How do Google changes affect businesses?

[Clinton]

Be careful what you wish for. An all paid model could be the future!

[mikeb]

I am sure though that Google run their own analytics on their search websites and keep a track of how it is being used...
I suspect that they are happy with their user interaction and consider their website to be offering what is needed...

In terms of users - it doesn't matter if it takes 1 click to get to the website where they find their answer or 10 - as long as the time / number of choices doesn't go outside a psychologically acceptable quantity / timeframe where they feel that the overall experience was satisfactory and the answer was found... I don't think that we live in a world where folks want / expect a perfect matching answer in the first site they visit - they are prepared to try a number of sites / try different search terms... as such there is a high level of tolerance to changes... add to that the fact that for many users they will recognise and ignore the websites which are not of interest (e.g. the big comparison websites) and Google have a great position with a dominant market % and customers who are happy with the results and have no desire to look elsewhere...

As such any competitor will have huge piles of inertia to overcome to gain traction...
It is the usual thing in business - while there may be a huge, obvious, opportunity to provide something better / faster / more sophisticated / smaller / with more blue flashing lights / etc. - if the market is not unhappy with what they have, they will not change... - people like what they are comfortable with... and I doubt Google will allow their website to get to the point where they upset everyone...

regarding time to implement changes - why would they do it over a 3 month period - and how do you do that anyway? do you randomise results between the 'before' and 'after' during that 3 month period... if a website is moving from no 3 to 33 do you move it down one spot every 3 days? - the algorithm to do that for all sites probably makes it impossible of course not - if there is a belief at Google that the new algorithm is better / more accurate (to their requirements not the webmaster's) then they will change immediately... they don't need to warn 3 months ahead - they have no responsibility to websites - their responsibility is to their user - the searching public...

As I posted on another thread - when a website moves down 20 places the webmaster cries foul - I am now worse off... Google though might say - you are now in the correct place - wow you had all that time promoted above where you should have been... two perspectives...

Alasdair

I think we have aired all this.

-As a searcher for what I search as an ordinary person the results I see are objectively worse, and less relevant, and I think google will pay for it in the long term.

- The frustration level / attention span ./ clickaway rate is VERY high on the web - 10 clicks is far too many, as every split test shows, I would suggest you do not advise that method to clients, or indeed, test it and prove it does not work.

-Getting SERPS to change slowly is straightforward. eg simple ARMA filter on underlying scores: particularly those calculated offline as penalty factors. It Takes 2 lines of assembler code.I would be surprised if there was not already some filtering to stabilise results at some level.. (or a page of object oriented bloatware with ten levels of indirection that modern software guys seem to prefer. Boy they get it easy these days!...(says with croaky voice) ) The main issue is giving webmasters a dashboard which tells them the underlying quality scores. and how they are changing so that people do not have to be clairvoyants. If their content is deemed to be "Not unique enough" give them a chance to do something with itl Common sense really.

- Like yellow pages before them, they have a captive market, so can dictate the rules and they can get away with ignoring critics for now. Time will tell how many people google have alienated when the better mousetrap appears.


I think one of the problems is the concept of "general" search is flawed - that one engine can process every kind of query well. So niche or category engines will start taking over from them. Now amazon is opened up to everyone to sell their own books, it has become a defacto (although poor) search engine for books with probably far more traffic than google for most titles.

Sure they have cosied up to their big brand buddies who spend.
They also have many who think the proverbial sun shines out of part of their anatomy , and give them almost god like powers. You were convince from previous answers that they can know and determine accurateon site behaviour metrics and process those as part of the equation. I and others do not think so on the basis of what we see, I do not think they either can or do except in very primitive ways. I can tell you that some of my big autogenerated spam sites long on spam content, short on links are now doing very well thank you. Google are not omnipotent. They use course stats, and in every change a lot of people are unfairly both rewarded and penalized. It is inevitable, and because it is inevitable, they should be more caring in how they do it.

. I think they have serious problems in maintaining relevance in a social media driven world. Google "Plus" in as far as I can tell is not being used by other than marketers, google are too left brain.

Time will tell.

My biggest concern is the fragility of the real prmary economy, not the safe bubble we all live in. They just not need more people like banks and google screwing with their viability. They have enough problems already without unnecessary artificial ones.

[akirk]

There is a third point I want to bring out - unless you are very lucky in your choice of search terms, none of the "common" search engines is very useful for industrial/business search.

I have an idea at the moment which involves buying industrial quantities of a common food ingredient. Search for it on Google, and you find retail suppliers who sell 1kg bags, or industrial suppliers in the Far East. I have only found suppliers' sites on the web by applying my (very out of date) specialist knowledge, I have not found any "new" ones, and the suppliers I have found do not make it easy to get prices and minimum order quantities.

I know that I will be able to find a local supplier by talking to people and making telephone calls, but this also brings up the point that a lot of established businesses actually try to ignore search engine traffic in order to avoid "stupid, crass, and irrelevant" enquiries from passing surfers with nothing better to do than ask daft questions.

As I see it, those businesses that merely want a "web presence" are maintaining a lower profile than ever before. Before the Penguin, I checked the position of one site in Google for my search term, out of curiosity. That site is now a couple of pages lower in the results. Because they exist on repeat sales from their established customers, that will not affect their sales much, but when you want to find a business that you know has a site, it might be a lot harder to find than it was this time last year.

very true - ties in with my comment above - that there are even businesses who want no presence... A good way of filtering clients is to only accept those who know you / know your clients / etc. or who hvae the tenacity to find you - though it seems counter-intuitive it can work very well for businesses in the right sector... try and search for Whites (gentleman's club in london) - they are not interested in your finding them... search for Boodles - you will find them, but you get a home page and a map - the rest, you need to already be a member - nothing on how to become a member (doesn't work that way!)... so not all want google sharing everything

My biggest concern is the fragility of the real prmary economy, not the safe bubble we all live in. They just not need more people like banks and google screwing with their viability. They have enough problems already without unnecessary artificial ones.

the problem is that your definitions are not necessarily widely accepted - you keep refering to 'real' businesses / economy - we live in a world where we have a mixture of company types - like it or not we will not be going back to the days of ox-carts and the industrial revolution - companies such as Facebook / Google / Twitter will continue to exist - companies such as Apple will have a hybrid role - manufacturing (though outsourced) and online - these are as real as any other company - your dislike of anyone not sweating to earn a living doesn't change the world the economy is no longer based on manufacturing - at a world level let alone at a UK level - it is far more complex than that now - and we are not in a position as a country to go back to manufacturing - the workforce won't accept the pay - so we have to accept that we have a country based on the service / tourist / financial industries primarily - and build our economy based on that understanding - therefore this is the real economy.

the other issue is that you seem to believe that companies can abdicate responsibility for running their own businesses... Banks and Google are no more screwing with a businesses viability than government / weather (aka God) / the market (aka the client) / or any other of the many variables which a business must study / plan for / adapt for / manage / etc. This concept of setting up a business and then expecting it to run in the same way for ever is rather out of date now - we will continue to disagree on this no doubt - you believe that Google is killing off businesses - I believe that businesses need to grow up and take responsibility for themselves - if they can't adapt and cope with the changing environment whether that is physical / electronic / social / political / etc. then either they are incompetent or they don't have a viable business any longer...

you have to either accept capitalism - or change the political scene - mind you communism which you seem to be advocating didn't work well either! Capitalism will always have companies operating for their own benefit that is how they make money - Google is not a social company with a remit to help the struggling businesses around the world - it is there to make cash. You either work with it - or despite it...

Alasdair

[kharrison]

. I think they have serious problems in maintaining relevance in a social media driven world. Google "Plus" in as far as I can tell is not being used by other than marketers, google are too left brain.

Google is not finished with +. From Jeff Huber in the WSJ: "“Helping local business is a big part of our focus at Google, whether it is connecting shoppers with the right store nearby or helping merchants attract and retain customers. In local, our vision is not a one-size-fits-all product, but a range of flexible solutions that make the Web work for all local businesses.”
We all know where these pages will be displayed.
http://9to5google.com/2012/06/04/wsj...early-as-july/