Google or Not to Google?

[Keimos]

having been hit by the recent changes that Google have made and looking at the quote that has been received through Garret. (well done!)

It would appear that we should stop griping and listen to the advice.

I was hit last year and managed to get back up and I have been hit really hard this year. To me the question is not what have those stupid b********s done but what should I do to ensure that I can overcome it.

There are simply two choices.
boycott Google and move to another search engine.

listen to what is coming from google and adjust your site accordingly.

What a really crap answer that is. I wish that my crystal ball was available or even better, I could have been at the drinking session when they decided the new algorithms.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My intentions are to now to get out my old archived site and stick it up. At hat time I had no idea about SEO or all these tricks yet it manged to last at #1 for 3 years. (computer courses) and no you will not find it at the moment, wonder why?

Good luck to you all in overcoming this hiccup.( normally every november, so at least you have been warned for next year)
Keimos

[ron sheldrick]

Google is widely used by consumers for finding products..so if you're a commercial site ignoring google is business suicide. As they say pride comes before a fall. I'm a freelance SEO engineer, so adjusting sites to rank highly is a way of life.
A lot of people think that you tune once and sit back and the $$$ roll in....it don't work that way..only in dreams !!!!
Serious internet retailers should treat SEO as a business necessity...If nobody knows you're there...nobody knows you're there and if you don't sell anything a strange thing happens...NOTHING

[amberstar702]

As Keimos said, we can boycott Google and move to another search engine (or engines).

IMHO, as Google distinguished itself from the mass of search engines, so can another one rise up as well. I predict that this will happen. I am sure that other search engines are gearing up to topple Google from their pedestal. It's inevitable as Google has gotten too big for their britches.

My husband does the search engine promotions for our websites and he mentioned that there is a noticeable relaxation of submission requirements on a few other small engines. Good luck to the contenders!

[Christian_SEO]

When you use any free service, it's hard to complain when things change... or it should be, no matter how frustrating it is.

To me, it's like all those poor souls that were heavily, if not 100% invested in ENRON. It's not quite the same thing, but it's the same principal.

Now more people know what we have said for a long time, get divesified and submit your site everywhere you can. Even a small search engine or directory may become a large player in a couple of years. Google used to be small. Alta Visita used to be big.

Get diversified and don't spend time on much beyond having a site would good content based around scored keyword phrases. Have what people look for on your site and you are going to get found.

Out of the 50+ sites we have worked on in the past two years, only one client has contacted us with concerns about changes in traffic patterns.

[janeth]

History shows that no one stays big forever.

I would keep working with Google but do not ignore all the other search engines. You never know who will be #1 next year.

[amabaie]

I, too, have noticed a lot of people griping because their free ride is over. Other webmasters have been cheering, because the algorithm change has helped them. Their turn at the gravy train.


I wish that my crystal ball was available or even better, I could have been at the drinking session when they decided the new algorithms.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My crystal ball tells me this: "Do things the way you are supposed to be doing them, and you will probably rank high." The problem is that so many SEOs are selling webmasters on sneaky tactics for short term gains.

The recent mess is just the first wave of what is to come, and was predicted by a few of the more visionary SEOs months ago.

I wrote this article three weeks ago -- call it the next wave of predictions. I might be off on the details, but follow the principles and you can hop aboard the free ride for a while longer:
http://www.vinuthomas.com/article75.html

[minstrel]

My crystal ball tells me this: "Do things the way you are supposed to be doing them, and you will probably rank high." The problem is that so many SEOs are selling webmasters on sneaky tactics for short term gains.

The recent mess is just the first wave of what is to come, and was predicted by a few of the more visionary SEOs months ago.
My feelings exactly... on both counts: the web is in this predicament today because of abusive SEO tactics and it wasn't difficult to predict that sooner or later things would be changed so that those tactics would no longer work.

The SEO industry is like the car sales industry: Not everyone in the industry is bad, but the ones who are give the whole industry a bad name. Maybe those in the industry should think about accreditation or at least a Better Business Bureau type of organization to help the public identify who is who.

[tnt]

I got kicked very badly, and I'm therefore one of those who's deeply disturbed with Google. And there's little in the new Google "advice" that would help me now, because I wasn't really violating their rules in the first place.

For example, I didn't belong to a link farm, and had only one link page with the same basic links on there for two years now. And there's a big difference between sneaky SEO and smart SEO. I had a link popularity of about 500. One of the outfits that replaced me on page one was a two person firm that had 29,000+ links pointed back at them. How's that possible without some kind of "sneaky" tactic? There just seems to be little rhyme or reason at Google, IMHO.

They remind me of young lovers who loose their heads over someone fawning over them so much, and begin to take it for granted that there's something so special about them that they can treat that love with impunity. It's not until years later and that love's long gone that they realize how valuable it was. Google may look back in the same at the 'love affair' we all seem to be going through with them because they're "so popular".

Remember four years ago when the wisdom of the Internet said that "If you're not listed on Yahoo, you might as well not be on the net?" Well I can't prognosticate, but it wouldn't surprise me if we don't one day look back at Google in the same way.

I actually like http://www.exactseek.com. They not only offer to actually help webmasters with their ranking, but allow you to schedule your own recrawls. The trend for search engines to offer 'service' to webmasters may become a competitive tactic. Even if nothing changes, maybe it would be better to have good search term ranking with 10% than fight Google for their smug control of today's 70%. And who knows, today's 70% may one day be like Yahoo's current 10%.

[jl-reis]

My crystal ball tells me this: "Do things the way you are supposed to be doing them, and you will probably rank high." The problem is that so many SEOs are selling webmasters on sneaky tactics for short term gains.

I'm going to have to agree w/amabaie here. I run a small web design business, so small that right now I can hardly afford more traditional means of advertising. My only options are to optimize my site (and those of my clients) the way that they're supposed to be done so that my targeted clients find me.

As a result, my site hasn't moved but maybe two spots either way during this last Google "fiasco". Two of my clients are placing respectfully for their chosen search words, and a test site is doing better than I could've hoped for.

I sometimes think that we put entirely too much store in this whole SEO business, whether for our own company or our clients. When I go through some of these boards I get the feeling that we're only aiming for that coveted "#1" spot, everything else be damned.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm tired, maybe it's those old holiday blues, but this is getting so-ooo old.

[felicity1127]

I personally hope another search engine rises up and puts Google in it's place. What they have done to the small businesses around the world with this latest algo is ridiculous. What bothers me is the websites that were'nt spamming or doing anything wrong were booted down in rank also. Patti

[Keimos]

Wow, some great feedback from all of you.

As usual there is the mix of the have been hit and the have not been hit, which has been good.

Having had a bit more time to look through various searches, desperately seeking an answer, I would put forward a theory that I did put forward in another thread and probably did not explain enough judging from the results of the responses I received.

My search for "computer courses", as previously explained boomeranged from #4 in a world search and #1 in a Uk search to where I do not know.

However, on searching for " computer courses UK", I can be found at #3 (admittedly on a UK search because that is where my customers are and normally tend to look) so I believe that general phrases such as two word searches "computer courses" will be rather random and will be affected by page rank etc but 3 word searches should define a search better etc. so the more words that an individual uses to search for "anything" the more likely they are to find it.

We now just have to teach all the lazy searchers that they need to use more than one or two word search phrases if they have any chance of finding what they are looking for.

What do you think, can we educate the masses in time?

I still think SEO is hit and miss, my least optimised pages seem to do very well for some reason as do the sites that I have put the least effort into. Some with identical content(different keywords though and some adjustment to the content to reflect the keywords - computer courses to computer training)

Another ramble to keep you all thinking, but remember itcan still be fun out there as long as you have a sense of humour.

LOL, and look forward to your answers.

The wise person always looks and listens before replying as they need to see and hear what the other person has to do and say.
KD 2003 'Born optimist'

[Nomad]

been meaning to get over to this topic for a little while::::

ok a bit of my history:

I'm fairly new by most standards, I only built my first web about 15mnths ago[?] something like that. I have now rebuilt that first site some ten (or more) times now. I now use frames and tables together.
I run three sites now and 1, my community site, has a featues section, for items of interest to my local community.
Through learning of meta tags I have on eof my featues pages hitting first place listings in Yahoo and Google.
no paid sub-mission service, no sub-mitting to free search engines just working on my keywords. I also have all three sites linked and mix the keywords between those sites.
My stats have climed slowly but steadily.

works for me and as I use Frames I simply play with those pages once or time a mnth adding or subtracting words and put little variations in title...Seems to work and only for about 3-4hrs work..
I'd have to conclude from my experiance so far, which granted is limited, is use of good variated keywords related to your subject matter has to be a majorly important factor in search engine rankings.

[ldyguique]

There seem to be several concurrent issues that are nearly mutually exclusive: 1) the worldview perspective of the average internet user and how they search; 2) the worldview perspective of individual companies and/or individual webmasters; 3) the worldview perspective of SEOs and professional webmasters; and, 4) the worldview perspective of search engines. None of these perspectives is clearcut and has only a single issue.

The worldview perspective of the average internet user for searching is nearly entirely dependent on skills, which in my worldview perspective of having been on the phones in technical support for an ISP for over five years, is nearly nonexistent. I would categorize the average user as being entirely dependent on their ISPs portal or on their machine defaults for their search engine: AOL, MSN, Google, and Yahoo. They have no clue that there is any alternative to whichever search engine that they do use, and most wouldn't be able to name the search engine in the first place. They simply click on the search box on their homepage. They have little knowledge of what a keyword or indexing is. Most have never clicked on HELP in any program or website to learn more or to expand their options (search or any other kind of option). Many use the search field to type in a known URL rather than a keyword or keyword phrase. Even very savvy users fail to use a search engine to look up error messages or program issues. Most are oblivious to whether or not a site that appears in their listing has paid for position or "just showed up."

Since the geniune target audience IS the average user, anyone with a vested interest in website traffic from them must accept the realities of certain things: Google holds about 68% marketshare of being the default search engine. They have crisscross co-branded/partnership agreements with many of the ISPs, other engines, and even supply much of the hits for AOL and Yahoo. This means that at this time, most websearches will go through Google. A great chart of inter-relationships of the various search engines can be found at: http://www.bruceclay.com/searchenginerelationshipchart.htm.

The vast majority of the websites that are currently on the net have not been developed with any great expertise with regards to SEO. Not only are many of the websites lacking in vision or content, but many were developed simply to give a web presence to an existing business or organization and only seek traffic from a select group who already know the URL. While all of these sites are adding to the proliferation of the sheer volume of sites being indexed, they aren't seeking optimization. Google's count today is: Searching 3,307,998,701 web pages. Additionally, many websites have been and are being developed "on the cheap" by beginners who are struggling to learn the rudimentaries of creating a website with little or no awareness of larger issues, such as SEO.

Additionally, there has been a proliferation of web-based businesses during the past five years--businesses there were never even conceived of pre-internet. Just as there is a very high failure rate during the first year for a storefront small business, there will be a high failure rate for these businesses due to similar factors of learning how to be a business, competition, marketing, product, etc.

Once one moves into the realm of the professional webmasters and/or SEOs, this is where all of the hot burning issues of placement, ranking, SEO are being worked with. And, again, as most know, there are several groups of professionals with widely varying skills and/or methodologies, and ethics. Since their customers are paying for a service and many of these customers are usually unwilling to pay for true and expansive expertise, there is always a bottomline element--how much time is a professional willing to spend for how much money? I think that some of the wails of consternation currently going on about the latest Google Dance is that many professionals are unwilling to go back and tweak sites that have already been paid for, but are still under contract for ongoing tweaking. Plus, many of these customers are unwilling to pay for placement in terms of PPC, AdWords, etc., as an ongoing budgeted cost to get hits.

The search engine industry itself has to deal with all of the above, plus try and make money to pay for staff and bandwidth, etc. Google must deal with website proliferation and index all sites. Competition for certain keywords has increased beyond anyone's expectations. 3.3 billion sites = lots of competition and duplication, notwithstanding all of the spamsites, etc.

So, my take on any of the arguments comes back to the bottomline: Google holds 68% of the marketshare and is likely to gain slightly more strength before hitting a plateau that is likely to last for a couple of years. There may or maynot be a decline in their position; however, I suspect that they will hold major market share for quite a few more years at the very least. If one chooses to ignore Google, then one doesn't really want or care about decent placement. While one should use multiple engines and/or marketing strategies, Google IS the show if one cares about SEO and visibility and one MUST deal with the changes.

[marknc]

In the light of the new Google algorithm can anyone tell me what the situation is regarding mini-sites, ie, one-pagers set up exclusively to draw traffic and direct it to a main site. Is this now frowned upon? This was a course of action recommended to us by a company that specialises in search engine optimisation (prior to the Google restructure). There is definitely no spamming involved as each of these mini-sites are very specific in their structure and keyword set up and are aimed at specific markets. But I would be interested to know the facts.

[CeeAllen]

I totally agree with what ldyguique said. Especially the part about the worldview perspective of the average internet user. I would add to that that the vast majority of them do not know what FAQ means nor are even curious enough to click on a FAQ link.

I have only been designing websites for the past three years and am admittedly weak in the field of SEO. I try to keep up on all the latest and greatest SEO strategies that I read about in various industry newsletters and other sources but I find so much of it contradictory. With only a few exceptions, none of my clients are willing or able to pay for a Yahoo submission, CPC or any other marketing that will cost them money. They do not understand that marketing a website is just as important and worthy of expenditure as marketing a brick and mortar store. I do have a couple of clients using Google AdWords but they have expressed dissatisfaction with the results. Two of my clients have paid a SEO company quite a bit of money to handle that aspect of their website - one ended up getting banned from Google and the other is doing no better than many of my other clients. A third left me for another designer who promised them #1 rankings. I've watched their site - it has indeed climbed a bit since they left me (a few months before they left me this particular developer spoke at a business class I was taking - I asked him specifically about how he handles SEO and submissions but he refused to talk to me about it since we were competitors).

For the time being, I will continue along my current path in submitting sites to Google, will continue submitting to the "core" resources as shown in the the search engine relationship chart to which ldyguique refers.

[JayDrake]

I personally hope another search engine rises up and puts Google in it's place. What they have done to the small businesses around the world with this latest algo is ridiculous. What bothers me is the websites that were'nt spamming or doing anything wrong were booted down in rank also. Patti

I read through all of this and all I see is webmasters that are mad at Google because their site isn't in the top spot. I sometimes wonder if we're so wrapped up in getting results that we forget that we're not the ones Google is trying to please.

Google will continue to change their rules in order to continue to have the best, most relevant search results possible. If that means my site sinks to #4,321,986 for my keyword it doesn't matter at all to Google. What matters is that visitors search for my keyword, find something they like and come back to search more because they trust Google. If my site is #1 but the searchers found that the Google results just weren't relevant they will go somewhere else and my #1 spot will be meaningless. That's what Google wants to avoid. They don't want their visitors to go away, and while it might hurt some businesses, it isn't your bottom line they're looking out for.

[amabaie]

Google will continue to change their rules in order to continue to have the best, most relevant search results possible.

I agree to a point. To what point? To the point where Google sells more ad space on other websites than on its own.

As long as it sells more ad space on its own SERPs, it must attract the public. But when it begins selling more space on other sites, the goals might start to shift.

Is it beyond belief that one factor in the Google algorithm might become the presense of Google ads on the page? It could start doing that today, not to throw the SERPs all out of whack, but to tip the balance slightly in its own favor.

Is this some kind of conspiracy theory? Nope. Just common business sense.

[justhost]

We can gripe all we want about their changes. I imagine they have hit and affected pretty much everyone. Even if another SE comes up and overtakes Google, it will be some time before that happens. So...whine whine...and then lets get back to figuring out the best way to beat out the competition in Google.

For my business, web site hosting, that is a very daunting task.

Good Luck to you all!

[tnt]

Google will continue to change their rules in order to continue to have the best, most relevant search results possible. If that means my site sinks to #4,321,986 for my keyword it doesn't matter at all to Google.

By actually searching, one would hardly know that results for searchers is what Google actually has in mind. I've been designing web sites in California for seven years. Just to put this assertion to the test, I recently searched Google for California Web Design Companies, no quotes, which is a phrase actually in the title of the site I am referring to. And as for spamming, one can see my post above about the test I did on that issue.

Now admittedly I did dig down pretty deep looking for my own site, which is just not there. But hundreds of misses for the search term actually were there, including these little gems. Remember, I'm searching for California Web Design Companies, and I get:

Welcome to Mervyns ... Affiliate Program
Energy Solutions from Sempra Energy ... The other is Southern California Gas Co.
Richmond American Homes. New Home Builder in Arizona ... Our designers will guide you with your selections.
kingsnake.com - the information portal for reptile and amphibian ... Outback Reptile Company
Cal Poly Construction Management Dept. Home Page ... Environmental Design
Index / Directory of Energy Commission Website ... Geothermal Energy in California;
Fast Company | How Google Searches Itself ... Google, the search-engine company in Mountain View, California
CHANK FONTS: Fonts with Flavor! ... a Swede's ode to German design
American Theater Web - Find theaters, Broadway shows, and ... ATW California Clippings
The World-Wide Web Virtual Library: Chemistry ... Chemistry and Materials Technology
HSS : Social Sciences : Recent Working Papers ... crossover voting in California Assembly Races
Altera: Leaders in FPGA, CPLD and Programmable Logic Devices ... arrow Japanese Web Site
Landings: Aviation related companies on the web: Index-A ... Minutes from Arizona
RV America - The Home of the RV Industry on the Internet ...constantly adding new resources
Ian A. Waitz ... Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California Supersonic combustion
Texas Advertising @ The University of Texas at Austin ... BZA Internet Marketing Services
EIA Links Page... Automotive Trade Organizations of California American Bioenergy
The Religious Society of Friends ... Richmond, IN; Friends House of Santa Rosa, California
The New York Times on the Web ... Some Inspired Slide Show
Russell A. Beattie Resume ... Spanish telecommunications company
Fast Companies Database ... US Columbus, OH Capital Group Companies San Antonio
MEXICO CHANNEL (c) Business Center … Mexican Companies & Organizations
whump.com | More Like This WebLog ... This is horrible design. ... Microsoft, TimeWarner, Yahoo, and Google
Water Environment Federation ... Offer Regional Watershed Info
About TrainWeb ... website would feature "trains on the web"
State of Denial - Prologue: Homes a model of ecological design ... oldest and best-known logging companies
iLoveLanguages - Your Guide to Languages on the Web ... tape lessons including a Spanish for Medical Professionals tape
Radon ... that install and or design radon mitigation
nada.org - National Automobile Dealers Association ... The newly designed products
Beekeeper's Web Links ... Queen Breeding Information. Gondar Design - North London ... First Bees in California
California Aquaculture ... along with new articles and photographs
Talking WithBurt Rutan ... Ted Eschi recently interviewed Burt Rutan
California Pottery: From Missions to Modernism ... to the quality of commercial ceramic design in America
Links To Egypt ... Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum San Jose

[mickm1]

I'm amazed at the line of thought displayed here. I've been a webmaster since 1994. In that time I've built, promoted and managed hundreds of websites both commercial and non-commercial. All of these websites have been designed to support other forms of advertising and promotion. An earlier post mentioned 'business suicide' - to rely on the internet as your main business contact medium is 'business suicide'!
Search engine submission should be considered with every step of website construction. From the URL down to the body copy and captions it must be taken into consideration. Any website that goes through this process will rate WHERE IT DESERVES TO BE. If your ranking is low, study what's in No.1 position, find out how they did it and then rebuild. Conning the spiders will just make the spiders smarter. In the end the spiders will be too smart to fool at all.
Others of my era will remember an internet where detailed, useful and free information could be found on any subject via a simple search on any search engine. When the great unwashed became aware of the potential of the web as a cheap form of unregulated mass media, the rot slowly set in. Now, instead of finding detailed, useful information with a simple search, I can only find website after website screaming to sell me the information I want. Either that or even the most refined search will turn up hundreds of totally unrelated websites which, when studied, have obviously been submitted for indexing using some inventive, sophisticated 'techniques'.
I must congratulate the more inventive among you. You are the ones who forced Google to rethink their indexing criteria. You are also the ones who are making search engines useless. You will be the ones who eventually clutter the internet up with billions of pages of advertising that no-one will want to see.
The many will suffer for the greed of the few.

[ronniethedodger]

Is it beyond belief that one factor in the Google algorithm might become the presense of Google ads on the page? It could start doing that today, not to throw the SERPs all out of whack, but to tip the balance slightly in its own favor.

Is this some kind of conspiracy theory? Nope. Just common business sense.

I don't believe that is the case. I have Google Ads on my site, and only in one of the four major areas of the site itself.

This one area in the SERPS at Google went into limbo last November, and then reappeared last week after the last dance at #54. So the Ads did nothing to promote my pages one way or the other ... except maybe it did rescue it from the pits of Google hell, I might concede that much.

I also have three other areas to speak of, two of which relatively did not move anywhere ... and the fourth has shot to page one on just about every possible combination of search terms imaginable. And it did so without the presence of any Google Ads.


However, on searching for " computer courses UK", I can be found at #3 (admittedly on a UK search because that is where my customers are and normally tend to look) so I believe that general phrases such as two word searches "computer courses" will be rather random and will be affected by page rank etc but 3 word searches should define a search better etc. so the more words that an individual uses to search for "anything" the more likely they are to find it.


I couldn't agree with you any more on this observation. I also think that holds true for just about every "real" search engine out there. The more terms in the query, the more relative the results.

Two word terms seem to be the target in this new algorithm, I keep seeing everyone alluding to that.

Some words do seem to be exempt from this algorithm though. The words I am seeing that are unchanged when used in a two-word context are words such as "gold", "silver", "ultra", "products" and several others that I have noted.

Another observation ... or more aptly a theory ... is that the reason for one of my areas of products have catapulted in the SERPS is because the base name of that product is a two-word trademarked name. The other three are all without question, one word names.

You throw in the additional word onto the product name and bingo ... I am being hit like nobodies business. Upside is that orders have increased largely, although the downside is that it is a lesser priced product than the one not being hit as much. So dollar totals are roughly the same.

Oddly enough I am not blaming Google for the downslide of the number one product we have in the SERPS. I never really managed to get that sucker up there anyway to where it should have been.

The sad fact is that nobody is actually looking for it right now -- and I got them to find it thru Google by using another two-word name with the word Gold in it as a comparison product. My pitch for our product is good enough to sell them on it in lieu of the other. And for that other term, I am king of the hill on Google, MSN and all of the rest. It is as good as gold. Pun intended.

Final point. I keep seeing over and over about how everyone's main phrase has gone in the crapper. It is hurting them no end. All I can say is why are you relying on building your site around just that one phrase?

Find alternative phrasings. Just because it is not showing up in your logs, doesn't mean people are not actually searching for it. I use additional words quite heavily such as product/products, buy, on sale, free, discount/discounts, and on and on. If I see something in my logs that came from a page three SERPS ... I figure people are really digging for it and I throw that in there as well. This latter method I discovered that people were looking for "free shipping" which was not all too present anywhere on my site ... this turned out to be another notch in the search referral belt after adding it to the footer area of every page.

[Stanton]

Of course we all expect algorithms to change about once a year, but what is particularly disturbing is the contradiction between Marissa Mayer and Danny Sullivan. Danny says that “Marissa didn’t really mean what she said” --- excuse me? We know darn well that Marissa is not prone to mincing words or being “wish-washy.” She meant what she said, period. The only one that seemed “wishy-washy” was Danny’s stammering and attempt at damage control for Google. The bottom line is that Google made their decision and are standing by it. Like it or not, that’s the way it is.

Anyone that has been in this game for any length of time knows how cut-throat it can be if you are trying to rank for very competitive keywords. This new Google policy gives your competitors the ability to blow you into oblivion; of course, you can always return the favor, but figuring out who is doing it to you could be much more challenging.

The other disturbing part of this Google fiasco is that it appears to be very subjective as to the links that are judged. I am working with a very small “Mom & Pops” operation that was enjoying moderate success and only have two links (which are in no way connected to engine spamming) and are now in a black hole for virtually every keyword. The only penalty that I see they committed was being a small outfit. On the other hand, I have another client that is very large and is linked to some very questionable sources (ones that I advised against, but stopped short of accusing them of underhanded tactics) and have made some major jumps on several of their keywords. Was their size a factor? Maybe there were other factors, but size appears to be the only common denominator, or should I say un-common denominator.

From colleagues of mine I have heard the exact opposite where small operations benefited and larger ones lost significant rankings. I have invested a lot of time looking at some of these cases and can only come to the conclusion that since making these decisions are in the hands of humans it tends to be very subjective. In other words, your site may appeal to one judge, but not the next. Do you suffer if the person judging your site thinks you have an ugly web design or doesn’t like your product or service? Are they thus harsher on your links? From all early indications, it appears that you really are at the mercy of the particular person judging your site. They can say that they use consistent criteria, but let’s face it; humans are humans, and as such, are going to formulate opinions based on their own tastes. Now I am not naïve in the sense that I think personal opinions of search engine reviewers have never played a role in your rankings, but it appears that reviewers with Google have been given some very wide parameters to operate in.

So where does that leave us? In my humble opinion, Marissa’s attitude was very cocky and smug. I felt that she could have been a little more sensitive in her remarks. After all, there are many businesses, right or wrong, that invested their entire future in Google rankings, and by doing so helped put Google on top of the mountain. Hundreds of them will never recover in time to meet their bottom line and will just fade away. That’s the sad part. Marissa sits in her “Ivory Tower” and never sees the pain that is inflicted on many of these small operations. We are in the trenches “day-in and day-out” and it’s not easy watching peoples’ livelihoods disappear over-night.

Two things are certain; one, when a search engine controls this much of the traffic then businesses will tend to put all of their energies into ranking with them, and secondly, every engine eventually gets knocked off the mountain; especially when they become arrogant, cocky, and insensitive. It happened to Excite, Alta Vista, Yahoo, and will now happen to Google. The bottom line is that it is not a healthy environment for the Internet business community to be controlled to this degree by one search engine. I, for one, am investing all of my energies in other search engines and telling anyone and everyone that will listen why they should. My advice is to get ready to catch the next wave!

[chris_g]

Minstrel said:
"The SEO industry is like the car sales industry: Not everyone in the industry is bad"

Having owned an SEO company since 1997 and seeing some of the things that occur I often think it would be better if all SEOs had some type of license or standard code of ethics followed. Therefore if you followed the guidlines customers would know who is legit and who is not. Maybe that would solve the problem, but then again look at accounting and the recent scandles there.

We get a lot of phone calls asking about SEO and the customers wanting us to do things that are actually possible but not within the contraints they impose.

We don't offer guarantees because most of them are misunderstood or uncollectable. Since most customers don't understand search engine optimization that well the often think the guarantee sounds OK. When it really offers zero protection.

As a consumer you need to look beyond the glossy white paper in the quote and look for companies that have a history of providing value for their customers. Talk to their customers and see what they are like to work with.

The orginal question was to Google or Not Google?

Any good marketing strategy should ensure you have exposure on the most productive media. At this time Google is a major player but don't put all your efforts into one area. If it goes wrong you loose everything. As a number of people experienced with the Florida update (algo change).

I have seen a number of good search engine come and go and if your not working on other areas you will loose agian when the next big wave hits and the biggest players disappear and leave you standing there wondering what happened.

Should you be listed on Google, of course but you should also be listed other places to.

Whats next? Well I do know from experience there is more to come so start developing a more rounded marketing strategy that includes more than just Google or you will be hit again.

[LauraB]

Just for the fun of it, I entered Florida update in my trusty Google toolbar. The first page includes eight listings for the Florida update that we all have come to know and to some degree obsess over, since what Dec. 6th!

For some odd reason that strikes a nerve with me. If Google has power and they do - it is because we have given it to them!

And the really sad part is I still prefer Google to any other search engine!

[Keimos]

Hey people,

What a great response.

I think my conclusions from reading all of your posts can be summed up very quickly.

1. google are attempting to get rid of the spam/cheats but at the same time have crucified many legitimate sites.

2. As a business you need to be there and as soon as the way to do it has been worked out, please let us know!

3. There are alternatives depending on your market. (I have found that by going through directories and adwords, I have not been hit so hard. I have a lmited budget but at the end of the day, an old business saying is that "You have to speculate to accumulate.

4. The "Google Search" has not been perfected and will not be right until the next sweep". A pure guess but I think the general outcry will result in a few changes. Google, so they say are catering for the surfer not the SEO. Why then as a surfer do I have trouble with the results that I am getting?

5. Mirror, duplicate and mirror sites would appear to have been hit. Nice one Google!!??

6. We need more competition from other search engines.


I have loads more insights but I think the above provides a good summary of this topic.

Which by the way is not finished, lets hear other peoples opinions as we have to keep going until the next Google trawl.

I have noticed that nobody has mentioned that google keeps a database of there results/crawl which is why it is so quick.

If you are not on at least one of the databases, where will you be next month???

:-)

[geoffreygag]

The Question: Google or Not to Google?

We agree, don't put all your eggs in one basket.

We agree that we need Google today. What is your reco... 2nd choice?