Search Engine Land’s Mediocre Post on Local Search
Matthew Hurst writes:
A colleague brought to my attention a post on the influential search blog Search Engine Land which makes claims about the quality of local data found on search engines and local verticals: Yellow Pages Sites Beat Goolge In Local Data Accuracy Test. The author describes surprise at the outcome reported – that Yellow Pages sites are better at local search than Google. Rather, we should express surprise at how poorly this article is written and at the intentional misleading nature of the title.
What surprises me is how far Matthew had to go to find something “misleading.”
You may not agree with the definition of “local businesses” but it was clearly stated, so if the results are “misleading,” it is because readers did not appreciate the definition of “local businesses.” Since it was stated, whose fault is that?
As far as “…swinging back to bad reporting…” (I didn’t see any bad reporting up to this point but it is his post), the last table with its “coverage of an attribute” saying nothing about its quality.
If you can find where the Search Engine Land post ever said anything about the quality of “additional information” I would appreciate a pointer.
That the “additional information” category is fairly vacuous but that wasn’t hidden from the reader. Or claimed to be something it wasn’t.
The original post did not follow Matthew’s preferences. That’s my take away from Matthew’s post.
Choices of variable and their definitions always, always favor a particular outcome.
What other reason is there to choose a variable and its definition?