Google, The Book Settlement, And “Gaming” Search Results

I’ve mentioned before that my online acquaintance Wolfinthewood (Gillian Spraggs, for those of you just joining us) has turned her considerable academic talents to the Google Book Settlement. She has a paper explaining aspects of the settlement you can download in PDF. While I am not sure I agree with her contention that the settlement may not be such a hot idea (again, I will NOT argue about it here) there’s something about this that is causing me a great deal of concern.

Wolf mentioned last week (on Friday, to be precise) that the search rankings for her post announcing the paper got, well eaten somehow. Now it seems her post(s) about the settlement have been somehow removed from being even indexed by Google. So has the page on her personal website containing the text of her paper.

Not just down below a mass of other pages in rankings. No. We are talking about completely gone. Un-indexed.

As Wolf says:

As I recall it, two things brought Google to its present commanding position. First, a superior search engine. And secondly, the fact that we trusted their results. Google did not go down the road that some search engines did, of mixing paid-for advertising links invisibly with the rest. And in those days their search results were always supposed to be strictly objective, generated through their famous algorithm. Absolutely no hand-fiddling.

Earlier this year anxieties were being widely expressed that Google might censor the books in the Book Service. There is a provision in the Google Book Search agreement that allows Google to exclude up to 15% of the digitised works from its database, without giving a reason. The agitation died away after Google’s representatives put their hands on their hearts and said the company had no intention of practising censorship. So that was all right, then.

This is exactly the same point I (and others) made about Amazon “gaming” search rankings–how on earth could we trust rankings or searches, once we know they have been fiddled with even once? It’s an arrow large online companies have in their quiver, one we now know they will use–if they think they can get away with it.

If they think nobody’s looking or likely to protest.

I am not entirely 100% sure Wolf’s post and paper has been the victim of such gaming. But it looks awful funny, doesn’t it? I mean, with pages completely disappearing from indexing? Just the pages concerning a Certain Subject, and not the other pages on the website? I am now curious and suspicious, and wondering what other voices in the debate about the Google Book Settlement have not been heard.

This does not bode well.

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