[Chunkford]

Well, this is all very interesting with the recent changes and announcements from the big G lately, and I can't help myself feeling that this is just the tip of the iceberg with even more radical changes planned in the pipeline from Google.

So here's my angle, and where I reckon it's leading too.

The natural SERPs must be a huge burden on Google financially and they don't make any money from it directly, only by placing ads around what's on the page.

Now lets say Google is purposefully causing disruption in the naturals to lower the value offered.
THAT'S MAD! I hear you say, why would they do this? Their searchers want and expect the most relevant results for what they are searching for right?

Well people aren't going to suddenly move away from Google. Others have tried and failed. Google has too much of a household name now to just fissile and die.

But now imagine a first page with no natural results....
Crazy don't you think, but it's only crazy because this is what we're accustom too.

I reckon with what Google have said about trying to understand entities to try and produce a wolfram alpha style of results, having already separate services e.g. youtube, shopping, news, local etc, they are going to remove the natural results as the main feature that searchers are presented with first and demote it to either page 2 or even another option on the left hand side. This first page will be replaced with information from their sources which will still be relevant to their searchers and still have their ads around it.

Google just needs an excuse and what better excuse than what's going on with the natural results and making it easier to offer something better.

Of course this is just my view and my pickled brain coming out with random theories

[Fear]

That is why they shake the results. The worst thing is - you can't prove it easily.

[heyman]

We need Facebook to get to work on search. They're the only legitimate threat to Google and Google knows it. Hence the creation of Google+ which is just destined to fail.

[_Richard]

Interesting but I think it is a lot simpler than that and I do not see them moving away from having organic results for a couple of reasons.

First people are used to seeing that 1-10 listed on the front page and even though a lot of people do not really notice or care about the differences between the paid and organic results changing the format too much will make people twitchy. Second if they did move all the organic results off the front page in order to add just information from Google related companies they would leave themselves open to action by the Govt or the courts (or both). As long as those organic results are there Google can say they are just trying to make the organic results better if they remove them altogether then they lose that very important defense.

I have been saying for months that the reason for all these shakeups is to move more people to the ppc ads. Any advertising has to have a positive ROI and a certain amount of stability. By increasing the amount of money it takes to rank well and by fairly frequent shakeups in the organic rankings they are making the ppc ads a better investment for a lot of companies. In a lot of niches the difference in ROI between the two (organic and ppc) was not that great anyway. By decreasing the stability and increasing the costs a lot of businesses will make the move to ppc.

[Chunkford]

We need Facebook to get to work on search. They're the only legitimate threat to Google and Google knows it. Hence the creation of Google+ which is just destined to fail.

There is talk about Microsoft trading Bing to facebook for more shares in them

[Chunkford]

First people are used to seeing that 1-10 listed on the front page and even though a lot of people do not really notice or care about the differences between the paid and organic results changing the format too much will make people twitchy. Second if they did move all the organic results off the front page in order to add just information from Google related companies they would leave themselves open to action by the Govt or the courts (or both). As long as those organic results are there Google can say they are just trying to make the organic results better if they remove them altogether then they lose that very important defense.

Why would they get in trouble with the Gov if they move not remove the search results and make it easily accessible?
They will still be offering a 'natural' search solution, you just need to access it another way to get at it.

[_Richard]

Why would they get in trouble with the Gov if they move not remove the search results and make it easily accessible?
They will still be offering a 'natural' search solution, you just need to access it another way to get at it.

I am not saying that the Govt would win anything but anti-trust laws are very open ended and vague. As long as Google can say that they are trying to improve the search results then it all comes down to opinion on whether they are or not. If they removed the organic results completely from the first page and replace them with a lot of their own products they would be painting a big fat target on themselves for one of the anti-business Federal attorneys to come after them. They can very easily create chaos within and de-emphasize the organic rankings without putting themselves on the firing line by removing them altogether.

Google is a business and their primary goal is to make a profit, spending a large amount of money on fighting the Govt is not a money maker for them. Up until now their big push has been to grab market share but they are starting to get close to anti-trust territory already. What they need to do going forward is get more money from the same or even slightly less market share. Even if they lose a few percentage points of market share because of all the rankings craziness they would still be much better off if they can increase ad revenue. Profit is the goal here so keeping costs level and revenues up would be a good move, giving up a few points of market share to increase profit is not really all that crazy especially if you are getting close to the point when you have a large number of people shouting monopoly. ***** remember when Microsoft invested in Apple when Apple was swirling around the drain? It was not because Gates was a big Apple fan it was to make sure that there still was somebody else out there to keep the anit-trust people away.

[active-learner]

Doing away with organic results and making it all paid will lose google a lot of money in the long run. They would lose like 90% of searchers, even if they have the brand name. It's very simple.

* When people search online they want information (ex an article, that they can read for free)
* Sites that write articles and make money from advertising can't survive in a PPC world. They simply don't make enough to justify the cost unless they are selling something
* No information articles in Google search = People go to bing/yahoo/stumbleupon instead.

Google is not dumb enough to ignore this because it would pretty much put them out of business. It'd be on the same level as the 99 cents store suddenly charging $50 for everything in the store. It's not going to work and they are getting rid of their competitive advantage.

[JSP]

I agree about Facebook needing to get into search. And I VERY much dislike Facebook. But it would provide legitimate competition to Google. Which is obviously a good thing.

Google would go into full-blown panic mode if Facebook, for example, partnered with Bing and offered a web search.

[Chunkford]

Doing away with organic results and making it all paid will lose google a lot of money in the long run. They would lose like 90% of searchers, even if they have the brand name. It's very simple.

* When people search online they want information (ex an article, that they can read for free)
* Sites that write articles and make money from advertising can't survive in a PPC world. They simply don't make enough to justify the cost unless they are selling something
* No information articles in Google search = People go to bing/yahoo/stumbleupon instead.

Google is not dumb enough to ignore this because it would pretty much put them out of business. It'd be on the same level as the 99 cents store suddenly charging $50 for everything in the store. It's not going to work and they are getting rid of their competitive advantage.

You have not understood what I am saying.
My theory is not to do away with the organic results, or making it all paid
It's to do with making the organic results a secondary option not the first.
Google has evolved into much more than a search engine and I'm sure they are wanting to reflect this in how they operate.

Imagine this scenario:
Person A types into Google "cheapest ipads"
Because Google understands entities they know that person A is looking to buy an ipad and displays on the first page their shopping results from Google Base users plus adwords ads around it.
They then have on the left hand side where the options for images, maps, news etc an option saying "Check the World Wide Web" or similar.

Here's another scenario:
Person B types into Google "Middle east conflicts"
Because Google understands entities they know that person B is looking for information and displays New articles from their trusted news sources, plus include adwords ads around it.
They then have on the left hand side where the options for images, maps, news etc an option saying "Check the World Wide Web" or similar.

This is simple analogies but can you see where I am going with this?

[Scipio]

Sry guys, but this doesn´t make sense.

Assumptions:
-Google wants to have negative SEO
-Google doesn´t want to have affiliate sites because his own network

Why in the ***** they should let big brands rank? Big brands pay for clicks more if they don´t rank. The best case szenario for google is when there are thousands of Microniche Adsense sites on the top and no brands.

There is no reason von conspiracy theory unless there is no clear motive.

And of course, Google wants to trash his SERPs because they want the user click on the ads ... are you serious with that?

[AdamWB]

I'm not really a fan of all these Google conspiracy theories. People will see what they want to see if they try hard enough - even if it's not there.

The entire reason Google is what they are is because of Organic results. Organic results drive their adwords budget and overall income. Changing that formula does nothing for them.

I'm not saying Google does no evil, but believe it or not, their business model isn't built around crushing businesses or small affiliates. They make decisions based on both longevity and short term gains to meet quarterly quotas. That's it.

People say their results are worse than ever, but they give examples that are far and few between and usually get fixed within a few days/months anyways. It's a computer algorithm, there are bound to be mistakes when it's supposed to judge subjective quality. Finding flaws is inevitable. Every search engine does this.

Hate it or love it, that's my opinion on the subject.

Edited by AdamWB, 27 April 2012 - 19:01.

[sonnguyen]

If your theory was right, then it might explain why their last quarter earning was UP, when:

CPC fell 12% from the year-earlier quarter, but Paid clicks soared 39% = more profit

Is this having anything to do with good sites mysterious tanked?

[GeorgR.]

I agree about Facebook needing to get into search. And I VERY much dislike Facebook. But it would provide legitimate competition to Google. Which is obviously a good thing.

Google would go into full-blown panic mode if Facebook, for example, partnered with Bing and offered a web search.

I hate facebook too but that would be GREAT. If there is anything Google fears it's facebook. I probably would abandon my focus on Google the second such would be reality. In addition, it would actually give facebook a valid "legitimacy" to use it, BEYOND the trivial stuff going on there right now.

I think Bing + FB would be a power combo (if done right).

[brighthope]

I have been saying for months that the reason for all these shakeups is to move more people to the ppc ads. Any advertising has to have a positive ROI and a certain amount of stability. By increasing the amount of money it takes to rank well and by fairly frequent shakeups in the organic rankings they are making the ppc ads a better investment for a lot of companies. In a lot of niches the difference in ROI between the two (organic and ppc) was not that great anyway. By decreasing the stability and increasing the costs a lot of businesses will make the move to ppc.

I do understand Google is primary focus is to make money and they want us to use PPC ads more. However, a couple of years ago, they "slapped" a lot of ads/sites using PPC. Most of them were info products/sales letter type landing pages and websites. My site was one of them. I was spending 10K a month on PPC and got back enough to make more profits. Then they slapped my site! I tried a couple of methods myself to get it back and also consulted a couple of PPC consultants to no avail.

I changed it to focus on SEO then. I got #1 with several keywords and I had several other sites to link to my main site with other keywords(kinda like teir 1 sites). They all ranked #1-3 and my sales page had more than 1000 hits per day....and this update in February slapped may main site. The one a week ago slapped other sites. Now I only get 100 hits per day...anyway doing SEO made better results after all than PPC.

Well it went off topic but...if they want us to use PPC more, how come they slap many sites on PPC?
There have been so many web masters/site owners suffeered from this slapping thing.

BTW I didn't sell anything "fishy" like make money online stuff using PPC ads. I sell some e-learning products and I use(d) long sales letters.
I of course tried to change it to short sales letters or "regular" looking site, but Google kept slapping any site I had with the same keyword.
(It was a blessing in disguise at that point because I got food results with SEO)

IF the money is everything for them, this PPC slapping thing doesn't make sense to me.

[Initial Effort]

When links are cheap, easy to get and being used by the masses Google cares. When links are expensive, hard to get and few people are using a technique Google lets it fly. Plain and simple. Yes, it is about driving PPC sales and their bottom line, but they are doing the algo updates to shake people.

[Logan Sargent]

Second if they did move all the organic results off the front page in order to add just information from Google related companies they would leave themselves open to action by the Govt or the courts (or both). As long as those organic results are there Google can say they are just trying to make the organic results better if they remove them altogether then they lose that very important defense.

This is exactly what I was thinking when I started reading the first post.

[Pat]

When links are cheap, easy to get and being used by the masses Google cares. When links are expensive, hard to get and few people are using a technique Google lets it fly. Plain and simple. Yes, it is about driving PPC sales and their bottom line, but they are doing the algo updates to shake people.

Even when they're cheap to get Google don't care.

They only care when a specific tactic becomes popular among the "public" for lack of a better word.

[Mike608]

I'd add one other possibility to the mix:

Perhaps Google's search engine or parts of the search engine have begun to break down or malfunction?

Perhaps Google has begun to experience a technological version of the biblical story of The Tower of Babel and can no longer effectively and consistently handle the shear scope, volume and growth of information it needs to process to provide useful, relevant results?

Total conjecture on my part. And Google has a huge number of people that are way smarter than I am.

But maybe the events we are seeing are not going quite the way they were planned by Google and they are not completely a plot to *****/punish SEOs, IMs and small businesses?

To mix my movie metaphors, perhaps we are seeing a Disturbance In the Force and a setback for SkyNet...

Edited by Mike608, 30 April 2012 - 07:39.

[dc_publius]

Google results stated to seriously suck a few years ago as people started to game the system. They know they need to do something.

That something is more social proof and more reliance on predictable quality sites - like their content network.

Maybe in some near future social proof/links will be valued much higher than regular links. Maybe each social network participant will have a sort of PR/Klout score - dependent on the quality/longevity of their social interaction and followers - and the things they link to will be ranked much higher. While one could say that these links will be bought and sold the same way as PR links, it will be harder and more expensive because no quality profile page owner with lots of real followers will be that eager to use their profile juice to link to viagra and pron.