Google slips up!

[Clinton]

Barry Schwartz reports on a comment from Google staff. The staff member in question says:

If you look at the Google experience from the standpoint of customers, it's pretty good. Users get relevant search results and ads. Advertisers get their content on top of everything else. It's a good compromise between advertising and usability, and it works really well. It's a bug that you could rank highly in Google without buying ads, and Google is trying to fix the bug.

You couldn't make it up!

All organic results are a inconvenience for Google and they have to show some organic results just so they can get their ads in!

PaidContent wonders whether Google's lost the touch and says they've had their worst month ever in Jan.

[JJMcClure]

That makes no sense. There are plenty of searches for which there are no Ads, someone has to rank well for those, so it's always been possible to rank well without buying an Ad. Plus, as someone who's been using Adwords for years, I see no evidence at all that being an Adwords customer helps you rank well, and Google have always maintained that there's no connection.

Of course SEO isn't good for users, SEO is trying to obtain a ranking that you don't actually deserve or you'd be ranking there in the first place.

[KenW3]

Of course SEO isn't good for users, SEO is trying to obtain a ranking that you don't actually deserve or you'd be ranking there in the first place.

As tempting as it may be to agree with that statement, I would still submit that given two identical web sites, both with identical quality content, the one with attention to on-page factors will rank well, and the one that does not define content in a way G wants to see, will not rank as well.

[Saul]

Plus, as someone who's been using Adwords for years, I see no evidence at all that being an Adwords customer helps you rank well, and Google have always maintained that there's no connection.

I thought they were referring to deliberately ranking at the top as opposed to buying in through Adwords to get to the first page of the results.

[Chabrenas]

Google has now grown to a size and dominance where its corporate culture had to change. I reckon all media contact will be through the PR department soon - as it was in IBM when I worked for them.

I get the impression Page thinks he's emulating Jobs, in the hope of achieving the same success in driving his company onwards and upwards. However, we already have evidence that he should really be following Jeff Bezos' lead and standardising the chaotic development environment within the company.

[crabfoot]

I needed to find details of a minor table top sale event in Hornsea for my wife, who wanted to know if it was happening this weekend or next. It is organised by the local council, and the last time I wanted to know about a similar event I searched and hit the council's website on page 1.

There's three new sites started up - search for local events, they find things for you. Then they save the search pages and run Adsense on them.
I gave up looking for the council's site after trawling through 6 pages, and tried Yahoo.

I gave up with Yahoo because after you've sifted a few pages it has started adding in extra and irrelevant search words to "help". Tell it you don't want that, it takes you back to p1 of your original search. Try to jump forward, it modifies the search again ...

Went back to the Garg and used some Gargyl-Fu to get the right section of the council's website (p3), then used the site search to find the actual page I needed.

I got plenty of info about past events of a similar nature in the same venue coming up, but nothing about the event next Sunday.

I'm trying to decide what those spiders are doing. Maybe the council shouldn't re-use pages (they're numbered for titles) when they update data on them - or maybe they should be running Adsense. Maybe we should acknowledge that WWW actually stands for Willy Wonka Wholesale ...

[grynge]

I needed to find details of a minor table top sale event in Hornsea for my wife,

Try yandex was that a better collection of results?

[grynge]

Barry Schwartz reports on a comment from Google staff. The staff member in question says:



You couldn't make it up!

All organic results are a inconvenience for Google and they have to show some organic results just so they can get their ads in!

PaidContent wonders whether Google's lost the touch and says they've had their worst month ever in Jan.

I can't say this statement even minutely shocks me. It's what some of us this forum have been saying for months, google don't want the serps to show above the fold, they only want to show their content and paid content. The only reason they have some serps without is because they would know they are low converting ones. (how would they know JJ is sure to ask) well they now have access to 100's of thousands of websites conversion data.

[grynge]

Hmmm Googles serps are so bad even googlers don't use them any more

[JJMcClure]

the one that does not define content in a way G wants to see, will not rank as well.

Agreed, to rank well you have to give Google what they want to give their own users. It's the very basis of SEO, whichever search engine you're targeting..

How I feel about that is irrelevant, I just need to understand it.

google don't want the serps to show above the fold, they only want to show their content and paid content.

That IS the SERP Perhaps you have a a different definition than Google do, all you have to do is get the job as Google CEO and you can do it the way you think it should be done..

The only reason they have some serps without is because they would know they are low converting ones.

I swear I just saw a pink unicorn.