Web Life

The Google Idiot-Bot

Posted on 21 October 2009

Our site has been established since 2001.  We have been on the first page of google’s search results for our main keyword since I can’t remember!  Years.  Over those years we have been growing steadily.  We complied with the “Which Webtrader Code of Practice” which shows our age and provides an indication as to our trustworthyness.  We have hundreds of reciprocal links, but in truth this is an area that has been somewhat neglected due to a massive workload on a skeleton staff caused by rapid growth and the need to survive.

The big google algorithm change a few months ago knocked us back to page 3/4, and that combined with the deepening recession has taken it’s toll. All of a sudden the emphasis is on backlinks, that is a link to your site without reciprocation, the ultimate demonstration of popularity (a hopelessly flawed and unfair system which I shall go into further in another blog post).  This being the case the same thing is happening on the web as in the high street. The big corporations are now in prime position because – and correct me if I’m wrong – a piece of paid for internet advertising IS a backlink and the big boys can afford plenty of it.

For our main keyword google now deliver up giant corporations on the first page relegating well-established,  interesting and diverse websites, like ours, almost into oblivion.  Furthermore, for our main keyword, google deliver, a “Local Results” with map to bricks and mortar shops.  Err!  Hello!  I want internet shops!  Duhh!! I’ve got a copy of the Local Yellow Pages thank you.  I don’t need an American robot to point out the facilities near me in the UK.  I wouldn’t mind so much if they were “nearby”  These “local” results are more that two and a half hours drive away!  Then there’s the book results, hang on a minute, I didn’t say anything about “books”!  And finally NEWS!  From the Times of India!  Err, what was I surfing for now??  I’ve completely forgotten!!

Now, instead of attending to my shop and my customers I am writing blogs, keeping up to date with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious and endlessly seeking out quality backlinks and reciprocal links to boost our popularity.  Oh, excuse me, time to write another article!

Apparently, 1000 visitors a day and growing wasn’t enough despite a 70% repeat business rate from extremely satisfied customers and comments to prove it.  Despite being chosen by Big Brother, Strictly Dancing, Pop Idol, GMTV and a myriad of Newspapers and magazines to have our products presented for Feature articles.

In a stange sort of way it shows google to be a giant, unwieldy, lumbering, clumsy, ignorant, unstable, badly-controlled, limited machine that inadvertently supports the strong and crushes the weak.  I might have respected them as a worthy enemy if that was their intention, but it wasn’t, was it?  To imagine that there is anybody behind this machine that is actually “thinking” is laughable.

Perhaps I’ve got it all wrong. Google armed with their monopoly and out of fear of annihilation for not feeding the corporate dragon, may be deliberately trying to cast the internet in their own likeness.  Internet giants.  Just like their retail counterparts we see in the retail parks outside every town, in every country, in the so-called “civilised world”.  Individuality gone to the wall.  We have become high consumers of low grade goods, feeding a rampant oil industry.  All buying the same overpriced crap from the same overpriced gigantic retail sheds, updating and replacing with new, with not a single thought that it’s actually all our fault because we have become, slothful slaves to convenience.

Anyway, not having given up, we have partially repaired the damage caused by the google idiot-bot and restored our status to some degree.  Actually, I do have one thing to thank the google fool for, it knocked our competitors into a cocked hat and now we’re almost back, we’re even stronger.