With millions of business owners, webmasters and affiliates spending thousands of dollars on SEO and countless hours optimizing their websites (only to have the Google organic search results shaken up or completely whisked away due to vacillating shifts from new algorithm changes) is genuinely creating feelings of anger, frustration and disdain.
Google’s greatest fear is you not using or needing to use Google…
As if running a business wasn’t hard enough, business owners are now forced to deal with the rise and fall of search engine results (knowing that at any time aside from ruthless competitors targeting their most coveted positions that a new algorithm change could come along and potentially sweep all their progress under the rug) without warning.
The only solution is to either (1) conform or (2) diversify your traffic sources to become less dependent on any one source of visitors, however, most are either unwilling or unaware of their options, so they continue to run on the treadmill in hope of stability.
For large or small businesses alike faced with overhead, cash flow and competition; conforming or overly depending on any one traffic source (Google) is not a viable solution for creating long-term stability.
Faced with violent shifts in rankings and either posting record profits or losses based on where you rank is a type of traffic-dependency. That dependency can be weaned and replaced if those same business owners took their searches or paid search budget to other viable search engines and / or traffic sources to funnel traffic.
Objectively, it’s time to see things for what they really are; the fact that Google (not surprisingly) is a business model motivated by profits. Despite the “don’t be evil” motto which once brandished a blind eye from most, with recent allegations of privacy concerns, changes in Adwords policies (which left thousands banned with no explanation) and the constant organic search algorithm shuffle, at some point users will come to terms with this and act accordingly (and ignore Google).
The Pervasive Threat of Google Penalties
Recently Google informed untold numbers of webmasters that they were in violation of their terms of service for unnatural link activity. Needless to say, the fear of loss is a great motivator. When people are told to conform, most will to avoid going against the current of the status quo.
However, the audacity that webmasters should conform to a terms of service (considering they didn’t opt in in the first place) based on Google’s limitation on determining the value of the link graph (paid link, intentional link, unintentional link, etc.) is preposterous. It’s not like anyone in their index ever received a request asking if it was OK to crawl your content and include it in their index?
Does CNN, New York Times, USA today or other massive authority sites add rel=”nofollow” tags to every outbound link or risk getting deindexed? No, they do not… Then why should you have to?
The fact is that websites with that extent of authority simply don’t need Google (because they already have an established brand) and users will go directly to their website instead of using Google as an intermediary (which is essentially all they are).
And how “relevant” would Google be if a user typed in CNN in Google and couldn’t find CNN (or any large brand for that matter), which makes brands essentially immune to being banned from their search results.
Yet, for small businesses, entrepreneurs, affiliates and others forced to compete daily in search engines to funnel traffic to thrive and survive are constantly pummeled by the vague terms of service which essentially means you cannot promote your website (unless it’s done according to Google’s promotional policy).
Google’s Stance on Links is Dated
Sorry, the last time I checked links were not exclusively designed to manipulate PageRank, links are just links, the are simply how people move from page to page and website to website. Just as freedom of speech exists, the freedom to link to who you like when you like exists in the same vein.
The only difference (mind you) is intent and links are either designed to deliver visitors from Page A to Page B or to promote – it’s that simple. And people are going to promote their business by necessity in order to create a profit so, I don’t see links going away any time soon, so, Google you will simply have to adapt (and stop penalizing webmasters) or they will simply move on to other traffic funnels.
The point I am making is, if Google were losing money due to their massive operation, do you think they would have the time, energy or resources to keep “shaking things up” in the organic search results in the name of search quality?
Would they have time to ban countless advertisers (since they collectively are not worth the time to service compared to fortune 500 and up clientele)? – I think not.
Is Google’ Greatest Fear Competition or Complacency?
With Facebook (the social giant) and Apple (the mobile giant) both considering entering the search engine space, Google could potentially have some SERIOUS competition ahead (unlike Yahoo or Bing) and which suggests that…
Google biggest fear is:
1) They will become obsolete as the preferred organic search engine and lose their monopoly (and profit).
2) Paid search will fail to deliver (since organic search is no longer “the cats meow” for disgruntled users) and the organic traffic base will diminish.
3) The curve will change (which is the most likely) meaning that new technologies, platforms, methods and/or solutions will emerge and people will simply move on from typing keywords in to search engines and use alternative methods such as apps, HTML5 or other alternatives to have media or commerce delivered on demand.
The cycle of emerging innovation (from BBS, to directories, to search engines) followed by user adaptation which now borders on user complacency has already reached the point of consolidation.
This implies that the cycle is ripe for change and a new potential curve (such as Apples Siri) or other alternatives to search could make the previous achievement obsolete (e.g. pagers, cassette tapes, VCR’s, the Yellow Pages).
However, at the time (back in the day) few were looking past the phase of user complacency and would still be using Pagers, cassette tapes, VCR’s, etc. if new innovations and curves had not usurped them, now making them obsolete.
While most people didn’t know (or care) what a search engine was 10 years ago, fast forward 10 years and they may not even be able to remember.
Keep in mind, the market is fickle and here today gone tomorrow can happen faster with the acceleration of communication and new emerging technologies.
The Take Away Is…
1) The very data in Google’s index that they attempt to police and enforce does not belong to them, it belongs to those who wrote it and who are generously sharing it with the web at large. Google does not create the content their index, “YOU and others like you DO” and how you promote it is up to you.
2) The web is bigger than Google and you decide Google’s fate every time you search on their platform or choose another search engine you cast your vote. There are thousands of traffic funnels to drive visitors to your websites aside from search engines (investigate them for viability to your business).
3) Google telling people to jump through hoops (in fear of a ranking penalty or removal from their index) is a Pandora’s Box they should leave behind (or they might be left behind on the next emerging curve from those same banned/penalized users).
In closing, Google’s greatest fear is you not using them and while their business model is brilliant, they’re the most successful company in history to profit from (1) using content created from other websites via crawling and indexing technology (2) create a synergistic advertising model as an accessory to their organic search results and (3) getting paid to send traffic away from their own site as an authoritative intermediary – this curve, put simply, has its limitations, particularly, if any of the aforementioned metrics change, (such as Google having to ask permission to crawl your data).
Fortunately for us (based on previous experience), we know that consumers are fickle and at any time they could opt-out and frequent other websites which have more emotional, functional or curb appeal than Google. Google started as one website and can potentially be reduced to that if people choose not to use it.
This means you, the users hold the key to just how much power or control you wish to allow it to have over you or your business.
Feel free to share your thoughts below…
Very interesting post. Although I’m not as jaded in regards to G’s policies, I certainly agree that businesses should invest in having a diversified traffic funnel – any business relying exclusively on organic traffic is positioning itself for failure. My advice to a webmaster would be to create a user-centered website with amazing content, let the algorithms rank based on its merit not on perceived SEO.
@Alex:
Thanks for breezing through and commenting. I read your post and thought it was stellar and had to link to it.
You could say I was letting off a little steam in this post. Could be something about not liking the whole do as I say and not as I do thing (which is an entirely different topic) on the ubiquitinous of their TOS.
The real takeaway was your last point, don’t be overly dependant on them for your businesses success.
Despite the tone, that was the message and that we “the collective consumers” vote by the very virtue of using their search engine or opting to use alternative sources.
I just think that they are at a point in their growth where appreciation for those that have silently contributed “the web at large” is in order than sending out “Dear Webmaster” letters to create a fear of loss for webmasters who may or may not have breached their TOS for the sake of survival.
The rabbit hole goes deeper, but best to stop here. Once again, thanks for stopping by Alex.
All the best,
Jeffrey
hello mate, hope you’re well in Chicago-land.
I have to agree with pretty much all of that.
k.
Your article “Google,s Greatest Fear” is so true we people do hold the power and Google should watch itself when putting out these foolish new algorithm changes as it could very well result in the Rise & fall of search engine results for Google.
Google’s power takes on the look of these big greedy oil companies who keep testing the people to see how far they can push their gas increases on us.
To me the only way to deal with these greedy fools is to shut the system down and then we will see where such companies like Google and the greedy gas monopoly will go with their now devalued product.
Kenneth C Young
hello
good article . i agree with most of the stuffs u mentioned. keep going. looking forward to your next post
Agreed, the new metric is traffic and Google is ONLY one source. It’s time for some diversification for the sake of survival. Shame on us for chasing the carrot blindly for so many years. Anytime any other website can put you out of business for metrics they control means it’s time to place less emphasis on that website for the sake of our business.
Cheers Gordon and thanks for commenting.
Jeffrey
Google can’t have it both ways, on the one hand they encourage SEO with webmaster tools and Matt Cutts Q&A’s but on the other hand they punish people if they’re over optimized. This is wrong in my opinion and they should make their minds up one way or the other and stick to it.
With the massive increase in social traffic Google know’s they’re search concept is dying a slow death. Just think Facebook achieves 100 billion hits per day and they don’t even create their own content. Amazing huh? My point is, more and more people are just sticking with social media now because a video can get you to the top of google in minuets rather than weeks.
Social Media traffic is what most people should be concentrating on today.
Richard
http://fbtrafficengine.co/fb-traffic-engine-product/fb-traffic-engine
It is true that a lot of webmasters have been affected by the changes made by google. Their foothold on searches are still on solid ground and until a better search engine comes along to compete with google head-on, then there is nothing we can do but to abide by the rules they implement.
Google is changing algoriths to fast, and if you get high ranking, you can lost it in few weeks
I fully agree and applaud you for your article. I’ve spend months almost without sleep after all my backlinks disappeared. I turned now the situation totally around and have and sell now the new metric: website traffic. I put those G bots to work for me the bots index and crawl now because of it and I choose the keywords for G to index. Yes indeed Sir, I try to give a new meaning to traffic-dependency.
Cheers.
Max Zepplin.
Wow, I saw this article from my wordpress dashboard, I’m using the seo plugin, I couldn’t pass up reading it when I saw the title haha.
This is very true, you made some great points about the new bs changes and penalties. I can’t believe how many people got hit in the recent updates, I felt it just a tad bit. Good thing most of my users come directly to my site or from social media sites.
Kudos from Detroit
@ fbtrafficengine
That’s what I’m hollering. Social media traffic is so, so powerful. My site went viral within 2 days because the topic my site was about was trending and I targeted all of the different channels and groups via tumblr & twitter.
Google should definitely be worried! I know I don’t use them anymore and neither do a lot of other people.
Heading straight for Google has become more of a habit than anything else. It is a bad habit that needs to be broken.. like picking you nose.
No one needs Google for anything. Anyone can certainly find all the information they need in Yahoo and Bing without subsidizing the one who gives everyone nothing but headaches.
it’s certainly a love and hate relationship with google
Wow! Your article was moving and the first I read that shared voiced my thoughts.
I think Google forgot that Adwords does not work without Adsense publishers. If they keep kicking out the publishers, eventually CPC will be too high for even the fortune 500 companies to justify the ROI.
It struck me the other day as I was researching competition. 5 to 6 months ago, I had thousands competing for Adsense ads. Now, there are only a couple hundred – spam and all.
Thank you for posting this article.
Excellent post! Google has rocked a lot of sites recently, the good along with the low quality sites with recent changes. The ride is getting a tad tough. Best to move on and diversify.
This article is BRILLIANT – Thank you for writing it.
It’s about time consumers wake up to themselves and realise that Google isn’t the friendly giant it’s cracked up to be – more of a tyrannous monster with frighteningly sharp teeth…
Perfectly outstanding insight into Google “evil”, and something I myself felt for some time now. At one stage I thought Bing might eventually topple Google. However they too come from a “criminal-mind” background. But hey, do you not get a sense of deja vu here? Does not this rise and potential fall from grace, remind you of another similar rise and fall from grace? . . . of another PC giant beginning with the letter M?