Author Topic: Google Orangic Serps Erosion - an easy reminder  (Read 9127 times)

4Eyes

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Google Orangic Serps Erosion - an easy reminder
« on: December 13, 2011, 08:38:21 PM »
As we are all aware, the G's organic results are now pretty much overwhelmed by G's own spam.

Since they changed the background colour of the adwords, exactly 'how much' is not quite as noticeable as it used to be.

If you want a reminder of the full scope of the problem, install the 'stylish' plugin for Chrome and use this style for Google:
Quote
#lclbox,#tads,#rhs_block,#productbox,#lu_pinned_rhs,#tadsb {background: #cc0};
... it gives all their crappy adds and local results a nasty background colour so they stand out a bit more.

Even though I knew this was happening - its a bit of an eye-opener.

FWIW, I found a couple of 'local' searches where everything lower than the #1 ranked site was pushed below the fold on a 1680x1050 resolution screen.

[added]
correction - easy to find local searches where none of the organic serps are above the fold
« Last Edit: December 13, 2011, 08:41:26 PM by 4Eyes »

ergophobe

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Re: Google Orangic Serps Erosion - an easy reminder
« Reply #1 on: December 13, 2011, 09:25:35 PM »
A little effort with Firebug and a custom stylesheet later, I did this for Firefox some months ago when the colors got so close I couldn't tell them apart.

It's amazing how close they've gotten the background colors. Would their SERPS pass a hand review by an AdSense reviewer?

Rupert

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Re: Google Orangic Serps Erosion - an easy reminder
« Reply #2 on: December 19, 2011, 03:51:58 PM »
Found the Seobook view on this if you are interested:

ForgetSEO  http://www.seobook.com/forget-seo


I have spent some time looking at this and have decided to have a go at ranking on this part.
Anyone any ideas?  I think it comes from the product feed, but not all of them are picked up and used by Google.  I have a suspicion that adwords has something to do with it, but it might be the folks who are good at one are good at another too.
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edo

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Re: Google Orangic Serps Erosion - an easy reminder
« Reply #3 on: December 19, 2011, 07:38:45 PM »
Google are sewing the seed for their own downfall with this. I thought they were smarter than relegating organic serps to irrelevance like the bad old days of Alta Vista etc in the late 90s, but perhaps the ad revenue is like crack for them and they can't see beyond it. Personally, I would love Bing and Yahoo to get more market share and hopefully it may start to happen.

Rupert

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Re: Google Orangic Serps Erosion - an easy reminder
« Reply #4 on: December 19, 2011, 10:47:18 PM »
mmm, I think they will get away with it now. 7 or 8 years ago, no way, others fell for doing this.  But now, times are different.
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littleman

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Re: Google Orangic Serps Erosion - an easy reminder
« Reply #5 on: December 20, 2011, 05:40:26 AM »
>But now, times are different.

And what is different is that they have a commanding majority of search volume, with only Bing being a distant second at 20-30%.  I am not to cynical to think that there could never be an upstart who grabs a large market share, but I do think that G has enough cash to buy anything that starts to have legs.

edo

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Re: Google Orangic Serps Erosion - an easy reminder
« Reply #6 on: December 20, 2011, 08:05:25 AM »
You're probably both right. Btw, Littleman, Google has a 90% share of the search market in the UK, so the competition is even worse here.

Just read that of the $29.3 billion revenue Google earned in 2010, $28.2 billion came from online advertising. That's a staggering 96% of their revenue. I didn't realise they were that much of a one-trick pony. Although to be fair it's a pretty nice pony.

Adam C

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Re: Google Orangic Serps Erosion - an easy reminder
« Reply #7 on: December 20, 2011, 09:40:10 AM »
Sorry - commented in wrong thread. 
« Last Edit: December 20, 2011, 09:42:04 AM by Adam C »

I, Brian

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Re: Google Orangic Serps Erosion - an easy reminder
« Reply #8 on: December 20, 2011, 12:17:19 PM »
Just read that of the $29.3 billion revenue Google earned in 2010, $28.2 billion came from online advertising. That's a staggering 96% of their revenue. I didn't realise they were that much of a one-trick pony. Although to be fair it's a pretty nice pony.

Yeah, it's been in their filings for a while. Can't remember whether it was a third or two-thirds of that income came from third-party Adsense partners though.

NoBeard

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Re: Google Orangic Serps Erosion - an easy reminder
« Reply #9 on: December 23, 2011, 10:55:45 AM »
I have just spotted you can filter out Google Shopping results by stores that accept Google Checkout......
Is it too cynical to think that accepting payments in this fashion will have a plus effect on ranking in the shopping results?

Rupert

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Re: Google Orangic Serps Erosion - an easy reminder
« Reply #10 on: December 23, 2011, 11:08:08 AM »
don't know, but it would be interesting to know the stats...
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JamesR

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Re: Google Orangic Serps Erosion - an easy reminder
« Reply #11 on: December 29, 2011, 11:26:13 PM »
A couple senators just recommended a formal FTC investigation into this.  Let's hope it goes somewhere.

grnidone

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Re: Google Orangic Serps Erosion - an easy reminder
« Reply #12 on: December 30, 2011, 07:08:23 PM »
For some reason I can't get the style to work...

Did I cut and paste it incorrectly?

4Eyes

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Re: Google Orangic Serps Erosion - an easy reminder
« Reply #13 on: December 30, 2011, 08:48:17 PM »
Quote
Did I cut and paste it incorrectly?
kind of hard for me to say - it works for me as posted though.