I’m guessing it’s not just me who’s not terribly happy with Google recently. I’ve heard quite a few people complain about the results google is providing. There seems to be more and more junk in google’s results and more stuff that simply shouldn’t be in their results pages.
Part of the problem with Google is that they’ve gotten so nazi about their algorithm that it’s preventing them from being able to provide good results. Because of Google’s fast climb to the top of the search world, and because of their total dominance over the past few years, there has been a lot of people who have done a LOT of stuff to manipulate Googles search engine results pages (serps). Obviously this manipulating of their results isn’t good for Google, so every time someone figured out how to get to the top of google by changing something on their site, Google had to change something else to keep that person from being able to get to the top. This has been going on for a few years now.
Personally, I think this has caused google to go too far. I think they have changed sooo many things in their algorithm that they’re preventing themselves from displaying good results. They’re so concerned with not allowing SEOers to dominate their serps that they can’t display ANYTHING correctly. I’ve seen so many bad results over the past few months that I changed my default search to be Yahoo instead of Google.
I think one of the reasons Yahoo (and MSN for that matter) isn’t having the problems Google is is because people aren’t optimizing their sites to get to the top of Yahoo. People have somewhat ignored the other engines because the searches done on them is so much less than on Google.
I’m not sure I’m being clear…
My point is that I think google is now being so nazi that they can’t provide the best search results because their algorithm won’t let them. Because of this, people are going to start switching to other search engines who are providing them the results they want. When that happens (and I believe it’s already happening), other engines will run into the same problems Google is having right now.
For the work I do right now, I almost say “screw you Google.” I’m not going to optimize for google anymore because not matter how good of a site I put up, it’s almost impossible to get to the top of google’s serps that it’s not worth the work. Other search engines are starting to catch up on traffic that I can stand to get less traffic but to get it now, instead of getting it in 2 years from now from Google. Besides that, Who’s to say that Google will still be on top of the search world in 2 years. I’m inclined to think they won’t be. I think Yahoo, MSN, Amazon, and others are going to continue to take search market share over the next months/years so if I can get a high ranking in these engines now, then in 2 years when they’re dominating search, I’ll be in a pretty good position.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Google. I think they’re an amazing company and they have done a lot of good, but I just think they’re too smart for their own good. Maybe they’ll prove me wrong.