Forum Moderators: goodroi
I think it's a good thing for the www and payback for Ink for 2000.
ROFL
Good for certain KWs in search results.
Not good for ads. Cost will double.
DG
Boooooooooooo.......
(edited by: EliteWeb at 4:09 pm (utc) on May 1, 2002)
I completely agree with your take on things Brett.
If that happens, I quit.
if Google were to get as spammy as my AOL inbox, the web might as well shut down :)
AOL did a recent financial cleanup. Google is (not so) slow-cooking an IPO.
Not going to happend.
Google always targetted medium to long term investment strategy. Even if AOL, M$ or else make G$ offers, the dam will resist.
AOL runs Mozilla, Open Directory, AOLServer, etc. They give a lot of stuff away.
They are the tech-friendly media company.
They are scary as a giant corporation, but the most benevolent of the big scary corporations.
I'm not too worried about AOL expanded their grip as long as they stay under 50% of the market.
I'd rather an AOL-Microsoft oligopoly fight then a Microsoft vs dozens of small guys, Microsoft would eat the little guys for breakfast.
Alex
While it is great when your sites are ranking well in Google, there are many people in these forums who have been the victims of Google's fickle indexing. It is far too easy for websites to become dependent upon the free Google traffic, and the more dominant that Google becomes, the more dangerous this is for webmasters.
We have a couple of sites where Google is probably providing 80%+ of the traffic. The budget isn't there for other forms of promotion and the directories simply can't compete with Google for the large variety of phrases these sites cover. If these sites dropped from Google...well there would be little point in running them! Not a good situation, nor a good business model I know.
Fortunately there isn't any income dependancy on these sites, but for many webmasters, the ups and downs of Google cause the ups and downs of their businesses.I would rather see three Google equivalent engines than one dominant engine.
This brings search the way it is supposed to be in front of more people: looking for documents from a huge variety of sources, rather than scrounging through paid ads (are you reading this MSN?).
Long live Google. Death to Look$tupid!
But, what a world this is going to open up for those poor AOL users. I've lost track of the number of queries coming from people with the email designation 'prisoner@aol.com' desperately seeking ways to find something as simple as 'pictures of Florida'.
It's a good day for integrity and honesty, and not just in terms of SERPS.
Based on some credible rumors I've heard about not-available-to-the-public data feed deals already taking place, it looks like Google is already open to the idea of "alternative methods" of collecting content. That being the case, I'd say that the idea that Google won't move (post-IPO) to some type of PFI program that will have a major impact on what ultimately gets distributed to their partners, is a bit naive.
I certainly hope they stay true to their current model, but I won't be a bit suprised if they don't.
I agree. Every month when google crawls its like a bunch of crack heads looking for their dealer saying where did my site go? Why was I dropped? How can they do this to ME? It is not about you its googles search engine they can do what ever they want. I have read several hundred posts concerning being dropped from google and each time its for the same reasons Google is being fickel or you did something to your site that you should not have done.
I know that it is more important to get into google now than ever before. But I think that as SEOs we spend waaay to much time on Google. If you think I am off base here look at the number of posts in the google section of the forum and then look at the rest of the sections. Dont get me wrong I like google and the results that they offer but it seems like we are putting all of our eggs in one basket.
I honestly dont know what to think about Aol and Google being buddied up for results. Good part is you no longer have to optimize for 5 different engines. Bad side of this is that if you are not in google you may not be in half of the other current engines. Its almost like a monopoly google has with the search engines.
If AOL buys Google, so what?
Two years from now - the two nouns in that question will be reversed.
Google is kicking a**. It is all part of their master plan.
[alexa.com...]
[amazon.com...]
[toolbar.google.com...]
I predict in the next 6-9 months you will see the above converge in a major deal.
Google is already making a profit.
AOL Lost 54.2 BILLION DOLLARS in ONE QUARTER.
[money.cnn.com...]
Granted - some of that has to do with the accounting methods.
Oh, and ask AT&T how much it loves its long distance business.
Things are changing. People are going to wake up and smell the reality of the situation. Information + Intelligence = $$$
There are three really big players - MSN, Yahoo and Google.
MSN is changing due to the L$ situation, but essentially the majority of traffic comes (or it used to) through Looksmart. Once a site is in Looksmart, there is little that you can do to influence its position in MSN.
The same applies to Yahoo - once a site is in, there is little that you can do to influence the positioning in the search results.
Therefore we are left with Google being the only major player where webmasters can influence their positions from month to month. Plus Google is still growing in popularity. Hence the interest.
Yes there are other search engines such as Altavista, Ask Jeeves, AOL, Inktomi, Lycos and so on, but the reward/effort ratio is so much smaller with these. Plus, if you are following the Google rules, your sites will probably do OK in the other engines anyway.
I think the number of posts in forum3 are pretty much in line with Google's position in the marketplace. People will always want to talk about the company/organization that has the greatest impact on the success or failure of their online businesses. And right now, that company is Google.
>>it seems like we are putting all of our eggs in one basket.
I don't think it's a case of us putting all our eggs into one basket. That statement implies that there are multiple baskets for us to place our eggs in. But that's not really the case. There is now only one basket.
I strongly hope Google continues its current model (I see no reason why they should change as this brought them all the success) and not resort to pay for spidering schemes.
I agree with commenters that being in Google becomes that much more a necessity now. We were impacted by PR0 for 5 months and I know how it feels and it will have more impact now (or when AOL switches to Google SERPs) than before for sure;)
