Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
For the past several months - MSN has ALWAYS beat Google to the punch on indexing new pages for all of my sites. Even Yahoo tends to be picking pages up faster than Google.
On top of this very important factor - Google's results are the spammiest of them all in my opinion. It has been getting worse - not better.
and most importantly - Google is trying to dominate every niche on the internet. They want it all. They don't want to keep paying you for your ad space - they want to dominate your niche and reap ALL of the benefits for themselves. The more "portal" esque they become - the less important Google becomes to publishers. The whole point of being a portal is to spread out and dominate on a broader scale.
I wish things were not the way they are, but the damage is done. The moral of the story is, I personally feel that while Google is winning many small battles on the internet - they are slowly losing SEARCH, and that is all they have in reality.
In my opinion google is the least spammy these days, I see much more spam on msn and probably yahoo.
The problem is people keep stating google is full of spam forcing them to tighting the notches stronger each time.... the effect of this has created the sandbox causing many problems for new websites. Many other filters are in place to beat spam, causing side effects to existing sites also.
We need to start saying good things about google so they will turn notches down slightly and allow new content to rank, and at the same time keep spam at bay. Easier said than done though!
It doesn't matter what MSN does - they just don't have the traffic.
The public masses will slowly become more educated about the ways of the web, and I firmly believe that Google's dominance will be shattered.
It's not only that their search is lagging behind - it's that they feel comfortable treading on extremely thin volitile ice... in fact they're jumping up and down on it. (eg.. Google Print, AutoLink, among others)
Once the stock price stops climbing, Google will lose valuable PR - the backlash will be that they jump harder on the thin ice... push the envelope in ways that makes people uncomfortable. Who knows, perhaps more ads per page in the SERPS.
I've even been thinking that the future of Google could end up being this:
Google serves up only cached listings - substituting ads, blocking ads of competitors, reaping the fruits of YOUR labor. It's seems far fetched but we already know they aren't afraid to walk the thin line of copywright infringement. (AutoLink ring a bell? They are already changing the content of your pages) If they implimented something like this that altered your ads instead... and made it something that you have to opt out of - it could happen overnight. The Google toolbar doesn't notify you of updates, it just does them.
Basically what they want is their own "layer" of the internet... all to themselves.
I'm still stuck on the AutoLink feature... If you are a part of AdSense, you already know that they won't let you run any other forms of "contextual advertising". This includes ones that will highlight key-words in YOUR OWN CONTENT for advertising purposes.
You CAN'T - but Google can. When someone uses the AutoLink feature on your site - this is exactly what happens... No wonder Google doesn't allow you to use other contextual advertising programs, it gets in the way of the ads they have planned for your pages.
When Google announced AutoLink - the response was obviously negative. Hundreds of thousands of authors, publishers, and the general public voiced their opinions agains Google by getting in line for class action lawsuits, posting in newsgroups, sending feedback to Google... what do they do in response? They advertise it on their homepage; The equivalent of them holding up their middle finger.
It doesn't matter what MSN does - they just don't have the traffic.
Maybe when the new MS OS hits the market there'll be a bit more of a fight on.
I just think MOST people use the SE that is "supposed to be the best" (like a popular fashion). That or whichever SE is already installed on their PC by default. Let's not get carried away with the idea that people look at the SERPs and think "these results suck" and go to another SE. I'm pretty sure it doesn't happen too often.
When MSN or Yahoo somehow get the word about that THEY are in fact "the best", then we'll see some changes in dominance.
Couldn't disagree more. Yahoo is the loudest and they are not tops. If it were a matter of marketing MS would have dominated long ago, they know thats not the way into this market.
It comes down to search quality, or finding what you are looking for... we know who wins that contest.
But all that is pointless anyway, like those "I am getting more traffic from ABC search engine than Google." It's your circumstance you are talking about, not everyones. For me, Google indexes all new pages or sites within 24 hours. MSN has never fully indexed any site over 100 pages. Yahoo has never fully indexed a site over 200 pages. Other people will have different experiences.
It's your circumstance you are talking about, not everyones. For me, Google indexes all new pages or sites within 24 hours.
G used to list all of my new pages within 24 hours, but over the last few months they're doing less well. Now, it takes a 3-5 days unless they're linked from one of our daily-freshed pages (i.e. the ones we change often). MSN is faster, but as noted above they don't list as many pages on a site (about a third of what G has for us), and even though we rock in MSN for our most competitive kw's, they only supply about 15% of our SE traffic.
I have to agree that G isn't as good at search as it used to be, and it's hard not to think this is because of all the new projects that are being worked on (Print, etc). But that said, I just used them to find out how to fix the rear U-joint in my Jeep (seen it done a few times, haven't tried it myself yet), and found what I needed at the top of the serps. This is good, because the rear drive-shaft is currently stowed behind the back seat (it let go and fell out as I was turning a corner), and I had to drive home in 4-wheel drive using it as a front-wheel drive (costed the parts already, 24 Cdn - very cheap). My point is: I automatically used G to search for info first, without even thinking about it. If the habit is that ingrained in someone who thinks about SE's, it's even more ingrained in regular users. For most people, Google is synonymous with search, and it's not going to change too quickly.
The web is young. In ten years kids could be like.... Google who? What's a Google?
Just like some of the younger folks might not know who some of the pioneers of yesteryear were.. (go,alta-vista,lycos,dogpile,etc)
All were HUGE names once upon a time. Only time will tell...
