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Excuse Me, But Where Did Google's Organic Search Results Go?

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Re: Excuse Me, But Where Did Google's Organic Search Results Go?

#12
post #2

There is clearly a Google-risk in many markets -- especially those dealing with content and aggregation. It's hard to compete with the massive scale that Google has at its fingertips. They can quickly enter many markets, outside of their core, if they choose to do so. Most of the time (but not always) they will become a major competitor. Think GMail, Voice, Mobile Maps, etc.

I wonder how long it will take them to get slapped by someone though? In the UK papers have to clearly identify adverts if presented in an editorial format. Why do google get away with presenting adverts as search results without clearly identifying them? A greyed out 'sponsored link' in the right hand corner is just pathetic, I bet most users don't even understand what that means.

It might take a while before Google get negative wide spread reaction or loose of revenue just due their reputation build over the years and innovative drive. However, in competitive market and emerge of hungry start ups looking for new business it might come as an opportunity for others

Re: Excuse Me, But Where Did Google's Organic Search Results Go?

#13
It would be nice to see the history of a search over time from the inception of Google to the present (with the same keyword search).

When you're in the barn, its hard to smell the odors - so having this progressive timeline is probably the only way to objectively see how much ground we are really losing.

Re: Excuse Me, But Where Did Google's Organic Search Results Go?

#15
It's natural for an SEO to be concerned with organic results appearing over the fold. It's the part that SEO's manipulate to their profit.

The rest of us should take a step back and think about actual quality of the results. Now there are a lot of ads on that page, but are the organic results going to be more useful then the Google Maps matches? For a query like "dentist" I think Maps could be a better source for answers.

Re: Excuse Me, But Where Did Google's Organic Search Results Go?

#16
post #2

There is clearly a Google-risk in many markets -- especially those dealing with content and aggregation. It's hard to compete with the massive scale that Google has at its fingertips. They can quickly enter many markets, outside of their core, if they choose to do so. Most of the time (but not always) they will become a major competitor. Think GMail, Voice, Mobile Maps, etc.

I wonder how long it will take them to get slapped by someone though? In the UK papers have to clearly identify adverts if presented in an editorial format. Why do google get away with presenting adverts as search results without clearly identifying them? A greyed out 'sponsored link' in the right hand corner is just pathetic, I bet most users don't even understand what that means.

Do you remember what Web 1.0 was like before Google? Search engines would often mix sponsored links into their results with no indication at all that the link had paid for their placement. Google at least puts them in a separate section of the page, labeled.

Re: Excuse Me, But Where Did Google's Organic Search Results Go?

#19
From the article: "Update: it looks like Google claimed the phone number removal was a bug, but weird timing that the bug appeared at the same time they started selling premium local ads that appear on the regular search results."

Why is it weird timing that a bug would appear when a system is being modified? Isn't that pretty much when most bugs are introduced?

Re: Excuse Me, But Where Did Google's Organic Search Results Go?

#20
I'm sorry, but this is a bunch of SEO guys whining about the fact that their dubiously useful sites they spent lots of time trying to move up Google's ranking are no longer at the top of the page.

When most people search for "san francisco dentists," why wouldn't they want locations and phone numbers of some of these dentists presented right upfront? This is no different than what Bing, Yahoo and even Duck Duck Go are doing, and there's nothing wrong with making the result page more useful for people without them having to click away.

Sure, Google has been getting a little too spammy with the amount of ads in the yellow box, but complaining when they surface Youtube videos or maps is ridiculous. Nine times out of 10, that's exactly what the user is looking for.

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