Is Google losing the plot?
I mentioned in a previous post that I thought Google was losing the plot so I thought I’d briefly explain why. I have a great deal of respect for Google and like most of you I’ve been using their services including their search engine, e-mail, advertising services, reader, places, and the list goes on.
How many times have you click on a search engine result to find a page with a list of advertisements or site that does not contain what you expect?
Recently I had a requirement to fly to Faro in Portugal for a meeting. I’m based 45 minutes from Edinburgh airport and two hours from Glasgow so I searched for “flights to Faro from Scotland”. The Google response was to list pretty much every discount 3rd party flight provider in the UK. My requirement was very specifically for flights from Scotland but all these sites took me to a generic homepage and over half didn’t even service the routes I wanted. This meant I effectively had to search again to find, or of course not, what I was looking for. I’m amazed organisations that rely upon the Internet for their customers can’t assist Google by creating landing pages that are specific to the user search criteria.
The only two airline sites that appeared were in the paid search area, with the exception of Jet2.com
What I wanted was airlines that fly from Edinburgh to Faro and Glasgow to Faro, what I ended up with was a list of generic websites that did not fulfil my requirement.
Google has an almost impossible task with billions of websites to index and billions of searches to deal with. Google’s job is to find what we want, but it can’t do it without the help of us web designers and Internet marketers. It’s our job to create websites, landing pages and blogs that give accurate and up-to-date information that Google can rely on and therefore present to our potential customers.
Last week Google changed its algorithm in an attempt to stop content farms appearing above original content on its listings. Many companies had complained that their original work was ranking lower than sites that were copying it. I really hope this new algorithm can sort out some of the problems I’ve been experiencing when trying to get information out of Google as the noise is getting in the way of the content I want to find.
