Hi, As a web surfer, I love Google. Lots of great services, easy to use, etc. But as a web developer, they drive me crazy. We all jump through so many hoops, trying to land a front page result, or encourage clicks on an ad. I understand a lot of people make some great money doing this, and I applaud them. But my generic questions are: 1) Should getting traffic be this difficult? 2) Is there a better traffic solution out there waiting to be devleoped? I am no programmer, so I dont have any answers. But all the effort we put into this seems silly sometimes. Just thinkin' out loud, bri
As a programmer, what Google has done amazes me. It's truly a modern marvel of engineering. That being said, they've become so powerful that many websites live or die with their Google traffic. Many webmasters are put in the difficult position of having to "game" the system to get results. A Google/Microsoft showdown is coming, and it will be fun to watch the fireworks as the two big dogs duke it out. I can almost guarantee that this showdown will come in the next 12 months. I think it will benefit webmasters if the two big boys are distracted by for awhile. I can't wait.
Well, it's not because of Google, it's because of competition. It would not matter which search engine was used the most by surfers, or if there were 5 big search engines that all got the same amount of traffic... the difficulty on landing on the front page is that there are only 10 spots. If the phrase you are trying to rank for is something other people want to rank for, then you have to compete with them. It has nothing to do with Google being "difficult"... phrases that know one cares about are easy to rank for, others are not. Doesn't matter what the se is, really. -Michael random link
As effective as Google can be i think there is still a very large room for improvement. How many sites do you have to go through to find what you are looking for? for me, its often many...too many.
Google does very well considering how vague most queries are. I mean, how can the search engine know what you are looking for exactly if the only keywords you supply are, for example, "make money" or "cancer drug" or "free sex" and so on. The computer can't read your mind although it seems to me that the reason Google is collecting so much data about its users is specifically to try and better understand these vague queries; other than better ad targeting of course.
Google does a great job, and I've always wondered why MSN and Yahoo can't replicate or improve on google's results. Heck they both have a large non-search audience (MSN through IE and Yahoo for their frontpage) that they should be keeping on their sites. That may be part of their problem too... G is search, the others are other stuff so their budget, resources, focus, goes elsewhere. It seems like they would see the success of google and start pouring resources into search, but no.
It is actually. This is what their personalized search is all about. They take what information they already know about you and try to read between the lines to narrow down your vague queries.
Releasing only on SE traffic is a virtual suicide. Actually there are some alternatives such as social bookmarking, link baiting (not just for PR), and generically, "web 2.0" I think that having a good base of returning visitors (direct traffic) is nowaday a MUST. On a couple of sites i have about 50% of direct traffic and this way I can deal with SE's hiccups. Would be terrible to completely loose traffic because of G's fart or just because someone is cheating the system. Just my thoughts. Guido
google is a circus for web developers and whoever is the best and on top makes the most $$$.... sometimes i wish it was easier...
People cry foul when Google analyzes our queries. What would they say if G had access to our actual thoughts?
I totally agree with you on having more than SE traffic but if your site is new and your network of friends is not huge then it takes for ever for word-of-mouth marketing to work. If Google sends you a couple of hundred new visitors every day and your content is good many will become return visitors. In my opinion, we need search engines but I agree with you that we should not live or die by them or always try to get all the traffic from them.
With all the apps Google have installed on your computer it would be easy for them to do a "personalized" search. They can just check your interests from what you have been searching for in the past (hope your wife don't use your computer) and give you results that fits you. The "I'm Feeling lucky" button can go away (Who's ever feeling lucky anyway visiting google trying to find anything????) and they can have a button saying "Use my previous search as base" .....
some can't get into Google, some can't get traffic from it, some can't get enough traffic from it, and some got banned from it.. just like in real life...work harder and wait for results. As for me... I got only 5 unique visitor from Google on the web directory from my sig.Isn't that "awesome" ? It takes a lot of work and SEO knowledge to make things working.
I really do not get it. I rarely search twice for the same topic. If i find something interesting i bookmark it. yesterday I was looking for a chicken casserole recipe, today for a bluetooth gps and a 4 blade propeller. Now I am looking for malleable cast iron fittings factories in China. Tomorrow I might be looking for porn: on what base google can feed me best results according to my previous searches?