So many companies view Google as an impartial entity that serves up the best information on the net… but when you sit back and ask yourself the hard questions, a peaceful mecca of online prosperity is the last thing you find.
Google is about domination, acquisition, subterfuge, and even sabotage. I am not saying Google is evil, in fact it is far from evil, but the big boys of the search industry are corporate businesses that have a singular goal: profit (call me a little jaded!)
So when you ask anyone in the realm of search engine marketing, if you have a really good trick in your bag of goodies… it is only a matter of time before they either stop working or actually become assimilated by the Googleborg.
This past month Google “recalculated” part of it’s algorithm to affect a large number of blogs, in an attempt to reduce the number of SPAM blogs (splogs) that have been popping up… and to tighten it’s reign on profits.
In a post today over at WebProNews, I read a piece about Pay Per Post and how Ted Murphy (the guy in charge of that service) has been a “lightening rod for criticism” since it was created. Murphy has a blog covering how Google had tweaked the PageRank of some PPP bloggers to a big whopping ZERO.
Murphy ~“It is no coincidence that Google has gone after some blogs that utilize PayPerPost and many of our competitors services. We offer a very attractive alternative to AdSense and are leading a charge to provide real monetization for everyday bloggers.”
I agree whole-heartedly.
While I would like to think that the big players in the search industry are making these sweeping changes to preserve the wonderful information they collect and to help our ability to find worthwhile information, I can only be left with this gut feeling that they identify worthwhile information based on quarterly profit statements.
I agree, I actually like the pay per post model as a way for regular blogger to earn revenue from their sites. Blog posts aren’t impartial no matter how objective one attempts to be. Everyone has to make money or earn some type of return off their investment. Google wants to make absolutely sure any business models in direct competition with Adsense (that provide SEO benefits as well) receive the least amount of traffic they can get away with. If they go too far they risk becoming irrelevant, so most of the penalties at this point are scare tactics (reducing PageRank without taking away rankings). It’ll be interesting to see Google’s response to Social Spark.