Search Engine Marketing Blog: piloSEO

Everyone who uses the Internet with any frequency knows that Google is the biggest player when it comes to everything online. What used to be a simple search engine has now grown to be the way many average users access and interact with the Internet. That means that any business that wants to be found believes that they must be indexed and ranking well in Google. In many cases this is true. Google search can deliver phenomenal traffic to a site that is well indexed. It also means that they face competition from a number of places and every other week I hear about another Google killer, usually in the form of a new search engine. I think it will be hard to displace Google in the short term but I have been thinking that Google may be the only entity that can kill Google. And one way they may be doing that is through their consistent insistence on using No Follow for certain links.

Why Does Google Push No Follow?

How you ask? Well, first we need to go back in time. One of the most important aspects of the original Google algorithm was links. Google treated links as votes and in the beginning many SEOs figured out that by getting a bunch of links pointed to a site could push it to the top of Google. This lead to all sorts of link schemes designed to artificially boost a site’s Page Rank and help it rank higher. One by one these link schemes stopped working and SEOs moved on to other link schemes. For the most part Google was able to identify these schemes and devalue the links. With the exception of one. That one was paid links. Paid links are hard to identify algorithmically. Sure, they could identify some paid links but the majority went undetected. So Google got a great idea. They told Webmasters that they should use No Follow (originally a blog spam fighting tool) on any links that were paid for. And to make their case their case they went out and punished some of the easily identifiable paid links. The SEO industry picked up on this and the No Follow revolution took off but…

How Can No Follow Kill Google?

Most of us in the SEO world understand what No Follow is and how it should be applied but Webmasters who are not involved in SEO are confused. They see penalties being applied, hear about No Follow, and begin applying it on every out-bound link, even those that are not paid. I recently spoke to a client who runs a popular and respected site about No Follow. They knew to place No Follow on their advertiser links but they also believed that it should be added to every link that went to a third party site. I explained that this was not the case but I wonder how many Webmasters out there believe that they need to add No Follow to all out-bound links? As more and more Webmasters learn about No Follow and apply it incorrectly it could cause a huge problem for Google.

Since Google’s algorithm uses links as a big component for ranking it could be harmful if all links are set to No Follow. If more and more sites start telling Google not to follow the links to other sites Google could face an issue in that they can either disregard all of the links or break the the No Follow attribute they developed and actually pass link juice to No Followed links. They could also take the link factor out of their algorithm and rank sites based on content only but I don’t see that happening soon. It may be far fetched but as more Webmasters misuse No Follow and hinder Google’s ability to crawl and index pages it might be the most viable Google Killer we will see in the near future.

Update: Michael Martinez has an excellent post, How search ruins the Web experience, that further explores this idea in much greater detail.

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Google attempting to take Office Application market share from Microsoft

The Sunday NY Times ran an interesting article about Google’s efforts to gain traction in the Office applications market. The article does an excellent job of laying out how Google would like to change the culture of Office applications and computing to be 90% web based. I believe there are a few issues with this IMO but the article either glossed over them or completely ignored them. While I agree that web based apps have great potential I believe that Google has some big issues to deal with.

Potential Stumbling Blocks

Privacy Concerns: Privacy is something that Google has been dealing with for a while and it will only get worse as their tools become more integrated and prevalent. Google wants users to create an account that ties all of their applications together. With Gmail and Google Tool Bar Google has the ability to track what you are searching for as well as your email. They use this to serve relevant ads to you through Gmail and provide personalized search results based on previous searches and clicks. Many users were (and still are) concerned about this but when you start adding the ability to track what you are doing with spreadsheets and word documents the privacy concerns become heightened. Most individual users will not have many problems with this but I am sure plenty of businesses do not like the idea that Google essentially has access to all of their trade secrets and sensitive business data.

One of the main goals in Google’s efforts to move into the office application world is to bring businesses on board. To succeed at this they must be able to alleviate privacy concerns and ensure businesses that there data will be safe and secure from anyone they do not authorize to view it.

Customer Support: Google takes a self service approach to most of their products. Their products are generally easy to install and they want users to be able to everything themselves. From Ad Words to Gmail they rely on the user to download, install, and troubleshoot. Ad Words does offer individual account reps to agencies and businesses who spend a lot of money on their services but they really push most users to online help pages and self service troubleshooting. This obviously allows them to offer their products for free or at a much lower cost than traditional software developers. For many of their products this is a good approach and works well. But when they start dealing with business applications and enterprise level products they really need to step up their customer service efforts. And they can’t just man their customer service department with entry level employees and interns. They need to provide high quality service. Anyone who has tried to get in touch with Google knows how difficult it can be. They rarely provide a way to call them and it takes some work to actually talk to someone on the phone. If they want to compete with Microsoft they need to exceed their customer service level. That may not seem like a big deal but the current state of Google service needs to be greatly improved.

Anti-Google Sentiment: Currently Google has a pretty good reputation among the general public. Many users like what Google is doing and have a general affection for the company. Most people believe that Google is a good company and holds their best interests at heart. The opposite is true for Microsoft. The main reason most users do not like Microsoft is because of their near monopoly status in the OS and Office Application marketplace. Google is nearing the same status in the Internet world. They own the majority of the search marketing revenue and as they add more tools and products they continue to cement their status and THE place to access information online. Go to any SEO/SEM forum or blog and most of the discussion is focused on Google. Many users rely on Google to find what they are looking for and many businesses rely on Google to send them business. Now I am an advocate for the need to diversify revenue streams and not rely on Google but the fact is that Google owns so much Internet traffic that doing well there can make make or break an online business.

This has lead to quite a bit of negative sentiment towards Google among some businesses and the search community. Many people in the search marketing world believe that Google is forcing them to change their sites and the way they monetize their sites based on Google’s algorithm limitations. There have been countless arguments recently with the crack down on paid links and I believe there are valid points on both sides. In the end Google has the right to do whatever it wants even if it means they don’t actually provide the most relevant results (search for John Chow). The suspicion and negative thoughts on Google are still mostly limited to the search marketing community but as Google continues to grow and seemingly monopolize the online world this sentiment could grow. As more and more average users start to see Google as a monopoly like Microsoft they may begin to rally against them and look for alternatives to their products and services.

Google has a unique opportunity but will their gamble work out?

Google is seeing almost unprecedented growth and they have gone from being a quirky start up to an industry giant in less than 10 years. For this growth to continue they need to be careful about how they proceed and address some of the concerns that many have as they move into more and more markets. If they don’t they may have difficulty overtaking Microsoft in the Office application world but they may join them as one of the most hated and feared companies in the tech sector.

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