Nick Garner's Blog

I was riding home tonight on my motorbike thinking of the reality that has struck home. Yes, the era of SEO’ers gaming the system wholesale might just start getting a lot tougher. And today I saw a the most visible sign yet of harder times for this species of online marketeer.

To preface what I am about to explain, its worth understanding a little about how Google think. If you have ever read complexity theory, you will know that within eco systems, there are depths of complexity we will never know about. A good example of a ‘micro eco system’ is a flock of birds flying in an apparently random way, but somehow working cohesively as a ‘mega mind’. It looks impossible, but in fact its all held together by a few simple rules:
- speed of a birds reaction
- external forces in play (wind)
- distance from the next bird
- desire to follow the bird in front
Change any of these variables and the whole character of the flock will change.

Have a look at this video and it will make sense to you:

And so with Google, they think ecosystems. They understand that great complexity is ruled by relatively simple forces.

Now you are thinking in a certain way, let me carry on…

Google have announced they are now beta testing this:

https://google.com

Whats relevant? – it’s the ‘s’, as in Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) connections . They justify the test by saying this:

“A few notes to remember: Google will still maintain search data to improve your search quality and to provide better service. Searching over SSL doesn?t reduce the data sent to Google ? it only hides that data from third parties who seek it. And clicking on any of the web results, including Google universal search results for unsupported services like Google Images, could take you out of SSL mode. Our hope is that more websites and services will add support for SSL to help create a better and more consistent experience for you.

We think users will appreciate this new option for searching. It?s a helpful addition to users? online privacy and security, and we?ll continue to add encryption support for more search offerings.”

Ref their announcement / The Register comment

So off the back of
- a number privacy disasters including Facebook and Google buzz,
- The federal trade commission and its efforts to stamp out bad marketing practice on the Internet
- European legislation on ‘opt in to store cookies‘
There is a pro privacy climate.

That’s good, sort of if you’re a consumer. For marketeers of course is just more stuff to deal with when trying to accurately target customers. (I won’t go there right now)

Google now tell us that we can surf privately. We can avoid being snooped on, so its got to be good for you. In thory – yes,? in practice NO. When did you last hear about a user suing because of surfing habits being revealed?

But what this does do, is make google a ton of extra $$$$$$$$$

How?

By switching over to https surfing, off the privacy card, Google will block all referrer data and IMHO they will also block this data in Google analytics. This referrer information will no longer contain keywords users came to the site on and also what they converted on.

If you are a professional SEO’er, you are gaming Google to get your site in places where ‘the money lives’. Every time a user clicks and converts on your SEO driven result, that is money Google could have made from AdWords.

To accurately game Google, you need to know what phrases convert, so you can spend money on linkbuilding for that phrase. Of course you can run an AdWords campaign and it will give you very good keyword intelligence. Now imagine you have this data and you run your expensive SEO programme but you cant track anything from Google natural search. You are getting conversions, but where from? How can you manage spend when you have little idea on what actually converts?

Now you are driving with a fogged up windshield. You will know what your rankings are (probably) But you won’t know be able to attribute ROI to phrases.

That means

>> less resource and accuracy within SEO

>> which in turn means more intensity within AdWords auctions

>> which makes Google loads more $$$$$$$$$

And all because they use a simple lever: imposing secure search.

There are other things going on that will affect their positive revenue uplift:
- More blended search / News search / Real time search / wikipedia pages, pushing out commercial natural results
- Reduction of the long tail. Webmasters are already seeing a drop of between 5% and 15% in long tail search volume, therefore concentrating users around fewer keywords and so making it easier for advertisers to advertise on these results.
- Category wide downward revision of quality score which I have seen recently with brand phrases.
- Bigger emphasis on ranking brand sites, knowing how bad they generally are with converting uses on anything other than dedicated landing pages.
- Attacking any sector where search is a factor: Product search, travel, mortgages
My guess is that this intensifying of AdWords auctions will uplift their revenues by 15% – 20% overall within 12 months.

So what am I doing about this?

Well, I’m going to restructure my sites, so I an run unique ‘join now’ buttons per page and then use tools like SEM rush to work out what pages rank for what and then match this all up to give me a reasonable idea which pages produce the best results and rank for the biggest terms.

It’s all a hack workaround, but its better than no accurate data.

So to wrap up, Google used to say “don’t be evil“, but they have dropped this mantra in favour of “You can make money without doing evil.”

They are not evil as individuals. But as a collective they are great at misdirection, deception and silence. They are moulding the shape of the Internet in a way that makes them more money and sell us the idea that its good for us.

You can say Micro$oft are evil, but I see them as a heavy thug barging smaller people out of its way. At least you know that’s what they are about. Google on the other hand are feeding us with happy pills (gmail / docs / youtube / tricks in the SERPS) and getting us to love them whilst sucking the financial lifeblood out of us until we can pay no more and our ROI goes negative.

I know this sort of behaviour has gone on for generations, and its just what happens when business goes greedy. I only hope Bing comes good and takes Google on.

—

BTW – I’m on a BING diet – and I’m liking it much! Here, try this: the blind search engine taste test

and you might like BING too

Related posts:

1. Google Human Reviewers Deep Insight
2. What is the real Google agenda?
3. Google Adsense and PPC Overspend
4. Google Personalised search is COMING!!!