They're a monopoly so actually, something can be done about it. But the government recently decided not to intervene. Whether that's because of all the money Google's been pumping into Capitol Hill recently or because they're truly innocent, we'll likely never know.
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Are iTunes Links Being Downranked by Google?
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They're a monopoly so actually, something can be done about it. But the government recently decided not to intervene. Whether that's because of all the money Google's been pumping into Capitol Hill recently or because they're truly innocent, we'll likely never know.
I always search "APP appstore" and it is always the first or second link. Although when I searched "whatsapp appstore", the play store was the 6th link, and the appstore was far enough down where i didn't care.
Unless people go to bing to find what they are searching, it's kind of important for a search engine to return what your looking for...
Apple making phones didn't seem like a smart decision on the surface. Everyone said it was a bad idea. But in the end it worked out. So the surface can be deceiving. I think the more important plan is the long term goal. ANd how that can benefit all parties involved.
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But the whole point is people often don't know what they are looking for. They just ask the search engine and see what pops up for answers.
On the flip side - if Apple had a search engine and shafted Google - there'd be a lot of high 5s.
Much like when Apple announced that they were ditching Google Maps and also ditching Samsung for parts.
I'm not equating search results to these maneuvers - and their legality/etc. just stating that clearly this is a Pro-Apple site (for the most part) and any news that Apple getting "slighted" (true or not) is going to have people ripping apart the "enemy"
Anyway - there could be a lot of reasons why iTunes links aren't showing up as #1. Mine showed up on the first page.
I'm pretty sure as long as the results show up - Apple would have a tough case proving Google was being anti-competitive.
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No, they're not. Ever heard of Yahoo, Bing and countless others?
Time to crack the dictionary.
Agree. But remember the 90's MS was accused of the same thing, when Apple, linux and others existed too.
If they are artificially 'dropping' the rank then you'll probably find its for very good reason. Not only do apps not belong in spot #1, but there are usually higher ranking pages.
It makes perfect sense in the screenshot MacRumors provided. Twitter.com is a hell of a lot more popular than Apple.com thus generally will have a higher ranking.
Then you've got the content side of things, the iTunes pages are NOT optimised for search engines and dont contain much in the way of keyword grabbing content.
Quit it with the rubbish conspiracy theories, which only seem to get posted to bump up arguments/thread participation. It doesn't take a genius to work out how ALL search engines rank content.
It makes perfect sense in the screenshot MacRumors provided. Twitter.com is a hell of a lot more popular than Apple.com thus generally will have a higher ranking.
Then you've got the content side of things, the iTunes pages are NOT optimised for search engines and dont contain much in the way of keyword grabbing content.
Quit it with the rubbish conspiracy theories, which only seem to get posted to bump up arguments/thread participation. It doesn't take a genius to work out how ALL search engines rank content.
I don't recall everyone saying they shouldn't do it at all. In fact, once it was announced it was all over tech articles and blogs alike. Nobody knew what to expect, sure, but I would hardly translate that into "eceryone said it would fail". Remember, what you read on a forum is not necessarily the opinion of the majority. In fact, it seems to me it almost never is.
Sounds like we're essentially on the same page. But!...Amazon paying Google to uprank Amazon links resulting from Amazon-related searches (e.g. "amazon fire," "kindle fire") doesn't seem like as big of a deal to me as Apple-related searches (e.g. "whatsapp iphone download") being intentionally or artificially suppressed. The former is business while the latter sounds a lot like vengeance.
And not to get too caught up in conspiracy, this could also just be a bug on Google's side or the result of changes on Apple's side (e.g. coding changes on iTunes pages).
They both aren't. MS was not a monopoly back then and google search is not now. Does not stop the government from saying they are though. Governments don't get it right at times. But I think it's more about monopoly prevention then monopoly cure.
It's an indication of the size of the user base on each platform. Taking this further, a larger user base should rank higher because it's relevant to more people, in this case 4 times as many.
The difference is that people actually choose to use Google. There are alternatives, they are free, nobody forces people to use Google, therefor Google isnt taking advantage of a monopoly. They could put dancing android icons next to every result, with a link to the Play store, and still not be taking advantage.
If it was a case of Google being the only option, and people being forced to use it, then yeah, we could use the monopoly argument, but as it stands it cant really apply when you think about it.
Legally? I have no idea. Just throwing my own twisted logic out there in the hope it somehow makes sense to someone
I have a sincere question. Is there proof that these are being suppressed in any way? I ask because even the very article we are commenting on poses a question and doesn't try to state it as fact (which is rare). Also, and this next point does a lot to debunk this conspiracy theory in my mind, my own searches have yielded various results. In getting iTunes links as the number one hit on multiple occasions. On others I am seeing both google play and iTunes (sometimes one is ahead of the other, but still on the first page). Rarely, I am not getting the search result I would expect at all. Conspiracy theories are funny in that they will take that data where I found nothing when I thought I should have and blow if way out of proportion. From my vantage point this seems to be exactly that.
Somehow if this were Apple pulling this crap to Google I'll bet you'd be defending Google.
Yes very rare. An example of a good article. They ask the question and don't pick their own biased answer for it. They are letting us decide what the answer is and letting us debate it on the forums. This is the way to generate intelligent chat on the forums. MacRumors need to take notice of this and keep doing it.
No, and I added a tidbit on the end of my previous post alluding to that. Also, I generally try to keep the use of "if" statements prevalent in these instances as I don't want to appear as passing something like this off as fact, which I don't know it to be (or not to be).
It could very well be that to some degree however a search as specific as "download whatsapp iphone app" should result in a highly ranked iTunes link, at least from my experience of searching Google for iphone app links on iTunes, yet no such link is anywhere near the top. That's a bit odd, in my opinion. Not necessarily intentional, just odd.
Sorry, this is not an issue. Even if the app store link was ranked the highest, it's not a download link. It is a 'launch iTunes' link. People who want iOS apps search iTunes, not Google. The result isn't ranked high because it isn't visited much and it isn't very useful.
Apple has the resources to try many things. Unlike Google, Apple doesn't try everything under the sun and release whatever crap they develop.
My Google alternative is Faroo - I'm planning on releasing a web browser that only has Faroo as a search engine because it seems to be the cheapest search engine available (I have no idea how it came to be that Google pays Apple to have Google be the default search engine - they charge developers like me about $6/1K searches my users perform... There's no way I want to be passing expenses like that to my users, nor am I going to be swallowing the fees.)
