I’ll Google it. This is the immediate response any of us have if we want to find out some information about something, anything. Has Google gone too far? How does Google work?
To Google is registered as a verb in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. It is easy to be blinded by Google’s draw and appeal, but how does Google work? I don’t mean in the sense of its spidering, or indexing. I am referring to ‘How does Google Work’ as a company with the motto of “Don’t be evil”.
With great power comes great responsibility.
If you have worked in the search industry for any time, you may have a different view of Google. I believe the most difficult issue to grasp, is that Google has a lot of power, and with great power comes great responsibility. No matter how much Google would like to, they are not able to make everybody happy.
The goal of the company is to provide a really, really good service to their users. However, since they are a publicly traded company, they have a responsibility to make profit. Since Google makes the lion’s share of their profit from ads on their search engines, it is in their best interest to have people clicking on there Pay-Per-Click ads. The easier it is for searchers to find their information via natural search, the less likely they are to click on the ads. Does this mean that Google’s search efficiency is at odds with its profit model? How does Google work with this sort of conflict.
Quality is Key to How Google Works.
Why do we use Google as our search engine of choice? Because it’s easier to find what you are looking for! So if Google were to drop its product quality, it would lose its edge in the market, and have less traffic.
In some ways Google has set up its giant monopoly in a way that if it ever veers from its “Don’t be Evil” way of thinking, it will lose its monopoly status. If all of a sudden the Google results were full of spammy pages that were not relevant to the search term, then people would just stop using Google.
How Does an SEO work with this premise?
If Google is running a multi-billion dollar monopoly towards offering users (searchers) top quality product, it is in your best interest to have the top quality product. This is why SEO (as we really mean Search Engine Marketing) is really going to be more and more geared towards good information architecture and user interface design.
The better your website “is” the better it will rank, This is how Google works.
This is why the best / most prolific SEO websites are created with teams. Not just a team of SEOs, or a team of designers or programmers (god forbid), but a well-balanced team with good leadership and direction. For the most part, the more money you put into web development (with the right team) the higher your Return on Investment will be.
How Can Google Work out the span and black hat SEO?
Fairly easily, they already do. Just because a Black Hat site will end up high in the serps from time to time doesn’t mean that Google is failing. Anyone remember 2002 Altavista, or Yahoo in 98? That was spam. We have gotten so used to the serps that we forget what they used to look like.
As searchers get better and better at using Google as a tool to find information, spam will have less impact , making it less and less cost effective. SEO spam is not like email spam. Email spam continues because it is so cheap to send. Black hat SEO costs money and time. It’s not that easy.
Bringing it full circle.
I make a living off of SEO. You would think that in my realization that Google is really as powerful as it seems, and that they are in the right, I would be turned down. However there will always be a place for people who build websites with search in mind. We will just adapt to the industry.
Google is not going beyond its reach, it is creating an environment in which we, as web developers, information architects, and internet marketers, are able to do our jobs with some structure and be rewarded for doing them well. Although Google may be a force to be reckoned with, they are not a bad one to have in your fold. That’s just how Google works.
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