Before I begin I want to say that I greatly respect what Google has achieved as a company and in a new evolving industry expect that even the best company won't be perfect and face difficult problems. They've had to make difficult decisions and the evolution of Google has brought the company into a difficult situation, one that they have helped create. Google (for good business reasons) has created a devil persona for those not adhering to the Google way, and an out-of-touch purist non-reality for what will happen to those that follow the Google code. Let me explain what I am getting at. Google essentially says if you build great content people will come, and while this holds up for some famous examples like Wikipedia and to an extent blogs like Mashable, there are far more examples of this failing. In other words, those that go against Google's guidelines (such as almost any form of conventional link building) get better results than the 'build it and it will come' group. Google Propaganda? Don't get me wrong, Google is the best at what it does and has the cleanest and most relevant results, but gaming Google is more the standard practice in the industry. The rulebook that Google preaches is broken, because if you play by their rules you generally get left behind. Google has it's ideal world, and it has continually been making good progress towards creating that, and preventing a web of anarchy. While others may not agree, I think if it were left to other companies like Microsoft and Yahoo, the internet would be a much uglier place. However, Google's ideal world which it tells to the public, and the real world are very different indeed. I understand Google has to be careful with its words, and has to keep up appearances (much like a politician), but in doing so it has taken some very aggressive, and arguably somewhat nasty steps - some may call an abuse of its power. The sort of stuff I'm talking about is: - how Google takes the approach of making examples of a few unlucky people who broke the rules, while others (the majority) walk free - using scare tactics and FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) campaigns to make people believe their algorithm is smarter than it is - deciding the fate of businesses with a prejudice against certain people, tactics or approaches. For example, SEOs that have made Google look stupid get a much tougher time than someone who praises Google. For example, I think Mahalo would be nowhere near where it is now if it was run by Aaron Wall (an SEO) instead of Jason Calacanis (an anti SEO) despite the fact Mahalo has done some non Google friendly practices. - The power to destroy businesses without reason or justification. I can understand why they do this, and what happens if they don't, but it still leaves an uneasy feeling for many. Political Worries? It also worried me when Eric Schmidt was a pre-presidential adviser to Obama and Google was a big donar to the Obama campaign. While pretty much all big companies do this, it is still worrying what influence they may have over law makers, and how it could ultimately hurt the little guy. The little guy is stuck in a difficult situation. Play by the rules and risk falling behind competitors (at least in the short term which can be years), or bend the rules and risk the disciplining and often deadly smack on the ass from uncle Google's big fat hand. I do my best to play by Google's rules (which is hard to do when they are so vague), after all I see them as a partner, if not a sometimes annoying one, but one that also comes with many benefits and I don't want to screw my partners that I want to have a good long term relationship with. I'm fortunate enough to have enough experience, and to have learned from some hugely successful mentors on how to leverage my knowledge of how Google works to get a competitive advantage, without breaking the rules, but it is not easy. This goes to show when I interviewed a few hundred marketing companies to find that about 95-99% are breaking Google guidelines (and about 75% of them claim its organic or whitehat strategy). I could envisage this deadly scenario playing out... - Google becomes increasingly arrogant and destroys more businesses that don't play by the rules. - Many of these businesses go under, while Google then may try to avert bad press and re-instate them it is too late. Those businesses are dead. - Public opinion of Google starts to turn negative. This often unreachable company, that sometimes feels like it is just an algorithm, is causing innocent people to lose jobs and good companies to go under. - Google gets taken to court for not playing fair. In a recession climate where people (including juries and judges) are more anti-big-companies, anti-super-rich, and anti-market-manipulation (which such actions could be viewed as) Google starts to lose these lawsuits. Google chaos ensues, or Google gets starts to respect its content partners. Probably would never happen, but who knows. Just a tongue in cheek post to inspire some debate
You make it sound as if Adolf Hitler or Mr. Burns is running Google. I'm pretty sure all the top dogs at Google know what they're doing. Whatever happens in the future, they'll take steps prior, before any of the aforementioned doomsday scenario even remotely gets close.
I thought Mr Burns does run Google? I'm sure if ol' Adolf was here he'd be on the board too Just kidding... like I said I think Google is an exceptionally smart company that's done a lot of good for the industry. I'm just unsure where Google's whitehat world vs. the greyhat world will eventually take them. My feeling lately is that Google has lost some of their innovation and skills compared to their past performances, even has Rand Fishkin a bit worried, and he's almost always super-nice about Google.
Awesome post. I can understand your points, and agree with a lot of them. But I also understand that the majority of these "frustrations" are only felt by webmasters. General users of Google do not share these frustrations or even care, they only care about getting good results when they do a search. Google's webmaster guidelines are a good general rule of thumb that I beleive should be adhered to by those that are in it for the long term. The FUD you refer to may exist, or appear to exist at the moment because their algorithm does not catch all the little SEO tricks, but that may not always be the case. They will always continue to tweak it because they need to continue to give the best results to their users. Those that have relied on these tricks to get them where they are, may be hurt by the tweaks. Those that haven't relied on them, should benefit from them. Anyway, great post. +rep. Cheers James
I feel frustrated sometimes on ranking over Google Search, but it never doesn't make me feel that something not right is happening at Google.
Very nicely written article. I like that you backed your opinions up with facts, which is more than you get with some of the more emotionally charged articles.
No if Google will be killed it will be killed by traffic generators . MFA sites are spawn like mushrooms from India , Russia and other countries . Also a lot of so called niche websites pop up although they have less then 100 views per day after 3-4 months . Yet this kind of websites take a healthy chunk and provide nothing original or useful . Other then that they are still squeaky clean from my point of view . The only violation of information that they do is the youtube localized ban .