Google’s Andrew Madden talks about how they are becoming more and more invested in working with online publishers and becoming content distribution partners
Madden started off his keynote at the 2009 SIPA 33rd Annual International Conference in Washington, D.C.. from a historical perspective. “The internet is big, and it’s growing. It took radio 45 years to reach 1 million in ad spending, while it only took the internet three years to accomplish the same goal.”
He then compared SIPA itself to Google.
SIPA’s mission: the business model of the specialized information publisher is to find a special niche of people who, for whatever reason, have an intense interest in a certain narrow field of information.
Google’s mission: organize all the worlds information.
“We used to expect readers to come to us, but now it’s a complete inversion. Now our readers expect us to deliver content to them,” Madden told publishers.
He then told the audience that, “10 years ago, if you did a search on Martin Luther King Jr., you’d find lots of articles. Within the last few years though, there are so many more platforms and niches. So, now Google is trying to deliver information within all those niches.” Google does this through platforms such as Google News, Google Book Search, Google Video and other platforms.
Now there is even premium content on Google. For example, the Wall Street Journal features content in Google News, which is tagged as subscription content and tells the user they need to be a subscriber to view the content. Some publishers choose to let readers pass registration and subscription barriers, if they come from Google News.
This is what they call the “First Click Free” program where a user can read the article, but the publisher can then “block the user with a login, payment or registration request when he tries to click away from that page to another section of your content site”.
The good part about this: Google gets the content, whether it’s subscription content behind a firewall or not, and they’re indexing it. Both sides win.
Google continues to work with publishers to index their content, especially printed works. They’ve even worked with newspapers, like the Pittsburgh Post Gazette to digitize 30 years of microfilm content.
Overall, the message is clear. Google loves content, so in turn, Google loves publishers. They’re looking to do their part in order to revive the industry and will continue to build tools that work with us, not against us.
More coverage from SIPA:
SIPA Take Away #1: 17 Testing Tools from Sandra Niehaus
SIPA Take Away #2: Get Your Staff Pumped About Search Engine Optimization
SIPA Take Away #3: Create an In-House Audio/Video Production Studio
SIPA Take Away #4: Membership Website Experience from Mark Ragan
SIPA Take Away #5: Best New Product Development Ideas
SIPA Take Away #6: 10 Ways to Sell One-Shot Products
SIPA Take Away #7: Google Really Does Love Online Publishers
