Google Gone Ga Ga
Google has been making people crazy. I’m no John Chow, but I refuse to let it get to me. I’ll tell you why. I don’t care what Google does. Read this, and maybe you’ll start to see things my way.
Google has done some amazing things. The most amazing thing they’ve accomplished is to convince so many people that they’re indispensable. You can succeed without Google. You don’t need them, they need you.
What about traffic?
Google may be the biggest search engine, but they’re only one traffic source. If your site is good enough and you get it in front of the right people, Google could collapse tomorrow and you wouldn’t even notice the drop in your numbers.
There are three levels of traffic. It all depends where your visitors come from.
- Level 1 Direct Traffic
Direct traffic is the best. That means the visitor came directly to your site. No search, no link clicking and Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200. There are a couple of different reasons your visitor came directly to you, and all of ‘em are good. This kind of traffic means you’ve done your job.
- They’re a regular visitor.
- They know what they’re looking for, and you have it.
- They heard about you and typed in your URL. (That’s brand recognition taking root.)
- Level 2 Search Engine and Directory Traffic
Search engines and directories are just below direct traffic. This means that your visitor is looking for something and the search results make them think you have it. You might, you might not. That’s a crap shoot. This is where S.E.O. comes into play. The higher you can get in the search engines, the better.
- Level 3 Referral Traffic
This is everything else. Web sites, ads and e-mail. Anything on the web that links to your site. The more links the better. The best way to get those links is by building something that people want to link to.
If that’s true, then why does 50% of my traffic come from Google?
Because Google has you convinced that you need them. Google’s "Webmaster Guidelines" is the best piece of misdirection they have. That’s because it’s intricate and contradictory. There are people making a living off of trying to figure it out. That’s what S.E.O. is now. Search Engine Optimization has become Google Optimization. People are so busy trying to rank well in Google that the thought never occurs to them that they don’t need to.
I’m not saying you should skip S.E.O., not by a long shot. I’m saying that you need to optimize for search engines, plural. Never focus on one search engine alone, not even Google.
You can be successful without Google. They just don’t want you to know that.
Technorati Tags: Blogging, Ramblings, Google, Page Rank, Google Page Rank, PR, PR Update, Google PR, PR 0, Googlesmacked, Googleslapped, Google Smack, Google Slap, SEO, S.E.O., Search Engine Optimization
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10 Responses to “Google Gone Ga Ga”
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Hi Jason,
This is one of the better articles I’ve read on the topic. I’ve added it to my more bad press about Google post.
Cheers!
Snoskred
Thanks, I appreciate that.
Hard to ignore Google even if they’re only driving 20% of your traffic overall, as they are in our case.
They still drive 65% of all search engine traffic sent to us. They ourproform, by a factor of two to one, the other 35 search engines combines.
So, while I understand your point to diversify, Google is still the dinosaur of the search engine world.
And search engine traffic is where your newest clients come from.
Almost 60% of our traffic is repeat book marks. We’re doing something right,
But we still need those totally new clients to capture those repeat visitors.
Yeah, if you’ve been focused on Google there are some shifts in thought that are kind of tough. That’s part of getting your site “in front of the right people”. Networking becomes much more important.
Google Gone Ga Ga | JasonWigley.com…
There are 3 levels of traffic. Don’t focus on a small part of just one.
Google’s latest Page Rank modifications have hit some bloggers hard, myself included. Like many others I’m back to PR 0. Doesn’t matter to me though. I don’t worry about Goog…
This is a great post about google. I’m linking to it from my post also. The information here is priceless and I agree there are so many other search engines out there that can bring you the same amount or more traffic then google
I keep coming back to look at the lolcat photo, because I need some cheering up. The only thing keeping me from being totally depressed about the loss of my PageRank is seeing how many links I have using the Yahoo! Site explorer badge.
Thanks Holly. Don’t forget that some of the Level 3 referral traffic can almost be counted as Google.
How many times have you searched for something in Google, went to a page, then had to click an outbound link to get what you wanted? I know it’s happened to me quite a bit.
Elizabeth, it seemed appropriate. When I found that picture I knew I had to use it in this post. *L*
I think a business can survive without google, but I can’t do paid posting without them because advertisers use their ranking system to decide who gets the job. But then we lose the rank for taking the opportunity. There is no way for me to continue doing it until advertisers start using a different ranking system.
If I don’t do paid posting, I don’t care what I rank with Google. But I want to continue with the posting because I haven’t found a better way to get paid for blogging.
Qtpies7, that’s why Google has used this method. From everything I’ve heard about traffic going to the newly PR0 sites Google has hidden their PR. Internally the PR is what it should be, they’re just not showing it.
It really depends on what you mean by “better way to get paid for blogging”. If you mean easier, there aren’t many. If you mean amount earned, there are a few. They’re much more difficult and take more time to build.
I still believe Google would have gotten a better response if they’d just said something about this before hiding PR. I mean a public announcement. Not something hidden away in a hard to find cryptic page of guidelines or on an employee’s blog.