Google Games
By Richard A. Baize

As webmasters, internet marketing and ecommerce companies already know and internet shoppers will soon learn Google appears to be only interested in using their top market position to manipulate rankings to create an artificially high demand and price for Google Adwords. They want to artificially entice anyone who wishes to compete for Google high positions to pay up for a sponsored ad or lose out for who knows how long. I call it “Google Games” with the end result being fewer choices for the ecommerce customer and a borderline monopoly creating unfair competition and artificially high demand and prices for their product…Adwords.

From my experience and all the internet talk it appears Google’s “Free” search is being manipulated to keep new websites from achieving high rankings. If you’ve published a new website in the past year and paid a good search engine optimizer to get you a good position for the best keywords/phrases, and you’re now ranked high in Yahoo and MSN but Google is still off the radar screen or at least a very distant, non-competitive third, then no one needs to convince you that the “Google Sandbox” is for real.

I had to ask myself why is Google doing this and no sooner do I ask then the logic of it comes to me. If there is a way for a clever search engine optimizer to figure out Google’s ranking rules and can manipulate a website to rank well and charges significantly less then Google Adwords to the customer for this position then Google Adwords becomes far less attractive and less profitable. So what could Google do to keep Google Adwords demand artificially high and pricey?

I believe Google’s plan is to cause their “Free” search to be so unpredictable and unreliable to webmasters and ecommerce companies that the only viable marketing choice is to pay Google Adwords for keyword/phrase position. Do you want a couple examples of this unreliability and unpredictability? Google’s Deep crawls have become unreliable. Just look how long it takes a new published page to get a Google PageRank, many months. Look how long it takes Google to recognize reciprocal links, even when those links are related and have a Google PR already….many, many, many months.

If my speculation is true, let’s think of the long term impact of this type of plan. Who is short changed by it? Obviously the small business owner who depends on internet traffic to keep their ecommerce business going will pay a heavy price if they can’t afford to pay Google Adwords. Customers will also pay a heavy price because it will reduce their ability to choose simply because the big boys could be the only ones left, or the only ones you will consistently see in on a Google page. Eventually Google will be the biggest loser because it opens the door for Yahoo and MSN to move up. Browsing shoppers want choices and the more choices a search engine’s results offer the better the engine and the more popular I believe it will eventually become.

MSN(beta), now seems to be the engine offering the customers the most choices. I personally am impressed with the new MSN(beta). My numerous websites are quickly indexed; good links quickly recognized and good optimizing shows quick ranking results. I have noticed that you have to stay on top of your optimizing because if a page gets only days out of date, old data you need an update to keep it fresh or it may drop in the rankings. I also noticed the number of websites MSN(beta) has indexed for most keywords/phrases I have used recently has increased dramatically. This gives the ecommerce customer MORE CHOICES. As an example of this my company is optimizing a site for the keyword/phrase “Wiring Harness” and as of today Google shows 568,000 sites indexed, Yahoo shows 483,000 sites indexed and MSN shows 2,222,265 indexed….More Choices! Yes, the site in the #1 position in MSN for the keyword/phrase “Wiring Harness” is my client, at least on the day I am writing this.

Yahoo is a close second in performance, in my opinion, and while the number of indexed sites per keyword/phrase seems to have increased, it is not as dramatic as MSN(beta). Google is a very distant third in performance as I judge it.

So the Google Games continue with all of us as long as they keep their dominant market share and what appears to be an unpredictable, unreliable free search engine. However keep faith because the buying public’s Blogger’s, instant messages, emails, water cooler conversations, and editorials like this will change the face of the market and in my opinion Google will have to become more friendly or they will just be another giant killed by Jack.

About the Author: Richard A. Baize is a 29 year retired United States Air Force Officer, formerly a base communication commander. Before retiring he spent 1-1/2 tours at Andrews AFB and in the Pentagon as the Plans and Programs Division Chief in charge of future development and modernization of all ANG computers and communications worldwide. He currently owns a couple internet businesses, one being an Internet Marketing One.Com. He also substitute teaches at local schools grade K-12.