I know many will not agree with this but its my point of view that google is loosing the race and untill and unless it reinovates itself in next 4-5 years google can be a thing of past. There are many problems with google from SEO point of view like -> 1. Indexing : Google is much slower in indexing of sites as compared with MSN and followed by Yahoo. Although it is good in reindexing. 2. Links: The most killing point of google. Links are indexed very slowely in google and add more to that when you will search links in google u will find only 1/4th of the links are indexed for a site as compared with links search with yahoo and msn. 3. SERPS : Now when its 90% links game the flaw in google links update is a problem since a long time, while others have gone far beyond google, google still not able to rectify the same. And also google serps is becoming more complicated day by days, making the job of SEO merely a gamble rather than anything.
I have found Google to be the fastest to deep index large new sites provided there is heavy linking I don't know if Googles decision to show a cross section affects their popularity in the least. It is only SEOs that complain about this. The average user would have no idea what it even is So you predict Googles downfall in 4 years based on the difficulty in which to manipulate it? You are speaking from an SEOs standpoint, not a users. Its the users though that give market share so I think you are way off.
msn is fastest these days to index google is second yahoo is way too slow but google is still the best in terms of traffic and msn is worst
Google take account of links VERY quickly, they may not show up like they do in MSN but who cares, the effectiveness of gaining links can show in google in a matter of days and affect the serps so links may be partially displayed as in site: but they are noted and implemented quickly.
Google only advantage is that it started way back at a time where it hardly had any competitors and as a result it made a big market. Moreover it offers a simple search option to google which were highly effective at that time. But now a days one cannt say that google offers better results. Everybody is having the latest technology and offering good results. The only reasons you get good hits from google is that peoples are addicted to it and its not easy to change people behavious so soon. But definately for SEOs point of view Others search engines are much better. And its not that u hardly gets traffic from yahoo and msn but its definately very low as compared with google. But in coming 4-5 years i think yahoo and msn combined together will drive a traffic as much as of google. And google needs to improve much more and offers some sort of flexibility to SEOs.
When I go to google as a user to search for something I don't care how often it updates its index or how it works I just want to see relevant results on the first page. As long as it continues to do this I think it will be fine. Maybe the fact that it is harder to manipulate than the others will mean that it remains better from a searchers point of view and therefore outlives the rest.
Thats i agree that a search engine should be meant only for end users. But how can anyone say that these days yahoo and msn are not user friendly. Both of them have come a long way and are by no mean worse than google. Its only because google offering quality results for long time that it has become a habit of users to use google. But i think MSN is the future search engine and it is catching up very fast and will pose a serious competition to google soon enogh. Yahoo also now have a market share of 35%, which means by no means peoples are not using it. Moreover they both are SEO as well as user friendly.
I don't know if any of that will be google's demise.. but something could be.. Google has been around little longer than 5 years, so predicting some kind of slippage in the next 5 years is not exactly walking out on a limb.
a point made by my computer illiterate father. Google is branded into peoples heads. I have never heard someone say "I Yahoo'd it", or "I Msn'd it", but housewives who dont own a computer know that if they are ever looking for something on the web know they have to find google and "google it"
Google also has a very clean and quick/easy to use interface. MSN and Yahoo have a lot of "other stuff" on their main page, rather thna just search in the center. I think that matters for some end-users.
Although I agree with this, personally I do not go to the front page to search anymore. Its all done from the search box on my browser. I can only assume that the use of a search box on the browser will grow. The portal aspect of Yahoo endears (SP?) it to several people I know. Having Yahoo news, mail, search (and whatever else) all in one place makes it the home page for plenty of people. I don't think the average public has much of an idea of the difference between Yahoo and Goole search results. For my end use I find Yahoo better, but there isn't much difference ime.
I find Google gets into my sites quickly, deeply and (provided its an established domain name) lists the sites well in a matter of hours, never mind days. Uploaded a site redesign on Saturday, by Monday Morning it was showing in the SERPS for the new search terms the new site was optimised for. And yes, it found every page. 2 days - thats not slow at all, It is hectically fast!!!! Build sites for the site USER and Google will like your sites!
The fact is, if MSN would educate the public about its superior indexing, they might get some people to switch. This in turn might cuase Google to change its strategy of only letting "old" sites show up in its SERPs. I pray for the day when MSN clearly communicates this to people on a massive scale.
An interesting piece of revisionist history, there, to try to make a point. I remember when Google were the new kid on the block, and people were saying that it would never take the place of the big search engines, like Altavista. Google was founded in 1998. Altavista won an award in March of 96 as the "Site of the year" from the german mag PC-Online. Archie was the first search engine for the internet, created in 1990. And then there is Veronica (1991), Jughead(1991), Aliweb (first system with user submissions - 1993), Jumpstation(1993), Yahoo (1994), Excite (1997), Lycos (1994), Infoseek (1994), Hotbot (1996), Ask Jeeves (1997) and Northern Light (1997) Er... yeah... Google were the first, alright - entered into a practically empty playing field.... Jeez oh jeez, man, research just a little before you make such statements, k? (Just found this which gives a more complete picture: http://www.seoconsultants.com/search-engines/history/ )
Before google, we had AltaVista, Hotbot, Excite, WebCrawler.. all were 'the best' at some time, but then came google, they are "the best" (as users see it) for a couple of years now. predicting they will not be the best forever is easy - someday they will not be, but it will take a long long time before google is not #1 anymore. When AV.com introduced sponsored links (at the top of organic results) they lost a lot of marketshare and are invisible since then. The same can happen to google: one mistake can ruin your reputation that has been built up over the years
I thought ask.com had a chance to be #1 way back when. As for Google, every empire must fall, but I don't think it'll be anytime soon.
It is a vicious cycle. A search engine becomes a victim of its own success. At one point a search engine becomes a top dog, every SEO out there rushes to optimize their sites for this particular SE. The SE then responds by adding in all sorts of spam filters that eventually do more harm than good and SEOs, and all the good sites move to a new SE. At least that's my theory for the shift in top SEs Right now Google is at the stage of adding in all kids of spam filters and a lot of webmasters are getting pissed off at the big G and hoping that MSN and Yahoo gain market share and drive more traffic.