As terrible as hurricane Katrina was it was the breaking of the levies, the giant walls that keep the water out of this below sea level city that caused the most horrific damage. Listening to an expert on why the levy broke the answer was simple. “One pebble moved.†Of course one pebble moving did not cause the levy to break, or did it? “It was the one pebble that moved that allowed another to move, that allowed more to move until the concrete wall gave way†was the explanation. The phone rang early this morning, October 18, 2005 at a about 5:30AM. My greeting was followed by a pregnant pause…..then “Wow, I did not expect to get anyone at this hour of the morning, I was going to leave a message.†I replied “This number rings through to a phone in my residence outside of regular hours, how I can help you? Turns out this was a legitimate client looking to use our services. It was a lawyer calling to rent some audiovisual equipment for a jury trial. Taking her information I found out she was not from the area, she was from North Carolina and was flying into Appleton WI later today. After getting all the information I needed she said “Can I ask you one more thing?†“Of course†I said “what?†She said she had a very hard time finding us. I asked her how she found us. She said she used a search engine. “What one?†I asked. “Google†she said. She had the time to talk and I was curious so I asked her what words she used. She said she used many combinations of words but finally used “audiovisual rental Outagamie†Just FYI, she used Outagamie because the trial is in the Outagamie county court house. She said she got very frustrated with the results. She said she called one company but they were in Chicago. Tried calling another but they were in Virginia. Another was in New York. Others did not actually rent but only referred business but would not disclose who they refer to. She said she knew what she wanted but after about an hour on Monday she gave up. She had to get other work done. Now today she is flying in so she needed get this resolved. After more and more searching, deep in the results she found us. Her question was why were we so hard to find? I explained how Google works. How Google pays very little attention to what is on the page. She asked what else she could have done. I suggested she try another search engine. She chose to try yahoo. Using the same words, words we certainly have not tried to optimize, words that appear on our home page due do what we do not because of any SEO, the same words that as far as I know do not exist as anchor text in any inbound links to us except the word rental, oh, …(most importantly)……………..the same words she as a Google search engine user (read CUSTOMER) chose to use “audiovisual rental Outagamie†got her a #1 result to us in yahoo to us. She then said something I wish Google could hear. After using yahoo she said “That is the information I was looking for. From now on I’m going to use yahoo.†Of course Google loosing one person, one customer can not possibly hurt Google. Google is big. Google is strong. Loosing one user is as insignificant as taking one pebble out of giant levy.
Nice story. Of Google has built its reputation on being the best 'levy' and this is because it's been responsive to people's needs. Of course a loose pebble my start a breach, but on the other hand google is busy piling more pebbles on the levy to make it higher and better. But all of us who live by the search engines watch the search engine game with great interest and there are great riches for the best one in town.
That is the kind of anecdote that Google needs to be fearful of... Some webmasters think just telling users not to use google's will have some kind of play. It will not.. Only when it impacts their ability to do what they want to get done will things change. This has to be google's biggest concern, and from this distance, it is not always clear that is the case.
I use Google all the time, and I'm willing to admit the results sometimes are flawed, but as an end user you sometimes have to know where to look. If I were to look for a business in a specific city, I would have used Google Local instead of the normal Google search. I'm not sure how Google Local handles county names - not too good in the case of Outagamie, but if you are to search Local for: audiovisual rental appleton, wi Then the second result is a listing for your business Presentation Rentals.
After this "update", Google has fallen behind Yahoo, Altavista, and MSN in terms of search result relevancy.
Yahoo has certainly pulled the finger out lately, used to get horrible results with them...am starting to use yahoo search more & more now though.
thank you for sharing. i'm a pebble too. i was hurt really bad by this event, and personally have stopped using google for search altogether. may i suggest that everyone else who suffered do the same? let the pebbles unite and boycott google.
Not that google really cares, but if this "whatever they are doing" doesn't fix itself, with me back on the winning end in the rankings in the next couple weeks, I will switch all my ads to yahoo. That'll teach em.
I think if Yahoo was as important as Google then people would find SEO methods for Yahoo, causing a problem there. Nobody here says "why can't I rank for Yahoo". But, then again, I believe yahoo and MSN index much better.