41–50 of 115 posts
Eric Schmidt said he was sorry but he couldn’t help. Now I’m angry. Wow. I think I respect Google more now. I don't like the "take it to the people" approach needed to get action out of Google, but I like "I know people who know people" approach even less. The chairman of the company should not be dicking about with search results because a friend asked.
I think it is quite terrifying, that one company can singlehandedly shut down business, even if you have never used a Google service in your entire life; because all your customers only discover you through Google. And what is to be done about it? you aren't a Google customer in the direct sense, so they feel no obligation to assist, and it seems as if even actual customers get negligible support. The only way out of…
Suddenly the mall wants to extort me by charging me money to use their space, electricity, water, etc. Those jerks!
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.
It came up for me in the adwords section, either at the top or on the right, for the first two pages. But I scrolled through five pages of results and in never came up as an "organic" result.
Let's make people rank, so they could build businesses from traffic we drive, and then cut the traffic. That would be a good business plan for Adwords, no? Now, seriously, I don't think this is Google plan. I think Google just got many billions websites and pages to rank. Google aim is not to be fair for every website, but instead to give the best results. Given a huge number of websites (and people running them), th…
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 g…
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.
And apparently Mr Cringely doesn't know anything about Webmaster Tools, which would probably be the first stop of anyone wanting to know about a sudden change in rank. Sudden changes are usually the function of 'action' rather than 'inaction' so I'm guessing that somewhere there was an action. Did she succumb to some black hat SEO marketing pitch? Did Cringely piss off some black hat SEO person? Did her site get comp…
> Did she not actually update the content for the last 5 years (including Copyright notice) so it doesn't appear to be a dead site. That's a function of inaction however. Moral: don't base your income on something as volatile as your Google ranking
I mean, I get the whole "don't depend on another company for your revenue" (e.g. apps in the Apple app store), but you're saying "don't count on Google sending traffic to your site".
Plus, her ranking didn't change -- her site vanished out of the index.
EDIT: Unless you mean "don't depend entirely on organic traffic"? I can sorta see that... but, again, if I've only now thought about putting a photo on a quilt (which is a new idea to me), around 70% of the US thinks putting [photo quilts] into Google is the way to get the site you want. What else would you suggest?
EDIT #2: Maybe "vanished" is too strong a word, since it does show up on string matches. But it was deindexed for search terms it used to rank for.
I think it is quite terrifying, that one company can singlehandedly shut down business, even if you have never used a Google service in your entire life; because all your customers only discover you through Google. And what is to be done about it? you aren't a Google customer in the direct sense, so they feel no obligation to assist, and it seems as if even actual customers get negligible support. The only way out of…
Furthermore, as more people are involved with online businesses they need to understand the ebb and flow of Google traffic. It can be turned off overnight. I don't think people realize that until it's too late.
"This is how she makes her living, selling on the web and through photo stores." "She founded PC Data, the largest PC market research firm, now part of the NPD Group." She founded the largest PC market research firm and now she has to make a living making quilts? How did that happen? Wouldn't the bigger story be how she lost all her money (which I'm assuming) running a PC market research firm?
Google is a competitive enterprise. They have to report to stock holders every quarter that income is more then the previous quarter.