Google’s Animal Farm

I’m not sure if you’ve noticed but over recent months, Google has begun to make moves which bring back memories of MS in the late 90s. Lately I’ve felt very much like I’m living increasingly on the Google’s Animal Farm.

Conflict of Interest

Right at the top of my list would be their continued assault on vertical search and the obvious conflict of interest this represents. Sure I have a vested interest in all of this because my business is advertising, but this goes beyond all that. There is something inherently wrong with a business that lets others innovate and then simply copies in the case of Google Flights, or acquires in the case of Zagat. Worse still is when a company uses its existing monopoly to elevate their products above those of their competition. Do a search for “Maps” and none cynics among you will be shocked at the results. Anyone remember Mapquest? Apparently Google’s algorithm which lacks any human intervention (nudge nudge, wink wink) feels that they are no longer relevant. Depending on your location when reading this post, its quite probable that Bing Maps doesn’t even factor into the top 5 results either. But dont worry, Google Maps is here to save the day. Ranked number one, organically, for most map related searches you could care to mention.

Double Standards

I’ve been in the online advertising industry for almost 15 years, and in that time I’ve seen a lot of change. One of the most active areas of any online business is SEO. The complexity is ever increasing. As a business we pride ourselves on keeping pace with change within our industry, but the more recent SEO developments have given many of us pause for thought. The list of “commandments” issued by google makes one suspect there is another agenda at work beyond pure search and site usability.

Lets take the issue of duplicate content for example. A site whose whole purpose for being is to replicate content from other sites and order it in relevance, is telling us not to do the same? Apparently they consider pages that have content that share similar characteristics are less releveant to their visitors. This logic evidently doesnt apply to searches performed on their site of course. Search for any multituide for related terms around a topic of your choosing, and you will surely find pages that share results and content.

If that wasnt bad enough, one of the latest statements coming from the search giant now claims that sites with ad heavy pages could also be penalised in search results! (Reported by Search Engine Land) We are clearly dealing with a whole new level of hypocrisy. Yes thats right, a site which gets the bulk of its revenue by placing ads alongside duplicate content is telling us not to sell our own ad inventory (well not too much anyway). Oh, but lest we forget, their ads are super relevent to their users and of course everyone elses aren’t. So guess what Mr Camera review site, your ads for the latest Nikon just dont fill a need. But please, please Mr / Mrs publisher continue generating that content, because without it Google wont have anything to sell its own more relevent ads alongside in their search results.

Conclusion

At the heart of the problem for Google is the need to increase revenue. Simply put. Their goal to organise the worlds’ information is becoming increasingly overshadowed by the desire to increase profits, quarter on quarter. That internal conflict will continue to grow as the revenue numbers needed to be beaten become higher and higher. Adding 10% of growth to a $1M company is one thing but the maths get frightening when your talking about $40B-$50B company.  I’m not sure what or if there even is an easy solution to the problem, but as was the case with Microsoft in the 90s more and more businesses are turning to the law to act on their behalf.  I see this trend set to continue.

By James Ketchell