Google=Glorified TV

Please forgive my bluntness. But let's face it "The empire has struck back". There's one sure way to receive top rankings with google - pay big money. End of story. Anyone out there chasing algorithms is like a puppy chasing its' tail. Even when you get good ranking your hits will be fed upon by parasites that hijack traffic enroute and sell the traffic to the highest bidders. And google can change the rules on a whim. Hello? Who would run a business under these rules of competition?

[DylanW]

Originally Posted by monarchist

There's one sure way to receive top rankings with google - pay big money. End of story. ... Who would run a business under these rules of competition?

Was there ever really any totally sure way to receive top rankings with any SE? Algorithms change and the competition changes (especially if it's a keyword with a lot of competition), so nothing was ever guaranteed.

It comes down to the issue of putting all your eggs in one basket. Diversify the types of advertising you use (SEO, PPC, shopping engines etc.), diversify the keywords you use, and you're going to have less risk in terms of changes than if you spend all your time trying to optimize and tweak for a handful of highly competitive keywords.

[janeth]

I agree never but all your eggs in one basket but as far as top rankings go with google it is more of a game then anything else and I like to play.

Originally Posted by monarchist

There's one sure way to receive top rankings with google - pay big money. Who would run a business under these rules of competition?

Let me guess... you're from the northern west coast. ;-)

Do you think competition should somehow exclude money? If so, you don't know what competition (or capitalism) really is. Money is, and always has been, one of the key components of competition. And that's good.

Take two equal businesses, with equal skillsets and equal products, but have one with more money in the bank, and that product DESERVES to win. It's an element of competitive advantage like any other. Companies with money can advertise and improve ranking on Google by using that money, just like they can advertise on ABC or CNN or in your local paper using that money. There's nothing new or more egalitarian about the web, nor should there be, no matter what the Birkenstock-wearing set may like to believe.

What cracks me up is how often I see people moaning about big money at the same time that they brag about how fast and nimble their small (i.e., struggling/poor) company is. If so, if small and nimble deserves to be lauded as a competititive advantage, then big and monied deserves to be as well. In fact, if small and nimble is accurately an advantage, then big and monied won't matter because that just offsets it.

Then you're at square one and even with the big guys -- if you're as nimble as you like to think. If you aren't, then maybe you need to move down to the triple A leagues.

Google will cater to advertisers or it will fail as a commercial venture. If you don't satisfy the people who pay you, you don't deserve to exist.

Get over it.

[janeth]

Take two equal businesses, with equal skillsets and equal products, but have one with more money in the bank, and that product DESERVES to win.

I do not know how your coming up with this but because someone has more money does not mean the deserve to win.

I compete with big business everyday we started this business with no money. I have ten people that work for me and my business is only 8 months old. We make a very good living and do a better job or as good of a job as any site online.

The people that work hard deserve to win. Money has nothing to do with who should win and who should loose.

[dmcgill]

What a dumb post!
Moderator, when a guest like that enters, I would hope you could block the post.
Anyway.
I know and have known that since the day the Internet woke up and some big money was made, there have been millions out there seeking the gold bar at the end of the Google bar (so to speak). Me and my company, sure, I would love to see it prosper and grow so I could spend my winters in the tropics and summers with my children at that cabin on the lake but... the fact is, it takes work and that causes a lot of problems for some.

That brings me to my point.
What makes this forum different than many of the others that I have belonged to is the fact that it is filled with great people who are working hard and still have that dream. God only knows that if we loose that vision, we will be like the rest of the "drop off .com money chasers". I beg to differ with the "guest", we are all trying and it is because of that, many are going to succeed and perhaps already have. I will continue to try and understand the workings of the net, the secret formula, the never ending dream of that "perfect solution" to how to make my sites and those of my clients the top on all of the search engines, mine, Google, Altavista and more.
So Guest, you didn't make me angry or discouraged, you only made me more determined!!
Members, we can be at the top and we can do it using honesty and fair practices. I take my hat off to each member of this forum and (then put it on quickly to cover up that little tiny bald spot that is starting to show because of all the hair pulling)
Keep on trying

Dmcgill

Originally Posted by janeth

I compete with big business everyday we started this business with no money. I have ten people that work for me and my business is only 8 months old. We make a very good living and do a better job or as good of a job as any site online.

Although I agree with you on the money bit and your site looks OK, you should really get an 11th employee that scans for spelling errors :)

http://www.geeksonsteroids.com/designawebsite.htm
This page alone contains at least a dozen and I'm not even native English.

[dmcgill]

Originally Posted by Anonymous

Although I agree with you on the money bit and your site looks OK, you should really get an 11th employee that scans for spelling errors :)

http://www.geeksonsteroids.com/designawebsite.htm
This page alone contains at least a dozen and I'm not even native English.

Where is your site?

[TrafficProducer]

one with more money in the bank, and that product DESERVES to win.

Why? ---

Ask yourself, Does a site, which has a hundred different fonts, bad links, and a £1,000,000 DESERVES to win???

Basket of eggs

More sites=more keywords=more traffic.
Ref: http://www.solutions.ukdots.com/cont...rway_pages.htm

Money is an asset that you leverage -- as you're doing. You have 10 people -- how do you pay them? With money. You charge for your services. If a client offers to pay you $10,000 for something another client is willing to pay you $1,000, which client will "win"? The $10K client, of course. If you're better than your competition, then that client got the better company helping them and will prosper as compared to the $1,000 client, by virtue of using money as a leveragable asset.

And you'll do the same. If you compete against a smaller shop and the smaller shop has the exact same skillset, you'll generally win, and you should, because you can offer more with greater depth of resources. Your first statement about having 10 people in 8 months tells me that you've said that to others before -- isn't that better than having one person after three years? Of course (and congratulations). You'll use that competititive advantage as it should be used.

But this notion about democratic values in search engines would be the exact opposite of what propelled your success. If your clients said that they were going to spread their work around to more firms instead of yours because that's "democratic", you'd argue that you're better and deserve to win more of their business. And you'd be right.

Originally Posted by janeth

Take two equal businesses, with equal skillsets and equal products, but have one with more money in the bank, and that product DESERVES to win.

I do not know how your coming up with this but because someone has more money does not mean the deserve to win.

I compete with big business everyday we started this business with no money. I have ten people that work for me and my business is only 8 months old. We make a very good living and do a better job or as good of a job as any site online.

The people that work hard deserve to win. Money has nothing to do with who should win and who should loose.

Originally Posted by dmcgill

What a dumb post!
Me and my company, sure, I would love to see it prosper and grow so I could spend my winters in the tropics and summers with my children at that cabin on the lake but... the fact is, it takes work and that causes a lot of problems for some.

So Guest, you didn't make me angry or discouraged, you only made me more determined!!

Dmcgill

You're making my point. You're determined to do what? Make money and provide for your family. You make money by building a better product. That in turn provides you with another asset -- which you can spend at the beach or you can spend building your product up even further to be more competitive. Money is an asset, plain and simple.

But if whoever your clients are decided that it was only "fair" to be "democratic" with their spending, how would you be able to prosper? You couldn't. They'd spend with others and with you, regardless of whether or not you were better.

Google is no different. It's not a democracy. They deserve to be able to charge for adwords and ranking positions and anything else they want. This isn't a college campus. It's business. And those with enough money to spend on Google have every right to prosper by virtue of it being an asset they paid for and turned into revenue.

Notice that I said in my original post that the assumption is, given equal products and equal skillsets, money can and should be the tie breaker. But where a smaller company makes a better product (with less money), OF COURSE they deserve to win. That's what I did. I started with one person (me) and grew my company to 150 people and $25M in revenues and $6M in profit -- with no outside capital, no debt, and no dilution of my stock. I did it by beating much bigger companies. They had money and they had every right to try to use it to stop me. But they didn't do it well. So no, I'm not from some big company that puts out a crappy product. I outmaneuvered the big guys. But there was nothing "unfair" about them trying to use their money -- whether by big ad budgets or hiring lawyers to sue me.

[janeth]

I would say to continue this when the guest will not post there rich and famous web site adderss is no fun at all

[janeth]

Now that I have had time to go back and read everything you had to say I agree.

But the way you started out was a lot different then where we ended up.

I have no problem with the way google does things they can change anything and everything they want I will figure out ways around it.

What I want is to see some other sites fighting for the top and not just letting Google hold it all by them selves.

[dmcgill]

I am a terrible speller as well. I have even found that my spell checker built into my handy-dandy desktop doesn't catch them all. I fail to see that if a person can't spell, that makes them by default a bad webdesigner...
I'm wondering if the "guest", is fixing his or her website prior to letting us see it.
Yes Google can do what ever it wants, just like microsoft has done for years. We will still buy the product and use the search but bye goolllyy it's fun to rib them and it will remain to be upsetting when they switch things around again and have a whole pile of sites start complaining again.
dmcgill

[janeth]

We add new pages every day and trying to do 100 things at once there are a lot of pages that need work out of 100 pages I'm happy it took him that long to find one and he only found one.

I guess he does not have a web site

anyway the fun is going to get a lot better
as we watch
Yahoo
Msn
Google
fight to be #1

[acornwebworks]

Take two equal businesses, with equal skillsets and equal products, but have one with more money in the bank, and that product DESERVES to win.

Economics 101 teaches that having money is not what counts...it's what you do with it.

History's trash heap is full of companies who had more money but mishandled it. Does Enron ring a bell?

And mishandling doesn't need to mean criminal mishandling. It can mean misjudgements...think "The New Coke". It can mean technology changes that make your product obsolete practically overnight...think the original Pony Express. It can even mean being arrogant enough to think that having more money means you DESERVE to win :-)

[janeth]

I agree 100% acornwebworks

[jimmack]

In a way I agree but also disagree on getting top positions in the Google search engine without getting into a long newsletter here all I will say is this.

You can get top positions in Google FREE if your not lazy, Did you ever here of work and research? Im not talking about just pushing a button and getting to the top.

I currently have 23 websites in the top 10 of Google most of them are in the top 3 positions I did this without spending a dime but I did put a lot of time in this.

And speaking of search engines everyone is on this Google kick and that damm page rank yes its true that Google is at the top now but to tell you the truth I get as much traffic from Altavista MSN and a few others.

As far as page rank goes if you think you need a high page rank to place in the top ten your WRONG there are many factors into ranking a website page rank is just one of them.

All the poor babys out there that were using cloaking and lots of other ways to get to the top (And some still are) well if your site was removed from the search engines you deserved it end of story.

Ever here of link popularity and site popularity? and thats another thing sure its true if you have lots of QUAILTY RELATED links going to your website it helps your ranking.

But the main purpose of links is free advertising pure and simple page rank is partly a by product from links.

If you want high rankings in Google get off your butt and get to work if you do not know how to do it hire someone who does.

James Mackinlay
JRM Website Marketing

[janeth]

jimmack

Very well written I agree

[trsiyengar]

I totally disagree with your point of comments. My own experience is otherwise. You may try search the following key words in Google, find my page on the top ten or even top one in seach; try Srivaishnavam, Hindu practices, Newly Sex, newly wed couples or newly sex method. These are the key words people searching and landing in my site. You will surely find me on the top ten order or even in the first listed one! To be frank with you, I have not paid a single penny to google, yet my web site stands tall among top ten. Let there be some fair judgement while commenting on subjects that is vastly read by all of us in this webProWorld site.
Best wishes,
trsiyengar
Dec. 13, 2003
[url] http://trsiyengar.tripod.com/

[janeth]

Hi trsiyengar

I'm talking about for popular key words.
The less popular key words are not hard to get at all.