Google’s push for Google+ risks user ire — and worse

Google’s going to great lengths of late to promote and celebrate Google+ — so much so that it’s starting to smack of desperation. Not in recent memory, if ever, has the company engaged in such questionable tactics to promote a new service. It’s gotten so bad that Google runs the risk of not only turning off users and customers, but possibly inviting more scrutiny from the FTC for potential anticompetitive practices.

In a nutshell, Google seems intent on using its position as the king of search to shove Google+ down our throats. The company is using Google Search to promote the heck out of Google+ — even mixing regular search results with links to Google+ content. It’s also slyly marketing Google+ as a way to get the kind of exposure on Google Search traditionally reserved for sites that have earned high-ranking status through legitimate traffic and referral links or for companies that have paid for advertising space.

Google also appears to be using its search platform to give its own social networking site an advantage over the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. I don’t know about you, but that reminds me of when another company with a near monopoly tried to lock up a new market and found the Justice Department on its tail: Microsoft back in 1998 when it was hauled into court for stifling competition against the likes of Netscape and Opera by tightly bundling Microsoft Windows with Internet Explorer.

And there’s more. Among Google’s latest questionable maneuvers has been the act of practically forcing users to create a Google+ account, even if they just want to make a Google account for Gmail, Google Docs, or another Google service. As announced Friday on the third-party Google Operating System blog, “If you try to create a Google account from Google’s home page, you’ll notice that Google redesigned the page, but that’s not all. You’ll now have to create a Gmail account and a Google profile, and you’ll automatically join Google+.”

That’s a nifty way to artificially boost a site’s numbers to make it appear that people are naturally flocking to it. (There is a workaround, according to an update to the blog post, so long as you have the right URL: https://accounts.google.com/NewAccount.) Such apparent manipulation flies in the face of Google’s claims that its search results are objective and that it tweaks its search engines to penalize those who game the system or simply don’t serve users well, such as the recent decision to penalize sites with many ads at the top of the screen through lower search result placement.

But this little tactic is really the tip of the iceberg compared to some of the other stunts Google is pulling to push Google+. One of the most irritating and self-damaging moves the company has made is polluting Google Search results with Google+ links, both on the right side of the screen where paid ads usually appear and at times interspersed among real search results. The value of the added Google+ results is questionable at best, particularly for a Google user who neither has nor desires a Google+ account. Some Google+ users have complained (on Twitter, ironically) that the Google+ entries reduce the number of useful search results, showing them their own Google+ content rather than the new information they were seeking.

From a business perspective, Google may have decided the reduction in ads and the reduced customer satisfaction are worthy prices to pay for growing Google+. But that seems a surprising anti-user approach for a company that proclaims user-oriented behavior. What’s more, there’s reason to wonder whether Google is taking advantage of its inside knowledge about its search algorithms to give Google+ results higher placement than competitors such as Facebook and Twitter. Finally, Google may find itself on the receiving end of privacy complaints as Google+ users find their information presented to Google searchers in ways they hadn’t anticipated or intended.

Consider some of the Google search results I got today. I did these searches using Google’s Chrome browser, and I did not log in to my Google account. For all Google knew, I was an average user looking for useful answers or sources via its popular search engines.

One of the first searches I tried was for “WWE,” which stands for “World Wrestling Entertainment.” I chose this search term in part because I know WWE was among the first companies to roll out a business page on Google+. Here’s what the resulting search page looked like:

If Google’s search results are to be believed, WWE’s Google+ page is second only to the WWE website in terms of search value. As a point of comparison, search results for WWE on Bing and Yahoo yield the WWE website as the top result, the WWE listing on Wikipedia as No. 2, and assorted WWE news-search results as No. 3.

Why does Google’s search rank the WWE Google+ page so highl? After all, Facebook’s and Twitter’s respective WWE feeds have both been around a lot longer and so would have more links to them — one of Google’s main search-ranking criteria. Facebook’s page shows up far lower on the search results page, and the WWE Twitter feed is nowhere to be seen at least on the first few pages. Google has reportedly claimed that it intends to negotiate with Twitter and Facebook to use their feeds, but the basic landing pages are public and shouldn’t require any special APIs.

And if you didn’t notice (and how could you not?), there are three links to purported WWE-related Google+ pages on the side, beneath People and Pages on Google+. Those may very well be useful links for someone researching WWE, but the fact that Google is using that space to list Google+ links instead of paid ads for customers selling WWE merchandise is, well, curious. In short, my Google search for WWE resulted in an eyeful of free marketing for Google+.

One is Bonnie Burton, who works at Lucasfilm for the Starwars.com site (per her profile, anyway). Her Google+ feed does have a goodly number of “Star Wars”-related posts.

One is John Gatt, who is a big fan of the “Star Wars” movies and video games (as well as other games). He uses his Google+ feed to promote his SWTOR (Star Wars: The Old Republic) blog, swtorface.com. Is Gatt’s Google+ page or SWTOR blog really a relevant result for someone Googling “Star Wars” (as opposed to, say, SWOTR)? Well, I’ll just note that said blog does not appear among the top Google results.

Incidentally, Google let me know right on the search results page that Gatt has “3 girls named Mara, Judzea, and Teneniel,” which is information pulled from his Google+ profile page — presumably because their names followed the phrase “Married to a Star Wars fan.” One wonders if Gatt knows or minds that the names of his daughters are so easily found by anyone who happens to Google “Star Wars.”

Finally, there is Alex Lindsay, who used to work at Lucasfilm and Industrial Light and Magic on “Star Wars: Episode 1.” Nothing he has posted since at least Dec. 24 has anything to do with “Star Wars,” yet Google somehow deemed his profile worthy of adding to search results pertaining to it — presumably based on the very basic keyword search of his “About” page.

So to summarize: Google, which once prided itself on not cluttering screens with excessive text, is using the lucrative right side of its search page to present links pertaining to “Star Wars,” one of which is of dubious value to a “Star Wars” fan and one of which is clearly of no value. In the process, Google Search is exposing user information (specifically, childrens’ names) in a way a user may not have wanted.

Also of potential concern to search purists is that Google is pimping Google+ as a way to get yourself promoted via Google search. Beneath the list of Google+ recommendations, there’s hyperlinked text that reads, “Learn how you could appear here too.” Click the link, and you’re taken to a page where you can create a Google+ account. To me, that translates to “Create a Google+ account, litter it with the right keywords, and you’ll get the kind of exposure generally reserved for the naturally most popular sites on the Internet — or for those who shell out the money for ads atop the Google search results page.”

None of this smells right. Google’s audacious pimping of Google+ may get more Google+ signups, but it may drive away search users and search advertisers — and get the feds to start nosing around.

This story, “Google’s push for Google+ risks user ire — and worse,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.