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Businesses Scramble To Stay Out of Google Hell
whoever57 writes "Forbes has up an article on the consequences of being dumped into a claimed 'supplemental index',
also known as 'Google Hell'. It uses the example of Skyfacet, a site selling diamonds rings and other jewelery, which has dropped in Google's rankings and saw a $500,000 drop in revenue in only three months after the site owner paid a marketing consultant to improve the sites. The article claims that sites in the supposed 'supplemental index' may be visited by Google's spiders as infrequently as once per year. The problem? Google's cache shows that Google's spiders visited the site ss recently as late April. 'Google Hell is the worst fear of the untold numbers of companies that depend on search results to keep their business visible online. Getting stuck there means most users will never see the site, or at least many of the site's pages, when they enter certain keywords. And getting out can be next to impossible--because site operators often don't know what they did to get placed there.'"
Google's obligation is to serve the consumer doing the search with the most accurate and fair results possible, not to ensure that sleezy companies paying big $ to "consultants" who game the system maintain their sales.
For shame, Forbes!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Unfortunately that is the price you pay for basing your business on the assumption that a FREE SERVICE (namely Google's ranking system) will continue to work in your favor. Many businesses are getting their "advertising" for free by being ranked highly by Google, and prominently displayed in search results. Maybe they should consider paying for strategically placed ads like everybody else.
I am by no means an SEO expert... but I've had VERY good luck with google indexes for the small sites I build for people. I've even gotten some business from it, because people some how think I'm some sort of genius. So what's my secret?
I READ THE INSTRUCTIONS AT GOOGLE FOR WHAT TO DO AND WHAT NOT TO DO AND I FOLLOWED THE RULES
If you simply follow the rules that google lays out, you won't get sucked into google hell. If you try and game the system by paying for consultants to "juice" your site, you gambled and lost. Bottom line: Don't be evil, and google will not punish you
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
Here's a summary of the article (which I incidentally read yesterday):
Why sites go in Google hell is a total mystery.
Story 1: A guy sold diamonds on his site. One day he went to Google hell, but he had no idea why. Why is Google not telling him? He had no idea why this happened... ok... ok... so he paid 35 grand to a SEO "expert" who filled his pages with trash. He removed the trash and few months later he went out of Google hell. To this day he doesn't know how he went out of Google hell.
Story 2: A guy had a site with lots of visits from Google. One day, he went to Google hell, but he had no idea why. Why is Google not telling? Ok... ok... so he had paid for a ton of links from spam sites, and he had to email each of the sites to get the links removed. Few months later he went out of Google hell, and this guy also has no clue what helped him.
Summary: It's a total mystery, that Google hell, I tell you.
I don't think you understand what "free market" means. Google owns the index, Google decides how it works. The searcher is their customer, NOT the "small business owner".
If they please their customers with the best possible results they will make more money. If they allow themselves to be gamed, searchers will go elsewhere and Google will lose money.
If you don't like that, go start your own search engine.
BTW, they have been sued over this kind of thing and they have always won. The ranking is their opinion and they are entitled to it.
I never said that businesses could afford to ignore Google. Restaurants here in NYC can't afford to ignore what the Zagat says about them.
What I'm saying is that this should not open Google (or Zagat) to any requirement for editorial transparency. If people trust information source A, and information source A doesn't recommend you, well, that may suck, but you should not have any recourse to demand an explanation - because your *potential customers* have the right to go to any source of information they want for advice, and your *potential customers* are not forced to use google.
This may in turn force businesses to do all sorts of things, but that's capitalism for you - your business does not have a right to succeed.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Does this also mean that you can "game" the sites of your competitors to get them into Google hell?
<Mr. Burns voice> Excelent. </Mr. Burns voice>
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
Google reached their position through complete and utter competence. They didn't advertise their site. "Google" as a verb spread through word of mouth alone. If pagerank is really being that unfair to a lot of legit sites, the same market forces that created the Google behemoth will bring it down. If somebody can show that Google's algorithms are really being unfair to Google's customers, Google will be compelled to change those algorithms or lose market share.
Man, you really need that seminar!
If your site isn't coming up in google the keywords you want and it's losing you $500,000 then you should probably buy some ads from google to get yourself back in there.
It's sort of an obvious solution.
Agreed. Perhaps more to the point, maybe they shouldn't have been depending on the free advertising provided by Google in the search results as their primary source of customers.
Seems that the real lesson here is that you shouldn't build a business on shaky marketing, and search results -- which are basically the internet equivalent of word-of-mouth advertising -- are pretty shaky. It might get you started and off the ground, but you shoudn't depend on them always being there, and you need to have a plan for staying in business if they suddenly go away. Otherwise, you probably don't deserve to be in business, and they'll be plenty of other sites to take up the customer eyeballs.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Forbes, being one of the 'premier' business 'rags, the real story isn't what Google's actions. It's the spin that Forbes is trying to create. The real thing to learn from this is that Google is still unpopular in the Forbes reading circle.
Forbes is just trying to put some negative publicity onto Google any way they can. As many have already pointed out, no sane business model relies entirely on the search results from another business that has no vested interest. Anybody working at Forbes knows as much, and yet we have an article talking about "Google's gulag".
The real information here is from in between the lines. A power struggle behind the scenes, currently Google is the target of some negative image campaigning. What I'm interested in is, where that pushing originates. Who 'owns' Forbes and is pushing for bad press for Google?
Spam or spamming the search engine.
I read all these articles about companies who think it's their right to have a high ranking in Google's search. Google is supposed to be helping ME find things I'm looking for. Kudos to them for tossing "search engine optimized" sites into hell. If they don't like it, they can go pay for legitimate ads somewhere.
Hey Google, we really need a button to exclude all sites selling stuff from searches. I hate having to wade through a pile of e-commerce sites when I'm looking for INFORMATION.