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Has Google
Lost the Plot?
by Courtney Heard
 With
the help of MSN, recently I’ve been reminiscing about the
Google of old. Remember those days? When you could take a good
quality site, add a few keywords, get a few incoming links and
bada-bing, bada-boom, it’d be #1 on Google? Remember the
old days, pre-Florida, pre-sandbox? The days when we, as search
engine optimization specialists, didn’t feel like a private
schoolgirl smoking in the bathroom? When we didn’t feel
like the iron fist would come crashing down at any moment? Yes,
those were the good old days. And MSN has finally brought them
back, though on a much smaller scale.
Google hit it right on the nose
back then. Search results were almost never irrelevant - venturing
to the second page of results was an event that drew gasps. There
was never, ever any reason to leave Google and search for the
same query on another search engine. Satisfied users the world
over, it was the search engine of choice almost everywhere searches
were conducted. I myself never strayed from Google, I was loyal
and I was rewarded for my loyalty with consistently relevant results.
But has Google taken their quest
for perfection a few steps too far? Case in point: http://www.jimmylerner.com
- this web site is the official site of an author. Search on MSN
for his name, “jimmy lerner” and his web site is the
top result. Now, try the same search on Google. The top results
are pages devoted to reviewing his book, book stores selling his
book, a press release I sent out to announce his new site and
a few times I’ve even seen sites show up in the top ten
that simply have a link to his site from theirs and are completely
unrelated. His site has been jumping from the second page to the
first and back again.
This begs the question, optimization
or no optimization, what, exactly, is the problem with a quality,
informative web site reaching number one for a search query that
is probably conducted specifically to find that exact site? Has
the focus and aim of Google changed from offering relevancy to
satisfied searchers to simply impeding the progress of SEOs? Is
Google’s main concern now, to stop individuals from helping
a site reach number one? It can seem that way, can’t it?
And I can only say one thing about it. Bad move, Google.
I’ve heard a few people say
that it’s just a transition period. That all web sites are
in the same boat, everyone’s waiting to see the fruits of
their optimization labor. Perhaps this is true, and perhaps over
the next little while we will see changes at Google that make
our jaws drop, impressed at the level of perfection we never thought
possible. But I think maybe Google needs to re-focus their energies.
Take the focus back to the user, not the SEOs. Get back to the
near-impeccable relevancy level before I start using MSN to learn
about all my favorite authors.
By Courtney
Heard, Abalone Designs
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