Thread: Google Just Killed Your Online Business

Yesterday I came accross this article "Is Google Stealing Your Content and Hijacking Your Traffic" and today I came across an article "Google Just Killed Your Online Business" and found that very true.

I think we are in a new digital era where the big search engine corporation having the search monopoly don't have any ethic or neutrality, in all cases they aren't impartial.

I personally think it is wrong and that kill and never let a chance to the young low budget creative companies before they can be known.

What do you think of these articles?

About Google stealing content, have you ever read something somewhere and then incorporated this information into your own content? If what Google is doing is stealing, then that was stealing as well. In other words, while this is very inconvenient for some webmasters, this is going to be a hard argument to win in the long term. The nature of information is such that it cannot really be "stolen", since you're just making copies. The argument will be especially hard to win by black hatters who do this kind of stuff themselves. Accusing Google of doing what they are doing... well.. you know how that sounds. There are no saints here.

What it leaves us with is how are customers reacting to this, and do they really care where the information comes from so long as they get it as fast as possible. Webmasters can cry foul, but Google users probably couldn't care less.

All of this puts considerable pressure on webmasters to change their tactics, IMHO. In a context of a rapidly changing world "thinking outside of the box" is more important than ever.

what can u do ? they're google and monopolize search engine ....
what they can do, doesn't what u can do .......

They just another type auto website with different strategy and tool to grab your content then use it legally ......

It's a double edged sword. In the case of the steakhouse and aquarium, they may lose some traffic to their website. But, it's a great advantage for the user to be able to locate the information quickly. Especially in the age of smartphones and tablet computers.

Originally Posted by memenode

All of this puts considerable pressure on webmasters to change their tactics, IMHO. In a context of a rapidly changing world "thinking outside of the box" is more important than ever.

The internet is still 'new' and there are still many untapped sources of traffic that are not obvious.

With all respect, the title of the first article "Is Google Stealing Your Content and Hijacking Your Traffic" seems a bit exaggerated.

The first two examples are about data that the local business owner can enter in Googles' Local Business Directory. Items such as publication of opening times are under the business owners' full control. If the business owner believes people will not visit their website, then it can be omitted from the directory listing. Besides, I wonder for which business owner this 'issue' proves to be a problem. I think business owners care more about visitors to their shop than visitors to their website anyway.

In addition, this type of search results provides additional visibility for businesses ranking further down the SERPS and those without a site (there are still plenty).

I'm doubting the validity of online reviews. The question here may not be where Google gets its reviews from rather than if those reviews are reliable.

Originally Posted by Loko

I'm doubting the validity of online reviews. The question here may not be where Google gets its reviews from rather than if those reviews are reliable.

Sure all the reviews are suspicious, particularly when they are mass produced on different platforms. Have you ever seen a person promoting hundred times the products from a single company on youtube? or reviews poping like mushrooms in short time?

Once again Google use corrupted reviews, many of us know that.

The huge problem with a search engine like Google having a monopoly bigger and bigger is that they start to act like a God.

Yes Google is so arrogant that they modified and displayed on the SERPs my title pages adding my company name at the end which I don't. It could change your SEO and screw up your rankings, plus I think they are going too far taking for pretext the "user experience".

I am wondering what would be their next steps, changing your contents, highjacking your qualified traffic and redirect it to their sponsors, create a quota of page indexed depending of your website size?

What I see is much more work from Google to the Adwords sides (you know on the right column, and the header) displaying now pictures of sponsor products.

Really when you see the line of shopping results with most of the time 5 identical product pictures from the same manufacturer with different keywords, the pictures on the Adwords sponsors side, line of brand links, line of store links (new), and all the little stars brands reviews, you just have to compete like hell to have the few ranking positions left to you on the organic side. Above all they bit your site every 4 months with their algo, "supposed to hit the spammers", really what does it mean to be spammers when Google change the rules? Let's say tomorrow I will be considered spammer because I have 7 products on one page? It is just getting more and more ridiculous.

Honestly that's disrespecting the hard working webmasters, that's all I have to say.

You can always block Googlebot from indexing your site if you want to prevent them from copying information. I know, this isn't a helpful thing to say under the circumstances, but it does underscore the fact that you do kinda give Google the permission to take your stuff by allowing Googlebot on your site, which Google can send only under the condition that they are allowed to do what they do with the info they pick up.

I guess it then comes down to a trade off, albeit an ugly one depending on what position are you in.

Originally Posted by memenode

I guess it then comes down to a trade off, albeit an ugly one depending on what position are you in.

Well, we agree to trade our own website data offering great user experience regarding our best abilities in exchange of qualified traffic from SE, that's a fair deal.

Now if some players are trying to cheat, they should be kicked out of the game, but don't kick the wrong players, that's my message!

I was running a forum which was mybb forum.
then I shifted my domain on blogger.. But pages indexed in google still showing threads in cached format.

Google has become like a snake finding its way through a rock pile. You cannot predict which path it will take. Most site owners who depend upon Google traffic base their businesses on what Google has done in the past. It is hard to predict where they are going in the future. Google's current constantly changing nature has led to the demise of hundreds of thousands of formerly profitable web sites.

I think Google has reached a point of maturity where they have achieved their original goals and they have too much money in their pockets. They are now experimenting with too many useless "bells and whistles" that do not do anything to enhance their search results for most users. If anything, the current search results tend to confuse both users and site owners.