Penguin 2.0, 5-22-2013

May 28, 2013 articles, seo

Google’s Changing Algorithm

With the release of Penguin 2.0, seems that search results are falling more and more onto the big name sites. Over the years with Panda, Penguin 1 and now with Penguin 2.o, Google’s search results are getting convoluted with brand name websites. I’ve noticed when I am searching for a product or a service, the first page is packed with Amazon.com, Ebay.com, Walmart.com, CVS.com, Walgreens.com, Facebook.com. Why on earth would I want these websites in my search results? First  a lot of these are brick and mortar companies, I can find a CVS, Walmart, or Walgreens in a 5 mile radius of each other if I am in a well populated city. Plus if I wanted to shop at Walmart, Amazon, or Ebay I would just type in their URL and search their site, not Google! Everyone knows the URL to any of these sites so why is the first page filled with big name companies or extremely well known websites? Is this really benefiting me as a consumer or website surfer, no NOT at all!

Google is only good for finding information

Don’t get me wrong, Google is great for finding information about subject matters. It really is information at your finger tips. Packed full of relative sites for finding out answers for a variety of subjects. And I think the new updates have indeed filtered out the duplicate websites, the scraper sites, and the affiliate spammers. But it is a double sided sword, in turn it is killing the small businesses selling products or services and killing the nature of the internet as a entrepreneur dream. If most of the search results are from big name brands, and big well known domains, there is no room for the little man. The beauty of the internet is that anyone can come up with a  service, or product and use the internet for building up that product or service and distributing it at a low cost level via the internet. Creating a successful business without all the overhead of a brick and mortar company, and without the traditional advertising expenses. With the new updates it is becoming more expensive and seems that only if you have deep pockets can you really achieve such a task. Google Adwords are a prime example, forcing small business owners to spend advertising money to get on the first page of Google, while the big companies that make millions or billions of dollars of revenue a year, get the first page of Google at no cost!

Why is Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and Yelp in my search result?

Since Facebook has opened up its website to be public access it pops up everywhere in my search results. Why in the hell would I want a Facebook page in my search results? Facebook at this point, is probably just as, if not bigger than Google. So if I wanted to find something on Facebook, wouldn’t I go to Facebook and search their site? YES, the answer is YES! Let’s really think about this, let’s say I am searching for a service in my area. I type in my keyword and find a Facebook page, I click the link and once on the page I see some information about the company and then I find their website link, I click on their link to read more about the company. What just happen? I had to click twice to get to someone’s website! What’s the point? Can’t Google just serve up that company’s domain to me and let me by pass Facebook all together? Same rings true for the other social websites.

I have to manually filter Google Results now

Google search results and all the new updates have been forcing me to manually filter the results. This means Google search results are becoming a bad user experience. In case you didn’t know you can add a minus sign to remove keywords or even full domains form your search result.
An example would be :  user computers -ebay.com -amazon.com -yelp.com

So I am finding myself adding a minus sign for a lot of convoluted domain names and usually not just one, now I am having to do like 2 or 3. Ultimately I will be looking for a different Search Engine (if anyone has a suggestion leave a comment) or get really geeky and just hack my Google Search on my computer and figure out how to remove a handful of websites from my personal search results.

Conclusion

Big brand name companies and websites have become their own internet space. Broken off from the normal, “no one knows the URL or domian”,  so users DON”T need Google’s help to find the website. They are well known and no one really searches for Facebook, Linkedin, Yelp, Walmart, CVS, Walgreens, Amazon, Ebay on Google!  They go directly to their website for searching what they want on their site, NOT Google!  So Google, how about you tweak your algorithm to not give these sites the first page? You would be helping us web surfers out a bit. It is great you are fighting spam, but you are also killing the internet for small business owners or enthusiastic entrepreneurs. And quite frankly I think you are steering away from the idea of being the best search engine provider out there with the intention of creating a free market and now are just promoting big name brands and charging the small business owner money to advertise on your search engine to get any real traffic.