My sister's a quilter and Google mugged her

Since work's got me locked into IE/Bing, I might as well point out that Ms. Cringely's site is #2 on Bing (#6 if you count the 4 ads on what looks like a 15% blue-gray background that come before #1).

Re: My sister's a quilter and Google mugged her

#7

Post by zallarak » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 9:00 PM UTC

I see a lot of these articles; someone feeling cheated because Google takes them off some or all search results. Google did not "mug" anyone - it is the reason for your traffic to begin with. The fact that you even ever had discoverability among a billion or so websites is a beautiful thing. Additionally, have some perspective, the search is a free tool that is very tough to get right. This might sound harsh, but I believe the effort in complaining could be better allocated into promoting the authors' sister's business. To emphasize, Google search is a FREE tool - use it to get business but don't make it your bread and butter because it is optimized for users, advertisers - not the content creators. To accept this is not optional, it is simply reality.

Re: My sister's a quilter and Google mugged her

#8

Post by eli » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 9:00 PM UTC

Reminds me a bit of the recent article on the rise and fall of the content farm Demand Media: http://variety.com/2013/biz/news/epic-fail-the-rise-and-fall... (worth a read).

Someone was recently telling me that "diversity of traffic sources" is a key metric they use to evaluate digital media properties. There's a real risk in basing your whole business on organic Google traffic.

Re: My sister's a quilter and Google mugged her

#9

Post by pflats » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 9:01 PM UTC

ErikAugust wrote: post #5

Comes up first for me - https://www.google.com/#q=portrait+quilts Edit: HA! Sorry, it's an ad! I thought it was the first organic result but it was actually the second ad! I can barely perceive that shade of yellow indicating that it's an ad. Took two or three takes.

Doesn't come up on page 1 at all for me for photo or portrait quilts.

edit: An ad for portraitquilts.com shows up first in the ads sidebar, though.

Re: My sister's a quilter and Google mugged her

#10

Post by bmelton » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 9:01 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #2

Really, "mugged"? Google walked up to her on the street and threatened her with a weapon?

The sad part is that I was expecting that maybe there was a snafu with Google's NFC payments, or the Wallet, or maybe Google Shopping algorithm or something.

Google used to give her a bunch of web traffic, arguably for free, and now they apparently have stopped, possibly with good reason, possibly without. And that is somehow stealing?

I'm sympathetic to the plight of having lost revenue, but that revenue was never guaranteed, nor was it owed, nor should she have allowed Google to be her sole source of traffic.