Liane - 1:05 pm on Mar 24, 2006 (gmt 0)

LOL Webwork. Actually, it was a very sleepless night. I had an exceptionally bad day and my mind was racing. So I came to WebmasterWorld to catch up on what had been happening ... which wasn't much, truth be told.

I began reading all the various comments in some of the current Google threads and realized that there are hundreds upon hundreds of posts asserting that "Google has gone mad", "Google SERPS are hopeless", "Google sucks", "Google will lose their market share" "I hate Google" ... and so on. Well in my considered opinion, they are wrong.

I realize how desperate webmasters can become when for seemingly no reason, their FREE traffic dries up and suddenly their income begins to dry up. I really do understand and I sympathize, but it is time that we all start to look at the big picture and realize the problems all search engines face.

To a large degree, [b]Webmasters are responsible for this current situation. [/b ]If all Google or any search engine had to do was to organize the information contained on the world wide web, that in and of itself is a monumental task. But that's not all they have to contend with!

Imagine if you will that you are a librarian and you have just been handed a brand new library. 85 billion books are dumped on your doorstep and your job is to read all of these books, categorize them and come up with a system of finding the most relevant books (or chapters within any given book) when a customer comes in and simply says something like, "eiderdown pillows". Oversimplified at best ... but this is in effect what search engines do. You as the librarian are then tasked with giving your customer your "best guess" as to where they might find the best reference material for eiderdown pillows.

Though you are an exceptionally brilliant librarian, the task is simply too much of a challenge, so you enlist the help of the public to corroborate your findings. You happen to believe that Joe's Handy Guide to Eiderdown Pillows is the single best book about eiderdown pillows in existence. However, you also think several hundred or even several thousands of other books may have some pretty useful information too. So you tell your client, here's my list on this topic. Why don't you tell me which of these you think is the best. You then do this with every customer looking for any information on any single topic and you ask them all to cast their votes for the best resource. You then begin adjusting your lists accordingly. Makes sense to me!

But while you were dilligently reading, categorizing, dealing with customers, adjusting your lists ... (all at the same time I might add) hundreds of thousands of gremlins (webmasters) were busy recategorizing your work without your permission or knowledge.

Add to that those webmasters who can't be bothered to maintain their old sites and who leave very old and no longer accurate information just hanging around in the libray. You can't stand still for a moment. You have to keep rereading all those books and try to sort out which has the current and correct information and which does not. Its a never ending task!

Webmasters (through manipulation of SERPS, scraper sites, hidden text, etc. etc, have undermined the work of the search engines to such a degree as to render many of them useless. That is why only three (of consequence) remain.

Google has not gone mad, they are simply trying to reorganize so they can attempt to clean up the mess we created. Many guilty parties will suffer the consequences they have brought upon themselves. Unfortunately, it also means many innocent parties will suffer right along with them. It can't be avoided.

That's really all I was saying.