Yesterday I wrote that I liked a lot of things Google has to offer its users. As a user, I am fond of Google and its offerings. However, as a marketer and budding webtrepreneur, I must say that there are several things that drive me crazy about Google. Google represents more than just a search engine when you’re a web developer. As a content creator, Google represents your challenge. Some may even say that Google is their nemesis. What I mean is that Google can make or break your business and dreams. One day the engine may rank you favorably, and the next day you may be gone from the first hundred pages of results, rendering your site invisible.
Organic search is, in my opinion, the best way to get traffic. Not only is it free, but it drives in people that are looking for your content. In contrast to advertisements, social media sites, or forum communities where people click through and stay on your site for less than 30 seconds, organic search results drive curious people who are looking for what you have to say and these people are the ones who are most likely to buy what you are selling. Your search ranking on Google or any other engine (but really, do they matter that much?) can equate to a lot of money or it can make you cry at night because you are not even bringing in enough money to bay for your hosting bill.
It is from this perspective, the perspective of a website builder and content provider, that I write this list. This represents what I find most frustrating and difficult about Google and feel that I can’t possibly be the only one on the entire Internet who feels this way.
SERP Fluctuation
SERP (Search Engine Results Page or Search Engine Ranking Position) is how high or low your website ranks when someone does a search for a given term. For example, a search for “Nicaraguan coffee” yields over 1.3 million results. If you are serious about internet marketing and are actively trying to make money from a site that sells Nicaraguan coffee, then the ‘rank’ that you receive from the search is very important. If you don’t come up in the first 10 spots, your profitability drops very rapidly. That is why SERP is so important. If you place well, you can stand to get a lot of visitors and make a lot of money.
This is my #1 frustration with Google. It is impossible to know exactly how Google ranks certain pages. From experience, I have been nearly driven mad. One day I had a term ranking #2. It brought me a lot of traffic for a certain niche and I was making about $60 a day. Too bad that this only lasted for 3 days. The 4th day after ranking at #2 consistently, my site started showing up at #146. I’m not making this up. I did not change the site other than add quality content to it but the site stayed at #146 or lower for about 2 months. Sometimes the site wouldn’t show up at all even after I searched over 400 results. It is finally making its way back up the list but it caused me to nearly quit that site.
Backlinks
Simply put, backlinks are links from other sites to your site. It is assumed that the number of backlinks coming into your site affect your search engine rankings. My opinion is that more backlinks help to place a site better on a results page. Google even offers a way for you to check for backlinks to your site. The problem is, I’ve never had a site show up in those results. I don’t know what Google considers a backlink but their backlink check only ever returns 1 results in all of the sites that I own. It’s rather frustrating, especially if building backlinks is the foundation of results placement.
SPAM Sites Do Well
Along the lines of SERPs comes the topic of SPAM. In certain niches in which I have sites, there are a handful of sites that are completely crap but they rank higher than me. These sites include sites with only 1 page, sites with irrelevant domain names, and sites that are written very poorly. How is that fair? I spend a lot of time making sure my sites are accurate, well written, standards compliant, more accessible, etc…and somehow they end up at the bottom of the pile.
My lesson so far has been to not give up. Eventually, I hope, Google will have its algorithm squared away in a way that it will eliminate the SPAM and eat up the ham. I just hope that day arrives soon.
