Is your business safe with SEO and Google ?

[Whitey]

I've been brooding over the safety issues of having all your eggs in the Google basket.

Is it safe and stable, or do we just hear the "cry" stories here?

Would Google help a large corporate if they tripped a filter, or would they let them sink like the small site owners ?

[idolw]

large corporate businesses do not rely on google.

[Whitey]

I can think of a lot do , and for many SEO is a major marketing channel.

Ebay , Amazon , Expedia the list goes on with different levels of reliance. Go to brands and brochureware is critical ... e.g. car manufacturers.

[wheel]

There are ways of diversifying even within Google. Nothing wrong with using internet traffic, the bulk of which comes from search engines, the bulk of that which comes from Google, as the place to bring in customers. But realizing the weaknesses in that and shoring up your defences is smart. At the very least, multiple domains sitting in the wings ready to get the push to the front page.

[OnlyToday]

So if your start-up is launching as a large corporate organization fine, but a small-time entrepreneur will be better off staying away from the internet and starting something less risky like, say a restaurant.

And that is a sad, sad comment on what a disaster Google is for small business. Shame on you Larry, Serg, et al.

[Murdoch]

I am currently, for the first time, with a company that gets MAYBE five percent of its overall traffic from search engines, and it is not even a large corporate company. And we are talking upwards of 20,000 unique visits a day here (over a span of 10 websites).

I have to agree with idolw about large corporations not relying on Google. I guarantee you that, while companies like Ebay, Amazon and Expedia do benefit somewhat from the search engines, the things that they rely mostly on are straight up marketing and affiliate traffic.

Also it kind of helps that those companies were not only the first of their kind to be heavily marketed, but they are also very competitive price-wise. And their integrations of third party software are right on the money too (Paypal, Unbox, Sabre, etc).

To answer your question though, yes Google would help a corporate company if they tripped a filter. Remember the whole BMW fiasco?

[edited by: Murdoch at 1:07 pm (utc) on June 24, 2008]

[netmeg]

My two largest clients are catalog companies. While they derive a pretty good portion of sales from Google, it's still a drop in the bucket compared to what comes in from the catalogs. Direct mail still works.