Today I was looking for unique musician gift ideas.
Whenever I am looking for something offbeat I prefer to search Google Blog Search as opposed to regular search. However, when I typed in “musician gifts”, I was shocked to see the e-commerce powerhouse Musician’s Friend in the list of “Recommended Blogs”.
Say what? See below:
Further on down the page was another suspect search result for – of all things – the homepage of a large Gannett newspaper:
Not sure what the deal is with this. Does anyone know what the criteria is for what makes it into Google Blog Search? Because these results CERTAINLY do not belong there.
What I like about Google Blog Search is the immediacy of information showing up in the search results. I like the offbeat nature of blog posts. They seem to do a good job of weeding out blog spam. Unfortunately it seems these large sites are somehow creeping into the results and it doesn’t make sense at all.
Musician’s Friend? “Recommended Blog?”
Are they PAYING for this placement?
C’mon guys.