Creative Disruption

The problem with talking about ‘transparency’ is that it can mean lots of things to lots of different people.

I sat in on the session at DLD (charied by Jeff) when Google’s David Drummond offered ‘greater transparency’ – but I’m not sure it was the same ‘greater transparency’ that was being asked for by some of the publishers in the room. In fact, I suspect that most of the publishers think of different things when they talk about ‘transparency’.

As Jeff reports, there was more talk of ‘transparency’ in Davos.

[And if you haven't read Alan's description of the same event - you should]

So – to be clear. I’d like to outline the kind of ‘transparency’ I’d like to see from Google.

Drummond said – as Google execs repeatedly say to anyone who asks that no money is made from searches on news content. This is always given as a blanket statement – and we just have to accept it.

Based on this statement, the idea of any ‘fair share’ of revenue for indexing our content is dismissed.

My hunch is that is true, although of course Google’s idea of ‘no money’ is probably not the same as most newspapers’ idea of ‘no money’.

But, what if this changes? What if, over time, in a world long after David, Larry, Sergey and Eric have all moved on, suddenly things change and the money starts to roll in on these searches. Or what if the profile of our content changes over time resulting in a dramatic increase in value. How would we even know?

So here is the transparency I would like.

• I’d like to know how often our content appears in Google searches (say in first three results, first page and first three pages)
• I’d like to know the revenue that was generated for Google from those searches
• I’d like a constantly updated view of the search terms that our content appears against the current cost-per-click of those search words.

Yes, I know – there are intermediaries and SEO specialists who will provide this for you, but frankly, the world would be a lot clearer and more transparent a place if Google provided this information for us. Continuously via a dashboard, please.

Too complex? Surely not for a company that lives on data and is mapping the ocean floor.

I dont’ ask to see it for other media owners. Just us. And we should be free to share it, or keep it secret as we see fit.

I also don’t particularly want our AdSense revenues ‘transparently shared’ with the rest of the market (and from working with Google over the years, I suspect Tom Foremski has slightly misread the smoke signals on this one). AdSense revenues are hard fought for – contractually, and in terms of implementation.

Is that too much to ask?

Perhaps Bing might like to do it first to get the ball rolling.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Google news – First, the news: Google told me today … (Jeff Jarvis/BuzzMachine) (techmeme.com)
• DLD Conference Report: Media Transformation (businessweek.com)
• Google’s Drummond explains why search engine pulled out of China (guardian.co.uk)

Tweet This Post