Favored placement
Favored placement (also known as preferred placement) is the practice of preferentially listing search engine results for given sites. It is also known as pay for placement, but this term usually refers to advertisements that appear along with relevant search results while favored placement affects the order of actual search results.
One of the earliest companies to use favored placement was
In February 1998 GoTo.com, a project of
As part of the Google-AOL deal in 2005, Google agreed to give favored placement to content from AOL throughout its site.[3]
Benjamin Edelman, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School, claims that Google has "hard-coded" bias in the algorithm it employs to generate its OneBox results which are shown usually at the top when a query can be answered quickly or a direct link can be given.[4] Edelman, states that in such cases, Google services such as Google Finance receive preferential listing over more popular finance sites such as Yahoo! Finance.[4] However, Barry Schwartz, CEO of RustyBrick, points out that OneBox results are not organic and therefore should not been viewed as algorithmic.[5]
References
- ^ a b c Pelline, Jeff. "Pay-for-placement gets another shot". CNET.
- ^ "Search Engine Watch - "GoTo Going Strong"". Archived from the original on August 28, 2009.
- ^ Hansell, Saul (December 16, 2005). "Time Warner Plans to Sell 5% of AOL to Google". The New York Times – via NYTimes.com.
- ^ a b Edelman, Benjamin. "Hard-Coding Bias in Google "Algorithmic" Search Results". Retrieved 20 April 2011.
- ^ Schwartz, Barry. "Are Google'sOne Box Results Unethical?". Search Engine Roundtable. Retrieved 20 April 2011.