For Google, Users Must Rank First

If search results are all about relevance, Google could be risking its own. In local search, for instance, by promoting its own results over other, perhaps more relevant sites, Google may be doing users a disservice. It also may be giving rivals like Microsoft a chance to take share. Web publishers live and die on how Google ranks their relevance. It determines their traffic first and foremost. And when they are working with Google to sell ad space, it affects the ad rates they receive. Arbitrating website relevance for searchers, as Google does, is a tall order. Results that one web surfer finds informative may be useless to another. Google's two-thirds share of searches, according to comScore, suggests it has managed well, historically. Yet Google's investment in its own content has to conflict with its role as a neutral arbiter.