Forum Moderators: open
It seems Google can't please anyone these days.
What is the root of it all?
a) The Florida update?
b) Big - just plain bigness (everyone loves to pick on the big guy)?
c) Poor management?
d) Public relations dept screw up?
e) Competitors planting seeds of division?
f) All of the above?
I have to say I got a smile out of that one, Bobby_Davro.
I'm not totaly happy with some recent changes coming out of Google however, if I where working there, in a capacity where I could try some of these revenue schemes, I would...
Business is business.
(Can I please have my old CPC back now?)
That this hasn't changed could be explained by Google having always been money-grubbin'. C'mon, lets be honest. It ain't like Google is a charity. And, the obsession at the plex with greed is not necessarily a bad thing. Without quality search results searchers will use SEs other than Google. Which would be bad for the bottom line, and thus Google has to keep quality high.
When you are small, you can afford to make more mistakes.
When you don't have really any tough competition, you can afford to make mistakes.
But, when you get large and everyone is gunning at you, you need to slow down and follow good management skills. Mistakes become very costly, to many or too big of one and you may very well lose your position.
On the other hand they are beginning to exhibit a lot of the same characteristics of monopolistic companies who utilize their power unfairly to the detriment of everybody else.
For example Local Results. Search for <snip>.
The websites that really match the search are pushed down 4-5 links and Google's goofy search results come first.
[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 3:08 am (utc) on April 11, 2004]
[edit reason] we don't do specific searches - ck the tos please. [/edit]
I think the Public Relations department might be part of the problem. It is a geek company and most of them have no clue that the public would not view them the same way as other geeks.I think that they could also do a much better of setting expectations appropriately.
I wholeheartedly agree with this. PR has never been there strong point. Given time though, Google will learn how to spin with the best of them.
Reason 2 is that the results really aren't very good anymore. I am getting fed up with so many junk, purpose built, sites appearing in the results. I should know, because I own some of them. Yahoo is MUCH better at filtering these out at the moment. The only strength of Google at the moment is the depth of spidering, and Yahoo can't be too far behind.
Yahoo is quite good at filtering out a lot of sites these days. The problem is no one knows or can tell us why.
Reason 3 is that Google treats webmasters like dirt. It is great to have Googleguy(s) here, but that doesn't detract from the fact that Google holds together a massive web economy, yet does little to protect that economy. I have seen numerous sites get penalised in Google for absolutely nothing (and far more who did deserve it). I understand that Google can't be responsible for everyone on the web, but being this callous with the livelihoods of webmasters leaves a bitter taste.
You cant be serious. Google has done more to make a lot of webmasters a whole lot of money than any other search engine. If you arent using Google to make money, then you arent using Google correctly.
As for gmail, time will tell if people find the ads annoying. With regard to privacy, well, some people just dont get it. They give up ID#'s upon request, confirm account numbers by clicking a link in an email and generally have no understanding of the importance of personal information. They dont realize that the company IT guy (remember the SNL skit?) has access to their email whenever he wants it. The silver lining to this 'outcry' is the opportunity for public education.
I was overstating it as to preemptively squash rxd's same ol' same ol'. Fact is that commercial results are very important to Google as is the happinness of folks here. I personally know a few here that manage millions of dollars in client accounts with Google. I doubt G really wants to pi$$ off the webmasterworld crowd too much as there are TENS OF MILLIONS spent overall by WW members with Google ads.
Saying that the only thing that matters is the satisfaction of searchers is beyond absurd. Advertisers and publishers are quite important as well.
As far as discontent goes, I really don't have any other than the fact that Florida seemed way off the mark. Since then, all seems cool, except for new sites not scoring at all.
Oh, gmail is ridiculous - hope they don't tie it in with regular adsense publishers or there won't be much advertisers left for us...
Seems like they're about to do something about that: [google.com...]
128 news stories [news.google.com] were negative or critical of Google/Gmail. Of those I would figure a fifth/fourth were original. That is more negative stories in one week about google, than in its entire history. Oh no, this isn't a little Florida update isolated to tech sites - this is massive sustained collateral damage being done. There is no putting the genie back in the bottle on this one. It is bunker mentality time.
The thing that strikes me about it all though, is that it appears to be some piling on. It is a feeding frenzy by the press. They smell a bit of blood in the water and are circling.
btw: The gmail debate itself is going on in the gmail forum...
> Google has done more to make a lot of webmasters
> a whole lot of money than any other search engine.
Newbie! lol! AltaVista, Infoseek, and Excite were MUCH easier to make money on that Google ever has been. Google has been far-n-away the toughest nut to crack of any of the engines.
> Google's management has been highly focused
> on the up coming I.P.O.
The last authoritative word we heard was from the ceo himself, who said there was no IPO planned. Last outsider info we have is that there will be no Google IPO in 2004. It would be quite unlikely to see Google IPO in the next year.
Google has done wonders for the web, and has set very high standards for the other players to aim for. I was simply stating why I think they are getting a hard time at the moment.
You cant be serious. Google has done more to make a lot of webmasters a whole lot of money than any other search engine. If you arent using Google to make money, then you arent using Google correctly.
And isn't this part of the problem? Google created the market for many many people to make money from the web. I don't necessarily think that the web would look anything like it does today if Google hadn't come along. That market now has thousands of managers, employees and sole traders dependent upon it, many of whom depend on Google for a significant proportion of their income. Google accidently penalises many of those legitimate companies every time it introduces a new set of algorithms/spam filters. Such is the way when automation is used to remove the junk. And many innocent people suffer badly because of it.
This is not a small issue either. While Google has created the jobs, it also jeopardises the safety of those jobs. This damages the whole web economy.
How many small time webmasters have spent months building up a decent site only to have it wiped out of Google during an update? Lots.
How many Mom and Pop companies have had their income slashed from being penalised in Google unfairly? Lots.
Do I necessarily blame Google for all of this? No. Unless they employ more human editors to deal with the spam issue, this is probably an unavoidable side effect. However, the bigger Google gets, the more sway it has over the income of more and more people, and the more careful they should be. And the more webmasters who get hurt, the more people they will have complaining about it; hence Google is taking a beating at the moment.
To put it another way, Google is like an employer sacking entire departments of people because 80% of them are incompetent. The other 20% have a legitimate complaint about being treated very badly.
We can all say that people shouldn't be dependent upon one search engine and they should bring in traffic via other means, but even then Google accounts for so much of a site's traffic it is scarey. Google is always going to get blamed when that income ceases with or without legitimate reason.
Google is valued at $12Billion, but how many times larger is the real web economy built up around Google?
