TheMadScientist - 9:54 pm on Jan 7, 2013 (gmt 0)

The online market question is a red-herring.

The online market question is exactly the point of this thread ... To make people think beyond Google so they don't have to give up if/when they don't have free traffic any more, but apparently some don't get it.

To say Google's 66.9% US market share is 'the only answer', because Facebook's Half a Billion members that are active monthly is the wrong demographic borders on impossible, because if the people being spoken of really don't have a computer or aren't online, then someone else who does have a computer and is online Must tell them otherwise Google's 66.9% US market share is useless too.

So, if there is really some type of 'online interaction' which generates some type of sales on the site or for the business, then the people 'interacting with Google' to find the site very likely interact other places also. (Facebook has half a billion active members, but they're not the right demographic yet Google's visitors are? HUH WTF?)

I know of more than one person who uses Facebook regularly, but doesn't use Google, so they'd be 'out of reach' unless there was a Facebook presence ... Seriously, it's really naive to say Google's results are the only way you can possibly be found online by 'the right people', and if somehow that's really true, the 'giving up' is probably the smartest decision...

Personally, I get to deal with quite a bit of 'blow back' from my posts, even if they're right, but I cannot imagine what it would be like if I tried to convince people a site with a monthly user-base that's greater than the entire US population didn't have the right demographic for any site/business to be useful to some portion of it's members.