Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites
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Re: Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites
#2You want access to God?
God says...
24:15 The eye also of the adulterer waiteth for the twilight, saying, No eye shall see me: and disguiseth his face.
24:16 In the dark they dig through houses, which they had marked for themselves in the daytime: they know not the light.
24:17 For the morning is to them even as the shadow of death: if one know them, they are in the terrors of the shadow of death.
24:18 He is swift as the waters; their portion is cursed in the earth: he beholdeth not the way of the vineyards.
24:19 Drought and heat consume the snow waters: so doth the grave those which have sinned.
24:20 The womb shall forget him; the worm shall feed sweetly on him; he shall be no more remembered; and wickedness shall be broken as a tree.
Re: Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites
#3What's the complaint here? Google makes changes that sometimes negatively impact someone's business?
As long as Google's algorithm is trending in the correct direction (that is towards better quality results) then these complaints are just growing pains and I don't see much of a problem.
Some startups are criticised for simply being features of a chosen platform. Once they get big enough, the platform in control will simply add the feature and eliminate the startup. I'm unfamiliar with Nextag but it looks like a price comparison site and you could perhaps argue that price comparison is simply a missing feature of Google.
Re: Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites
#4“We try very hard to make sure we communicate with Webmasters,” Mr. Cutts says. For instance, he says, he reassured Gawker Media that it would remain in search results after Hurricane Sandy caused it to crash.
This somewhat perfectly summarizes the genius solution Google found to customer service. Google is very keen to react with a personal face to high profile cases while at the same time squeezing all the thousands of faceless small businesses in similar situations into Adwords.
Re: Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites
#5Some sites go down in rankings, but other (hopefully) more useful sites go up in rankings.
Also if your company is impacted negatively by this, you should attempt to focus more on social network effects to reduce reliance on Google. For example, integration from Facebook and Twitter opens up more channels for users to visit your site through.
Re: Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites
#6The question is, is google the web? why do we rely so much on google ? because we became lazy ... because browsers like firefox promoted google search heavily , until it becomes obsolete as a browser itself because of chrome , because all these comparison sites built their businesses on google search engine, and now google has his own shopping search engine , they became obsolete , and the list goes on and on... our businesses rely too much on google, until google take us out of business...
Re: Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites
#7“We try very hard to make sure we communicate with Webmasters,” Mr. Cutts says. For instance, he says, he reassured Gawker Media that it would remain in search results after Hurricane Sandy caused it to crash. This somewhat perfectly summarizes the genius solution Google found to customer service. Google is very keen to react with a personal face to high profile cases while at the same time squeezing all the thousand…
How is Google squeezing small businesses?
Re: Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites
#8The problem is that Google competes with businesses that once thrived on its platform. It's similar to when Microsoft decided to bundle IE into Windows. Google now bundles comparison shopping and local business reviews into search.
If they go too far in this direction it will probably hurt them. Users don't want a search engine that puts its own, lesser quality, sites at the top.
It'd be amazing if Google spun off Google Search as its own company. The business is so narrow and successful that it could probably survive for 50 years without any fundamental change. Instead, it's being distorted and weighed down by a sprawling organization that's desperate to create new businesses, and compromising the search product to do so.
Re: Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites
#9I think the most serious concern is how Google promotes its own offerings above more popular competitors in the search results section. For example, do a search for "finance" and Google Finance is shown above Yahoo! finance, even though Yahoo! finance is better by most measures, and far more popular (see http://www.businessinsider.com/google-finance-yahoo-finance-... )
If you rely on Google to drive traffic, but also compete with Google, that puts you in a difficult spot.
Consumers ought to be annoyed too. Google has historically does a good job distinguishing between links that are artificially promoted (ads) and algorithmic rankings. But Google is artificially promoting their own offerings and presenting them as if they're a result of the algorithm.
This seems like a bad strategy. It has the potential to shake user confidence in Google's impartiality and link quality, annoy site maintainers, and drive away advertisers.
Re: Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites
#10“We try very hard to make sure we communicate with Webmasters,” Mr. Cutts says. For instance, he says, he reassured Gawker Media that it would remain in search results after Hurricane Sandy caused it to crash. This somewhat perfectly summarizes the genius solution Google found to customer service. Google is very keen to react with a personal face to high profile cases while at the same time squeezing all the thousand…
How is Google squeezing small businesses?
Basically, the volatility of their algorithm and the opaqueness of it means that any small business that is getting >80% Google-referred traffic is in for a tough time if they're marked as bad. And mistakes happen. Say:
* A canonical tag that shows up due to a bug. Dead.
* Industry terms that appear duplicative to the NLP parser. Dead.
* Too-diverse content. Lower rankings, but functionally dead.
There's tons more, but I'm not a practitioner of SEO.