Comments on: Does Google Favor Its Own Services?

By: doary

doary — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 04:55:26 +0000

Who is professor who did this is a paid Microsoft consultant? and how about the data which isn't that convincing?

By: general

general — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 09:48:57 +0000

Brand loyalty may mean that Google users searching for “mail” mostly want Gmail, and Yahoo! users searching for “mail” mostly want Yahoo! mail. It may be the users that are biased, rather than the algorithm.

By: derry

derry — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 02:09:23 +0000

It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the reason that GMail comes up first for a search on mail is because a lot of people who are Google users get to their mail by typing the word mail into a Google search box and then selecting GMail as the result they wanted.

By: fasyl

fasyl — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 18:27:57 +0000

The google algo are always changes and I think it is Google adapting to the fact that to get to Google calendar I usually just type the word calendar into a search box

By: Drew

Drew — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 15:50:22 +0000

My assumption has always been that smart search engines look at which result users click on first as one factor in ranking order.

Brand loyalty may mean that Google users searching for "mail" mostly want Gmail, and Yahoo! users searching for "mail" mostly want Yahoo! mail. It may be the users that are biased, rather than the algorithm.

By: Brock meeks

Brock meeks — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 12:42:56 +0000

So this is what passes for research at Harvard these. If my kids were going there I'd demand a refund.

No need for further comment, Danny hits it out of the park.

By: Duncan

Duncan — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 09:17:58 +0000

The actual results you get will of course vary by the person doing the searching.

For example, I get Google calendar first in the results if I search for calendar. I don't think that's bias, I think it is Google adapting to the fact that to get to Google calendar I usually just type the word calendar into a search box or the address bar depending on what's nearest.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if the reason that GMail comes up first for a search on mail is because a lot of people who are Google users get to their mail by typing the word mail into a Google search box and then selecting GMail as the result they wanted.

By: Shantanu

Shantanu — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 06:09:19 +0000

Maybe I'm missing something but your analysis looks incomplete.
Yahoo results show yahoo services first in every search but they are not biased, google is?
Also, why should results for "mail" be a "stretch"? According to most web analyzers, it is the third largest email service in world but more importantly the one with most growth rate (approx 25% last year) while the other top two are losing users (approx 5% and 15% for hotmail and yahoo respectively) which would mean that gmail is being talked about more on the web.
Did you factor in these things?

By: Jason

Jason — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 06:00:57 +0000

The article is actually pretty weak. Danny Sullivan does a good job talking about it here:
http://searchengineland.com/survey-google-favors-itself-only-19-of-the-time-61675

The professor who did this is a paid Microsoft consultant, and the data isn't that convincing. He also took the Marissa Mayer video out of context.