Google Could Be Hijacking You

Lets say you live in the Miami area or are thinking of taking a vacation there. You might want to bring your family to the Miami Seaquarium, and it might be a good idea to find out exactly where they are and what hours they are open. So what do you do? Fire up your browser, head on over to Google, and search for -seaquarium miami-. You should get a result thats something like this:

So whats the problem? First of all, Google gives away the hours right in the SERP. Theres no need for the people to visit the website. While I dont know for a fact that traffic growth is a success metric for the Miami Seaquarium, I think its a safe assumption. By denying the Miami Seaquarium that traffic they deny them the opportunity to upsell visitors to the upcoming aquarium programs. Now Googlers might counter by saying that its all about providing a better user experience. Maybe at the next conference Ill improve the movie going experience of some Googlers by telling them the surprise ending of the latest movie before they see it. I mean, I saved them money and two hours of their time, right? Thats gotta be a better user experience.

See that review and link to more information? Click either of those and, instead of being taken to the Miami Seaqurium website, youre taken to the Google map listing page. Google stole the information they wanted from the Miami Seaqurium, hijacked the traffic for themselves, and put them on a page with contextual advertising that puts more money in Google s pockets. The only person that gets a better user experience out of that is someone whose paycheck directly results from that advertising. Really this is nothing more than a scraper adsense website designed to hijack traffic away from place it should be going. Because Google controls the SERPs they make sure they are at the top, guaranteeing clicks, traffic, and revenue from that page.

This is almost the exact behavior I described in my debate with Danny Sullivan a few weeks ago on Sphinn. I stand by my position that giving Google the copyright to the information for free right out of the gate is the same as giving them permission to steal and develop a money making operation based on your labors without giving you any of the action.

Want another example of Google stealing? Sure, here we go

Lets say I decide I want to go to nice steakhouse for dinner. I know theres a Bryant & Cooper here on Long Island. I wonder if its still any good, so I type in -bryant & cooper steakhouse long island reviews-. Heres what I get:

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