Search engines are great shopping resources – for
video games, cameras, or even summer camps. But for practical information,
the search
engines have run into serious trouble. Commercial sites elbow out more
substantial, community-minded resources, which have become nearly impossible
to find. Fortunately, these problems can be fixed if search engine companies
work to balance community and commercial needs more effectively.
Picture the parent of a troubled teenager turning to Google or Yahoo in
search of credible information sources, effective treatment programs, and
perhaps to find places for connecting with other parents. I studied search
results at Google and Yahoo to see how well they deliver on a parent’s
reasonable expectations in this kind of circumstance.
Our Askquestions.org reporters are currently researching an article about treatment programs
for troubled teenagers and as a result, I know that there are many
free and effective treatment options available. Family
doctors,
school counselors and religious communities all offer relevant services
to families. Private therapists are also readily available, and most states
offer publicly funded counseling or therapy programs aimed at keeping teens
off drugs and out of the court system. We also found online message boards
and community sites tapping the word-of-mouth network among parents. And
we located expert advice from government agencies, academics, and the medical
community. The consensus opinion across all these sources is that families
should seek local, community-based programs that treat the whole family,
not just the teen. And luckily, plenty of community-based programs are
available.
Both Search Engines Missed the Good Stuff
I was stunned to discover that none of this information appeared
when I searched on the phrase ‘troubled teen’ at Google and
Yahoo, even when I waded through 100 search results at each site. Instead,
I was
confronted with a staggering number of listings all pointing to one commercial
option: coercive residential treatment centers (RTCs) that include boot
camps, wilderness programs or behavior modification programs. Costing between
$1000 and $2500 per week and lasting for many weeks or months, RTCs are
a growing and profitable industry. But mental health experts warn against
them.
RTCs consume about one-fourth of U.S. spending for children's mental health,
according to a report from the US
Surgeon General’s
office. And yet, recent well-controlled studies find that RTCs not
only fail to
help
troubled
youths but they can actually exacerbate their problems. "When you
cut off ties with parents, family, and home [as these approaches do]",
says Dr. James C. MacIntyre, associate professor of psychiatry at Albany
Medical College in Albany, New York, "you make it much less likely
that the child will eventually be reintegrated into society.” And
many journalists, parents, and experts describe plainly predatory marketing
practices used by some of the RTCs to lure desperate families into choosing
expensive options based on false promises. Lawsuits against RTCs number
in the hundreds. Survivors run web sites and nonprofit groups aimed at
helping each other cope with the devastating after-effects. Some of these
resources are listed below.
At both Google and Yahoo, searching on the phrase ‘troubled teen’ delivers
almost nothing except commissioned referral agencies and the RTCs
themselves. Deception abounds. The referral agencies do not disclose the
steep commissions
they collect from schools and escort services, for example. And interconnections
between the various arms of this industry are common. Six different URLs
among the top 25 results at Yahoo point to one site, TeenSuccess.org, which
is a referral agency. TeenSuccess.org is registered through a proxy DNS
registry, and there is no ‘about us’ information provided at
the site itself. A consumer has no way to determine who owns TeenSuccess.org,
or to appreciate the site’s many commercial ties to RTCs and other
businesses.
The following table shows my analysis of the top 100 non-sponsored results
for the ‘troubled teen’ search at Google and Yahoo conducted
on the same day in June 2004. I spent time looking at every site, noting
interconnections between the various sites, the links among them, and the
people behind them. Only 15% of the listings at Google and 2% at Yahoo
were the kind of nonprofit, noncommercial resources that would be most
useful to parents.
Searching on the phrase ‘troubled teen’ |
Google
|
Yahoo
|
Total number of results |
448,000 |
895,000 |
Total Listings per Page (sponsored and non-sponsored) |
20 |
30 |
Percent of first page, non-sponsored results that are commercial |
80% |
85% |
Percent of the top 100 results that are non-commercial |
15% |
2% |
Number of valuable news articles in the first 100 results |
13 |
3 |
Number of commercial sites with multiple listings in
top 100 |
16 |
31 |
Number of redirected ULS on first page |
0 |
10 |
Google and Yahoo programmers probably know exactly how many pages
of results most people will read before fatigue sets in. My personal
limit
was 100 listings,
which equals 10 pages at Google and 5 pages at Yahoo. I didn’t
include the sponsored links in my analysis, but I noted that the RTCs
and referral
agencies dominate those listings, too. Including the sponsored links,
you begin to appreciate
that a searching parent has to scroll past a truckload of commercial
listings to find only a handful of non-commercial sites and valuable
news articles.
Commercial Sites Are Not Good CitizensThere’s another problem with the commercial sites-- they don’t
share, and a parent who wanders into one of them tends to get stuck inside
a kind
of RTC echo chamber where no other options are considered, and no dissenting
views
are expressed. By contrast, non-commercial sites always linked to external
resources. Indeed, our reporters have found most of their best sources
by following links
either from journalists, academics or government sources. But the commercial
sites link only to one another. None of them cite independent information
sources, even though there is plenty available. And none of them refer
to media reports
or news articles about themselves or their industry.
I found 6 media sites in the top 20 results at Google and 2 at Yahoo,
but only one is a news article. The others contained very little content
except
for
ads, links or paid listings from RTCs, and referral agencies like TeenSuccess.org.
In all, I found 13 good news articles in the top 100 Google results and
only 3 at Yahoo, But none of the excellent and fairly recent reporting
on this subject
from the New York Times, Fox News, and Salon.com (among others) appeared
in the
first 100 listings either in the “news” section or the regular
search results at either site. I’ve included a list of these news
stories below.
Adding everything together, Yahoo was far more clogged with commercial sites
than Google and had more examples of outright manipulations.
For example, four
different
companies
were
able to
include themselves
repeatedly among the top 20 listings at Yahoo, while only one company got multiple
listings among the top 20 Google results. Yahoo also had 10 redirected links
on their first results page, while Google had none.
From a user’s viewpoint, this search experience is frustratingly
commercial at both Yahoo and Google. All of the most effective and affordable
treatment
options are missing. Journalists, academics and other impartial information
sources
are
scarce and
hard to find
in the overwhelming numbers of sites served up (nearly 500,000 at Google
and over 800,000 at Yahoo). Welcome advice from other parents cannot
be heard.
And
important government research statistics or information reports do not
appear. The results are wildly out of balance in favor of commercial
rather than consumer
needs.
How to Upgrade the Search EnginesHow can the search engine companies improve this experience for consumers?
Boosting visibility of noncommercial information sources would be a vast
improvement. And establishing some ground rules for commercial sites
would also increase
the
user’s satisfaction. I offer the following recommendations:
- Create a separate search channel for noncommercial, publicly funded,
and nonprofit services and information sources using the same model
as Google.com/Uncle
Sam,
which restricts results to government sites. Searching Google.com/UncleSam
for “troubled
teen” produced about 5,000 listings, all of them from public
institutions like the National Institutes of Mental Health, Congress,
and several
state agencies. Consumers would appreciate having the same option
to bypass the
commercial sites
and find other community-based information sources, parenting bulletin
boards, and non-profit service agencies in a Google.com/Community
search channel.
- Create a task force of suitable people to establish criteria for
inclusion in the community search channel. Nonprofits could certainly
use the help reaching
their constituents. Few nonprofits have a marketing budget to
match the commercial
companies who spend thousands of dollars for sponsored links
at Google and Yahoo. Google’s website claims that they have a program to
help nonprofits use their Adwords program at reduced rates, but for
the past month or
more, we have
been unable access the adwords.google.com/grants page, and I
noted that nearly all of the sponsored links at Google represent
commercial companies
who are undoubtedly
outbidding the nonprofits. Giving low-cost sponsored links to
nonprofits is a good idea, but boosting their ranking in the
non-sponsored listings
would be
an even bigger boon, and a valuable service to consumers.
- Boost the visibility of credible media sites. We found many valuable
articles in media outlets that did not appear among the top 100 listings
at either search
engine. In every case, reporters have interviewed experts and
assessed the evidence to provide exactly the kind of information parents sit
down to
find when they
search the Internet.
- Set standards for commercial sites by, for example, requiring them
to correctly identify themselves. Clearly the commercial sites have
used link exchanges, redirected
URLs and other tactics to gain unfair advantages with the
search engines at a significant cost to users.
I can imagine this troubled teen scenario re-occurring in many other
situations where businesses and consumers have conflicting interests.
Confronted
with health, career, or family issues, consumers want access to the
low-cost or
free community-based
options available to them, but advertisers want to channel
consumers towards the goods and services that generate the most profits.
This
tension is a constant
issue across the Web, and in every other public medium. But
because of their unique role as gatekeepers on the Internet, the
search engines
have the greatest
opportunity to find a workable middle ground that supports
community goals as well as commercial ones.
The magazine industry has a long tradition of balancing the competing
needs of readers and advertisers, and so we know that it can
be done. I can offer
many
examples from the twenty plus years I’ve spent as a publisher
and consultant to magazines. Take mini-vans, for instance.
When the car companies were aggressively
marketing the first mini-vans to families in the early1980s – and
buying lots of ads in parenting magazines by the way – magazine
editors were writing critical reviews of the vans. Their main
objection was that
the mini-vans were
regulated as trucks, not cars, and therefore lacked the safety
features people take for granted in a passenger car. Fairly
quickly, the auto
industry responded
by boosting the safety features of the mini-vans. It was a
win-win situation for consumers, editors and advertisers alike,
and I think we can reasonably
demand an equally balanced approach from search engine companies.
Luckily, Google and Yahoo don’t need to hire editors
or experts to balance competing commercial interests like magazine
publishers do. Instead, the search
engines only need to help consumers find the non-commercial
resources already available to them.
The Noncommercial
Sites for ‘Troubled Teens’ Found
by Reporters at AskQuestions.Org (but not found among the top
100 listings at Google or Yahoo)
1. Survivors Groups
International Survivors Action Committee www.isaccorp.com/index.html
A non-profit group of families with first-hand experience
offering tips to parents about finding non-abusive residential
treatment
programs.
TheStraights.com www.thestraights.com A collection of news
articles and information to help parents avoid the most
abusive programs,
the ones with many pending
lawsuits and criminal investigations. The site is maintained
by Wesley Fager, a father
who unwittingly sent his son into an abusive program.
Another site opposed to RTCs is NoSpank www.nospank.net/boot.htm.
2. Parents Forums
Fornits http://fornits.com/wwf/ Includes information submitted
by other parents along with many first-hand stories.
Ivillage http://messageboards.ivillage.com/iv-pstroubled
Has thousands of postings and replies about handling troubled
teens.
Parents Network at UC Berkeley http://parents.berkeley.edu/
Thousands of parents offer advice and recommendations to
each other.
3. Academic/Expert Agencies
The Center for Adolescent Studies at Indiana University
http://education.indiana.edu/cas/adol/adol.html Offers
many links, articles, and resources for parents and
teens, both.
Children Youth and Family Consortium at University of Minnesota
http://www.cyfc.umn.edu/adolescents/index.html Offers a
host of resources, articles and tips for parents.
4. Professional Associations
The Independent Educational Consultants Association (IECA)
http://iecaonline.com/ a non-profit, international professional
association representing full-time experienced independent
educational advisors.
5. Community-Based Treatment Programs
Because I Love You http://www.becauseiloveyou.org/ is a
nonprofit organization that helps parents develop effective
strategies
for dealing with teens.
The National
Self-Help Clearinghouse helps people find support groups
or start
new ones. http://mentalhelp.net/selfhelp/
6. Federal Government Information Sites:
Mental Health Clearinghouse http://www.mentalhealth.org/child/childhealth.asp
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention www.cdc.gov/mentalhealth/
Food and Drug Administration www.fda.gov
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
www.samhsa.gov
A Family Guide to Keeping Youth Mentally Healthy and Drug
Free www.samhsa.gov/centers/clearinghouse/clearinghouses.html
SAMHSA's National Mental Health Information Center http://www.mentalhealth.samhsa.gov
National Institute of Mental Health Child and Adolescent Mental Health www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/pubListing.cfm?dID=23
Recent News Articles that did not appear on Google and
Yahoo searches:
From Fox News: “Drug War Casualties” by Radley Balko,
Thursday, May 23, 2002
http://www.webdiva.org/fox/
From the Wikipedia online encyclopedia: “World Wide Association of Specialty
Programs and Schools”is a collection of news articles and report
on one association of RTCs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWASP
From the Observer magazine of the British newspaper
the Guardian, “The
Last Resort” by Decca Aitkenhead, June 29, 2003.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,11913,987172,00.html
From
Salon.com, “I Was a Hired Thug for Tough
Love” by Sheerly
Avni , August 30, 2000, http://dir.salon.com/mwt/feature/2000/08/30/wilderness_camps/index.html
From the magazine Psychology Today, “Family Ties”, By Ken
Gordon, August 2, 2002
http://www.psychologytoday.com/htdocs/prod/PTOArticle/PTO-20020802-000015.ASP
From Mother Jones Magazine, "Drug Mistreatment" by By Jake Ginsky
February 18, 2000, http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2000/02/rehab.html
From Ivanhoe.com health news, “Whats Wrong With My Child? Mental Health
in Kids—A White Paper” by Mildred Leinweber Dawson, published
March 3, 2003 (requires a small payment to read). www.ivanhoe.com |