Certain Habits

Mark Cuban asked that question recently in his typically provocative fashion. Here’s a sample so you can get a feel for the argument. (But read the whole thing):

How many websites would have to recuse themselves from the Google Index before Google Search was negatively impacted ?

Mahalo​.com thinks it needs to support the 25k most common search terms in order to be successful. What would happen if MicroSoft or Yahoo or a MicroHoo went to the 5 top results for the top 25k searches and paid them to leave the Google Index ? A theoretical maximum of 125k sites, but with overlap, probably closer to 100k or less, times how much per site on average ?

The math starts to get interesting. At $1,000 per site average times 100k sites, thats only $ 1 Billion Dollars. The distribution would obviously favor the larger sites, so of that billion dollars, would the top 1k sites take 500k each and the remaining 99k split the rest ?

From a strategic standpoint, this scenario is interesting to contemplate. As Cuban notes, the alternative approaches competitors can employ to usurp Google—“better” search, a “new paradigm” of search, “better UI”, etc.—fail because people will have a hard time discerning that the new is truly better, and it’s difficult and expensive to develop these capabilities anyway.

But is Cuban’s claim that “[a]fter all, once consumers realized that Google no longer had valid search results for the top 25k searchs, that traffic would most likely go to MicroSoft and Yahoo” true?

I wonder. This claim assumes that Google’s success is due it’s algorithmic authority. Clay Shirky discussed algorithmic authority in a recent, must read post. (Go ahead. Read the whole thing. I’ll wait.)

But this is a double edged sword. Were Microsoft to take that approach, it would be a tacit admission that Google’s algorithmic results are more reliable, ought to be more authoritative, than others. In a world where 25% of searches conducted in the last three months have been conducted for the first time, this is a dangerous admission. The top 25,000 searches account for a lot of search volume, but the vast majority of it?

Not only does this strategy assume that the top 25,000 searches truly are pivotal, it also assumes that the top five sites account for most of the value of the search. It is true that the top five results, and page one in particular, do account fo rhte majority of clicks. The top five results provide “good enough” answers to most questions. But on the top 25,000 most popular searches, the next five results are also likely to return good enough answers. Maybe not as good, but good enough still. (Especially since the top 25,000 searches also have the most competing content).

The biggest loss would be the removal of sites like Wikipedia and Amazon from Google’s index. (No doubt Google wouldn’t take cash to remove YouTube from its own index). However, knowing that these sites are no longer on Google, would users move to Bing, or go directly to Wikipedia or Amazon? I suspect that Wikipedia and Amazon would probably get more direct traffic than they do today. They are already becoming defacto algorithmic authorities of their own.

Moreover, the approach assumes that the top five are largely stable. But of necessity, paying the top 5 of the top 25,000 searches is to pick a snapshot of the Internet. While on many of the searches, the top positions are no doubt relatively stable, there’s still quite a bit of volatility. And the removal of the top five would likely encourage new sources to enter the market and fill the gaps in Google’s index.

What Cuban doesn’t say explicitly is that one of the benefits of spending $1B or $10B or $50B to induce top sites to leave Google’s index is the publicity it would generate. It would send the message very publicly that Google has lost something valuable. This kind of public spectacle may be the only effective way to spend marketing dollars to unseat a brand as entrenched as Google. (After all, Warren Buffett famously wrote that he didn’t think anyone would be able to displace Coca-Cola’s brand even if they spent $500B to do so.

Google’s brand is a powerful moat. Even though there are zero switching costs, people use Google habitually, not because they think “Google has better results in its index today”, but because they like to use and are accustomed to using Google. It’s hard to imagine that changing anytime soon, even in the face of a clever (desperate) gambit by its competitors.