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Posts on Google

posts.withgoogle.com

68 pointsr-w28 comments

This is really worrying.

For the vast majority of the population, these are just going to look like regular Google search results.

My parents won't think "these are posts by someone managing this", they're just going to think "Google says this is the best information about my search".

So you're a politician, what are you going to do? Of course you're going to make yourself look like a saint with these posts.

You're a game company.. of course you're going to post "reviews" that are totally unbiased here.

This is dangerous.

I'm not sure I follow - how is that different than having every polititian/company ability to just create a website with a review and enter search results in that way?

From the screenshots it looks guaranteed to be the first result.

Those results are governed by page rank.

Google is essentially allowing people and orgs to bypass the ranking algorithm.

Not really - these posts are part of the knowledge graph box (which can already be controlled by a company if it's a company result). They aren't mixed in with the actual search results (although on mobile the knowledge graph box can appear above a search results depending on the search/context).

As per my understanding, the knowledge graph box is something output from an AI sort of system. A company can correct some results if they are factually wrong, I guess.

What Google is proposing now is for individuals and organizations to directly supply content for it to be shown on top of search results. Now who will check the information provided to Google? What is to stop a government from spreading false news on Google?

So that I'm not misunderstanding, this is going to allow brand owners to manage the data that comes up on the right-hand panel during a Google search?

I don't think that's too bad. Especially if Google hasn't crawled the data correctly or references outdated information. I imagine Google will limit any "advertising" (i.e companies giving marketing bio's instead of factual bio's from Wikipedia) that might take place there if they're not monetising it. Although it does open the option for them to do it in the future, which is a worry.

Yes :) Companies have actually been able to manage the details that come up in the knowledge graph box for a while now via Google My Business. Posts now allow you to add updates from the company to that box.

Which as someone who had been asked to fix wrong information in Google search results dozens of times over the years is a god send!

Google is less and less a search engine, and more and more a Compuserve/AOL content portal designed to keep you on their sites.

I'm pretty sure if Google's current form was a different company doing it, Google would rate them as a blogspam/contentfarm and derank them.

So, I tried the "already verified? post now" link, and got:

"Switch accounts to publish on Google Search You're currently signed in as B1FF@gmail.com [not really]. This account doesn't have permission to publish on Google Search."

Looks like a channel for businesses and public figures, in competition with FB pages or Twtr posts.

It's funny, because back in 1997 Google search took off because of good results AND not having the top of the presented page full of crap. Someone is spending goodwill like it won't run out ...

It won't. Google owns the Internet. What are you going to do? Leave and start your own internet? Get real.

Google is popular and has a big web presence but they are easily replaced in many cases (especially search)

I hope DuckDuckGo gets a lot better really soon. Things like this and the AMP debacle make me more and more distrusting of search results. Unfortunately, Google is still so much faster and more relevant than DDG.

> DuckDuckGo gets a lot better

That's highly unlikely. You need a huge money to build and operate the search engine comparable to Google. There is another route though - to build something like Blekko engine, but it requires a big amount of help from the users.

> There is another route though - to build something like Blekko engine, but it requires a big amount of help from the users.

Considering that Blekko was, ultimately, shut down, users may be less inclined to contribute to something similar in the future, assuming they remember.

I switched to Bing and have been perfectly happy with it.

Isn’t this just an extension of Structured Data which could already be used to generate such cards, but now to make it so people don’t actually visit your site and just stay on Google instead?

It's bizarre to try to motivate people to use this (even those paid for it, like brand managers) whilst being completely vague about how it works end-to-end.

Imagine if TV advertisers had been like "Well you record an ad, pay us and we do something with that... transmission... blah di blah... Hand Wavey"!

I think it's the underpants gnomes profit model[0]:

Step 1. Collect underpants

Step 2. ???

Step 3. Profit

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO5sxLapAts

That's a very large area of the screen dedicated to content other than search results.

How does this work? I tried searching "Liverpool F.C." and "Survivor" on Google and nothing unusual shows up. It is a future feature?

So, at some point I want to search about "kavanaugh" on google, and it turns out that kavanaugh's social manager already doctored a great landing page for his name...

I don't know, it seems like a great feature, but we are loosing the essence of the internet.

I don’t understand what it is.

Is Google Yelp now?

It has been for a while; I trust Google reviews more than Yelp or many other review sites.

AOL keywords, anybody?

google is getting too desperate about user data, google want there user to use google post rather then yelp or facebook. good going google.

Here's exciting "new" way from our Google overlords to fleece creators of content and spy on the audience. What else is new under the sun?

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