Google isn't worth Ranking on

[MrFewkes]

I was just looking at the serp for my product - and google just isnt worth even bothering with really now.

Sponsored 1
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Site x
Shopping 1
Shopping 2
Shopping 3
Youtube1 - Youtube 2
Site y
Amazon
Site z
my site

I cant seem to shift site x.
Site y is the same owner as site x
Site z is same owner as site x aswell

Ive been at site x's position and y position and traffic wasnt much better than where I am now - maybe 35 clicks a day rather than 20 or 30.

The point is though - with a spamming monkey like the one who owns xyz with all his spammed forum member profile links and other spam junk - i really cant compete for the top spot - and with all the google bum fluff round aswell - I ask myself is google even worth bothering with?

I must admit I do laugh - the spammer has had his paypal account suspended (yet again) so people cant even purchase there at sites xyz now anyway.

So ever so smart google ranks a spammer / fluffs all its own stuff out there and kills the rest.

(I suppose if google were that smart they would drop sites which linked to paypal and then paypal just showed a page saying "this guys been suspended and cant recieve money). Or maybe they like spammers who cant take payments? LOL - it maybe benefits them.

Is google worth it so much these days for your terms?
(organic that is)

Mind you again though - if I spam the forum profiles with my link aswell I might have a chance.

I get the feeling im messing round chasing my tail rather than being an online trader.

[robdwoods]

If your sites were highly focused on individual keywords and keyword pairs, MayDay put you in your place. I just wish I'd seen it coming....

Depends on the site. I'm focused mostly on highly competitive two word phrases using purely "white hat" tactics and if anything I got a traffic bump from Mayday. We're not a big site or big brand, nor do we use large numbers of low quality links or buy links of any kind. It depends on the vertical but a well engineered site with a decent link profile shouldn't have got smacked too hard for 1 and 2 word phrases unless it was significantly over or under weighted for one element of the algorithm.

[robdwoods]

Mind you again though - if I spam the forum profiles with my link aswell I might have a chance.

Sometimes you do have to get down in the muck if that's the only way to compete in your space.

@MrFewkes You also note that the shopping (Google Product Search) results are above not only your own site but also above site y and z. Are you generating a feed for Google Product Search? I drive significant traffic to my main site from there at almost no cost and the traffic converts almost as well as traffic from the traditional search results.

[nomis5]

The OP posting said this which just about summed the post:

"and google just isnt worth even bothering with really now"

So, if you get to number one in the Google serps and "and google just isnt worth even bothering with really now"

The problem is with your site. Number 1 in Google is the tops, tell me what is better?

[lfgoal]

I used to bust my butt to keep one single word where I was top 10 in all major SEs for years and it only contributed 3K visitors/mo vs 400K/mo in long tail searches.

Gave up that keyword and never looked back after easily dominating the long tails in my niche that surprisingly drove way more traffic.

I love this. I dominate on my primary keyphrase, and most of my competition spends all their waking moments chasing it. But I only get 4 percent of my traffic from that trophy phrase. Everything else is long tail. As long as I'm willing to crank out the content, they're destiny is toast.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Do everything right and a spam-a-saurus outfit will eventually come along and dominate with volume.

Put out one TOP QUALITY site or spam the internet with TENS OF THOUSANDS of them. Offer a quality experience or mashup what's already out there. What REALLY pays most?

I know what I WANT to say is more worthwhile but if you're in it for money bulk and mashup is the way to go. Let someone else create the top quality content and mash it up a few dozen ways to get the clicks.

The bigger your mashup site/spam network the more you make. I should know, I'm getting creamed by 9 different varieties of those for most of my keywords. Google is even giving itself the top spots in search so yeah.... Ranking in Google is NOT what it used to be.

[physics]

Ranking in Google is not easy but those high rankings are still worth cash. I have to say that what's eroded, along with the cleanliness of the 'organic' serps page, is the 'unwritten agreement' that seemed to exist when Google first started. The unwritten agreement was this: "We (Google) are going to steal a bit of your (website owner) content in exchange for giving you nice prominent placement on our search page." It was like there was a mutual respect between Larry, Sergy and YOU. After all, as academics they were trained that basically just taking people's content and pasting your ads all over it was wrong. Part of what happened is that the world changed. People are more tolerant of sharing their content than they used to be. But also part of what happened is that Google became a "Corporation" with a capital C and they became less concerned with academic appearances and more concerned with the bottom line.
This is the GORG's internal thought process over the past few years: "Let's shove a few more ads up at the top there, let's add our own youtube results right at position 5, let's move those ads in closer from the right, let's put a bunch of our own product listings in there, let's harvest every image on the web and then put our ads next to them, etc." "Me. ME. MEEEEE! MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" "Oh, yeah, and you measly little website owner. You are a spammer. You should be ashamed of yourself. You bought links. Go say 100 Hail Mary's and cry yourself to sleep. Just to be nice we're going to decide to not totally kick you out of our index so long as you promise to be good and rat out all of your competitors." Good times.