Forum Moderators: goodroi
My first reaction, of course, would be shock and denial. It is not often that the most successful company in a field seeks to follow the least successful competitors. Back to the point... yes, I would consider paying for Google, but I would also be counting the days until a replacement came along. Search is like water. There will either be public pressure to clean up the "water supply," or some people will take it upon themselves to buy what they perceive as the good stuff. (btw - I'm amazed how much money people spend on bottled water; I would rather drink free, less pure water and pay for 'pure' search results.)
This might seem contrary to my earlier opinions about PPC eventually having a place. Not necc. At least with PPC and free search you, the web surfer, know what you are getting (as long as everything is labled properly). With PFI, you have no idea how many great documents are being actively ignored, and so far the reality of the model in no way lives up to the theory.
The article talks about how Google's next challenge is trying to compete in the enterprise search market with companies like Ink and AltaVista. The problem that I think they'll have trying to do this, is the fact that the core technology that makes them the preferred web search engine doesn't have a great deal of value when applied to individual site search. I may be missing something here, but I can't see how the principles of PageRank will help produce better results for Martha Stewart than what she could get from AV or Ink's site search tools.
With AV and Ink having a combined corporate client base of over 3500, compared to Google's 7, one would think that making some significant gains in this market would require taking some customers away from their competitors. Right now, the only thing that Google could use to accomplish this is the their commanding web search market share. That makes me think that the smartest thing for them to do is to tie any paid inclusion/crawling program to the use of their search products. (Similar to Fast's program).
Now if I was the CEO of a decent size content site, and A Google sales rep came to me and said that switching to their search software would guarantee that all the content of my site would be included in Google's web database, and that they would recrawl my site every two days, I think I would seriously consider switching.
In addition to increased frequency of crawls and the inclusion of deep level content, there are plenty of other perks Google could through in. Things like guaranteeing that your site won't be dropped if GoogleBot shows up and can't connect would be just one example. When you factor in other things like xml feeds, and the fact that it wouldn't involve the amount of negative pr that a pure "open to the public" paid inclusion program would, it seems like a logical first step.
A program like that would provide a lot of smaller companies with an opportunity to get the kind of special treatment sites like CNN are now getting. It would also put less pressure on Google when it comes to manipulating results, because the core service you are paying for is the site search. That's an expense you have with or without Google. The inclusion features are just and added incentive.
If they moved in that direction, I don't think I'd have a problem with it, and I would probably convince some clients that use other search tools to consider switching. (provided the costs were comparable).I also don't think it would have nearly the negative impact on their "free spider" activitiy that Ink's programs have had.
