Rockford Social Media News
So Google is going to include their social network results in search? And they are going to exclude Twitter and Facebook? Ken Evoy, owner of Sitesell is very much up in arms about this, as well he should be since the Sitesell model is based solidly in the ‘provide-valuable-content-to-search-engine-query” school of online business. That worked very well when search results were not slanted by the search engines. Now, it appears that Google will be favoring content created by members of Google+, which could exclude all of those content creators who do not belong. So traffic to websites like my AskMiketheCounselor2.com could drop precipitously.
Evoy says that Google is unfairly attempting to dominate both the search results and the social media results, and it sounds suspiciously like a monopoly to my non-legal ears.
I would add in that Google’s recent moves in the mobile market would add another component to a strategy to control the mobile market too. They have bought Motorola, and they are penalizing non-mobile websites in the search results already. So if you are not mobile friendly the way Google wants you to be, which means having a mobile website that loads fast and meets the needs of a mobile searcher, which are very different than the needs of your basic PC surfer, your website will drop in search engine results. I do have a mobile website built for this website, and if you search for this url on your mobile, you will see very different results than you would see for a PC search. My unofficial observation so far is that traffic is up on my sites that have a mobile version built. I know Google has indexed the mobile version of my sites, and that did not take long at all.
While I admire the business brass that Google is displaying, I am not sure what my response should be. Ken Evoy is saying boycott Google and go to Bing. I am sure many others will simply go along to get along. One thing is for sure, there is an uproar. I will keep you posted.
