Well I was waiting for this day to happen, but some people gave me their usual "that will never happen" comments in here. All the local service sites are under threat now as Google's well planned execution to wipe dominant local listing services out of business is put to action. Let me start by saying that this has no negative impacts on my businesses and infact has helped to gain some good ground. BUT... I am unhappy with current changes as they do affect what I search for as Google is unable and probably will remain unable to fulfill the request that deliver the results that craigslist, gumtree, kijji, Oodle, vivastreet and the many many more that exist out there. I know many people in these companies and know for a fact that they have all seen huge drops in traffic since Google introduced the local listing Algo change. Lets look at an example "used car manhattan" now lets ask a question, should the first 10 results be random garages in manhattan that have used cars or ps2 or whatever or should they be sites that are able to deliver what the customer is looking for? They are looking for a site that combines all the people that have things for sale under their category so they can search them properly. Is Google better equiped to handle this search or Autotrader? 100% Autotrader! this should be the first result before local listings or anything else for that matter. Rediculous! Google fails to do this, they have put live a terrible product that we the people are forced to use in order for Google to test and make it better at our expense and when the time is right they will charge for upgrades and higher listings that will eventually turn into some sort of adwords taking away free enterprise for entrepreneurs. But meanwhile have a look at all the sites mentioned above on ALEXA, all their rankings have taken a huge hit since the latest update. They have no way of listing their sites for each location in Google Local. It maybe for the better but that is a hell of a long way down the line. I think its outrageous that Google is able to get away with this behavior, its an attack on business where the world is suffering huge recession issues. Google is way to big now to be able to freely get away with affecting such a huge part of the economy in a single swipe, there needs to be some kind of regulation. Dont get me wrong craigslist is too big to fail and we all love it alot, I just dont see how it can be legal for Google to decide when a business has done enough ground work that they simply take the idea and pull the rug from under them reverting large portions of business back to themselves! When do we stand up for whats right? The new preview service is interesting but just another step in the process where users will click less on your site and cannot be sold by your marketing/branding. Very soon there will be no need to have a website. Just a local listing in Google with added features such as video and blog options and that will be the web! There should be inependent regulators, dont ask me who, but there should be. Once again I have done well in all my businesses from these changes so I am not bitching because of any of that. I am bitching because it affects my non business web browsing, looking for random stuff/info etc.. Does anyone care, or are you too focused on your own business and how good/bad they are doing to care about the times when you use the internet in your spare time for the reasons it is here in the first place? Thoughts?
google's main motive is to earn by complicating its organic search results.and making its paid result better.google drive more n more traffic by its organic results.
I had put a thread about this entitled "Google is screwing us". Nobody seem to care and most just believed that i was whining. I believe the average Joe surfer will make the difference when more and more people start binging. I have heard many people say that will never happen, but it is happening right now. Google does not and never will listen to webmaster crowd the only thing that talks is CASH.
First of all no one forcing us or screwing us. We always have other options to search - Bing. It is good, gives good results and good enough to find what are you looking for. I agree that recent Google changes are not good at all: local search, instant search. Now, when I search 80% of the page are local businesses. And yes, it is probably hitting site like craigslist, kijiji and others. But, these site have their own search and people are not search to find content on these sites. Everyone knows ebay, so if you are looking to buy something, you will visit ebay and search there, if you cannot find what you are looking, you will go to google. Vraigslist and others are big, powerful websites, with high rankings. They receiving millions ads everyday. Just think if all these will be shown on google SERP. You search and all you get are only pages from 3-4 website - this is not what google wants. This is what netscape did 15 years ago and we know the results. Please keep in mind that google is also under constant pressure from other big players. Facebook with 500m users - these users searching on facebook, not on google. Twitter with tens millions users - these searching on twitter. eBay, craigslist, kijiji - same story. Bing+Yahoo 30% of all searches in north America. Are you expecting with all that trend, google will just sit and wait till someone will take over? And don't forget - Google is business and for every business the target #1 is money, target #2 is deliver good product. So, yes it some point local listing will not be free and yes people will pay. But there is always alternative. 15 years ago Google was just small, unknown alternative!
I am 100% on google's side. The thing is if google can do a better job at auto sales then so be it, if autotrader was powerful enough there's nothing google could do to stop it. The fact of the matter is google has not been hurting too many business since the beginning. Google has made Craig's(I'm a rapist trying to find a victim) list to be popular through many of their programs available. If you want to complain about a business monopoly then you should be talking about Walmart as everytime one of their buildings open, 100 others go down months later because of them dumping the prices due to getting half of their crap from discountinued product lists. Yep, just like stupid wikipedia. The information is totally outdated and stupid but everytime you look upsomething its always there. Google is trying to control this.
Good to have some Candians in here I live in Vancouver (yes profile says London, I was born there). I hear what your saying on all points, but I think Google is the better of them all, they just have too much power over the business world. Walmart is just a grain of sand on a beach compared to Google's reach. Google can impact the worlds economy at the flick of a switch and personally I dont trust that they wont screw up at least once. Bill Gates was stopped from entering the car market as he would have to much of a monopoly in the world economy. They were forced to open up windows software to allow others in. Google should not be allowed to use their own website services within their main search. We dont allow GM to set the Automotive Industry Regulations, thats done by an independent board. Its not sensible and its biased to allow them to do both, yet we allow Google to have that control. Facebook effects all of us but very few on a business level. Its has good social marketing aspects but almost all businesses would survive despite changes facebook make to their site. Same as twitter. yes some businesses survive on a model based around these services but very few.
Absolutely agree! One thing that's forgotten is the OP wants AutoTrader to be given preference over the individual who wants to sell things. What does one do if he doesn't use AutoTrade? Then you ARE screwed cause you can't get noticed unless you pay. And if the only way to get noticed is to pay AutoTrader then AutoTrader becomes the monopoly! iow, what Google is doing is good for the average guy.
Man, you are reeaallly stretching things. Just 10 years ago, the world got along fine without Google. So you live in the world of 'whatif' and don't go outside your front door. Now you're making things up. Then you'd have to shut down Microsoft, too. Huh? This makes no sense at all. Facebook doesn't affect me at all. Nor anyone I know. In fact, the only people I know who have a Facebook account are my two sons and it's not much different than a forum to them and forums have no affect on us either. I can't think of a single business that uses Twitter for anything but advertising themselves. Doesn't affect me because I'm not dumb enough to follow such things. If Twitter shut down today, I wouldn't even notice.
Interesting debate I must say. The fact of the matter is it is all about business and money. Google will do whatever makes it the most money. If someone is deemed as a threat they will try and many times suceed at whiping them out. The ones that suffer here are us webmasters because being in this since the late 90'a I have seen Google tweka and tweak and add more and more. I remember not to long ago the paid results stood out like a sore thumb. Now you can hardly tell the difference between paid and not. So now position one in Google is really position 4 isn't it. BUT there is nothing we can do about it.
I don't mind, I've paid my $150 to yellow pages (who google has a partner agreement with) and our business site is right up there at the top when you search for the keywords <our area> <what we do>. I might be more annoyed if we didn't have a yellow pages entry.
Oh? How is Google blocking anyone from entering this market? Or are you just guessing? Yep. You're just guessing.
Who the hell said they were blocking people from entering the market? I said they are trying to monopolize the SE market... Read before you try and insult someone...
It's easy to insult people who don't know what they're talking about. When you are a monopoly, you control the market and competitors cannot join or compete. You accused Google of trying to do that which, of course, is blatantly false. Microsoft, otoh, did do such a thing and were fined $2 billion on two continents for trying to lock out competition. The 'definition' of monopoly you quote is not quite correct since you can be a monopoly yet not be the only seller. In addition, monopolies can't ask "any price you like". wth did you get those defs? (Though, technically, mono, meaning one, does mean one seller but you can be declared a monopoly in most countries while there are still other sellers)
Stop it, you don't what your talking about... Microsoft pays like 3 million/day in fines, but makes about 35 million/day... so the threat of fines will never get in the way of wanting profits. Google tried to buy Yahoo, and the deal never fell through, had it, they would have had their monopoly along time ago... Monopoly has nothing to do with locking people out, this isn't a union... The cable companies only operates one company in an area, that's why you have no choice when it comes to cable. You either pay their high prices, or go screw yourself... That is a monopoly. Google is already trying to do the same, since they own 60% of the market, and are already doing as they please with the local search. You think Google says, well were at 60% now, "lets not grow because drhowarddrfine we shouldn't" give me a freakin break. Google is trying to buy up every big internet property there is, and your telling me they are not trying to monopolize the market? Google is already trying to dip into facebooks users by launching their own version of FB. If Google had their way, they would send their competition to the bottom of the sea...
Yep. You're making things up as you go along. Not worth talking to you. That is true, though. So you just contradicted yourself. Monopolies don't lock people out but you can only buy from one company which locks others out. (And cable companies are regulated by local municipalities so your thoughts don't apply anyway.) 60% means almost half of the market belongs to others which is far from a monopoly. Name one. I'm sure you can't. Microsoft bought part of Facebook so what does that say about them? Microsoft did buy part of Yahoo and you're complaining about Google? You're rambling. You don't know a thing about what you're talking about except what you heard on DP and most of the stuff I read here is pure BS.
"Is Google better equiped to handle this search or Autotrader? 100% Autotrader! this should be the first result before local listings or anything else for that matter. Rediculous!" Are you crazy? Everyone doesn't list on Autotrader, so it wouldn't be a good result. They charge way too much money for even basic listings (over 1k a month). People know that, which is why they shop around.