Beginning of the End?

Dominic just a blip or on the slippery path to web oblivion?

[seekanddestroy]

Right now many Google results are deeply flawed, and regardless of webmaster income they are doing a great diservice to the public who put Google where they are, after all, we are constantly reminded that it's not the webmasters who are important, but the users!

It's interesting to see how many people here regard Google as being the be all and end all of search (indefinitely), but then Alta Vista used to be a bit like that.

In the web game it's all very transient, if Google carries on the way it's going, it's going to run into difficulties, so this current blip is either the beginning of the end and I'll be optimising for another search engine in two years time and not give a monkeys about Google, or Google will get through it and my income will go back up in a month when it re-ranks my 'follow the rules' sites with 100% relevant content to the phrases they are optimised for, ahead of pages which come up for my searches which are there by virtue only of the links into them.

I guess Google have to beta test algos on the real thing for some reason (it is madness to do so otherwise), but they need to be real careful, the competition is always only one mouseclick away.

What do you reckon?

[percentages]

I "reckon" Google is the best SE in the marketplace today. (warts and all). BUT, it has also peeked. Now we will see more competition from the likes of Yahoo, Overture (via its aquistions) and of course M$.

Long term winner....IMHO....M$.....for right or wrong, for richer or poorer....for better or worse, M$ is a very difficult pone to tackle!

Money talks, it does sing and dance, and it will walk all over the competitors in the years to come.

To Bill, Google is like an executive toy, of no significant threat but useful under certain conditions!

[edited by: percentages at 8:24 am (utc) on June 3, 2003]

[trillianjedi]

I tend to agree with %'s unfortunately!

I think the google blip (can't say I've really noticed it as a user, but taking your word for it) can only be a good thing for some healthy competition.

I hope that AllTheWeb picks up a little market share.

Microsoft have the capability to be No. 1.

All they need to start making that happen, imho, is to build a decent website and a nice search engine front end.

The backend seems to work quite well.

Does anyone know of a search engine front end that takes the results from several engines, parses them to remove duplicates entries and then build a list from an amalgamation of the results?

That'd be the one that I'd like to use.

TJ

[MotherE]

I don't think the results are "deeply flawed." Even if this update has some mistakes in it, you can't predict the future by one update.

[Brian]

In my view, Google's marketing is currently well ahead of its performance as a search engine. Whatever has been going on in the last few weeks may be a sign of some crisis in the organization, or it may be a sign of efforts to make genuine improvements.

But if, say, ATW - or even Alta Vista, which seems to be getting its **** together again - came up with a good marketing angle, Google could start to crumble. I think we could see something like what happens when water gets into a car ferry - nobody much notices till the thing flips over.

[zeus]

I must say that this up and down in the serps are getting on my nervs. I have seen the last 3 days my unique visits a day is gone from 27.000 to 13.000 yesterday, that is alot of users in a couple of days and thats not the usualy everflux, the update from May has not ended yet.

Another thing it seems like the most of us have that problem with less visits and not good ranking for some keywords that used to be good, but that must also mean that users of Google do not get as good results as before, because here in this forum we are some good SEOs and do operate some huge sites.

zeus

[EarWig]

percentages

IMO you hit the nail firmly on the head

"Money talks, it does sing and dance, and it will walk all over the competitors in the years to come."

Now - whatever happened to that Ne*****e browser everyone used to use a few years ago ........................ ;-)

EW

[rfgdxm1]

I wonder what the market value of Google would be? Mr. Gates should be able to afford Google.

[zeus]

If it realy comes money in the serps, then we will see the same results all over, like only amazon, microsoft, dell..., then all the small sites/business will go down, thats why I like Google, everybody has a chance here without spending alot of money.
I realy dont want to see only SE like oveture, because of the paid inclusion, but also the bad results in the serp, I like to see other sites not just those companies you already know.

zeus

[mfishy]

There are so many threads with this exact topic. Here is one

[webmasterworld.com...]

[seekanddestroy]

I like the ferry analogy!

So currently the Google ferry has a Dominic puddle of water onboard, and a variety of 'more clued up' by the day sharks (SEs) circling for the rollover!

Well, we will see, if it gets across the waters a few more times, I'm sure it's got quite a few trips in it left.

Ooops.. better get back to my sites, the visitor numbers just doubled from yesterday as Google yet again adjusts its opinion of my pages! I currently re-evaluate my career choice on a daily basis!

Oh how we laughed, we almost cried...

8O)?

;O[?

XO(?

8O)?

[seekanddestroy]

Oh yeah %:

Good call, put your money on M$ every time!

;O0 how much?!