Internet Search Changes

A couple of interesting stories on SEO in Sitepro News today.  Firstly from http://www.seobook.com/google-branding on how Google is now favoring big brands.  I had noticed this myself over the last month or so and the trend is now firmly set.  Big corporates will start to dominate search in the same way they dominate traditional markets – perhaps more so.

This sucks if you’re a one man band search marketer and it will become increasingly difficult to generate profits without PPC which I still find something of a lottery.  Sadly, it is understandable.  The amount of crap you come across now is quite extraordinary especially from atricle spinners.  The information is often out of date and incorrect  Those of us that practice article marketing will realise that for the majority it is only utilised as a mechanism to build backlinks for ranking purposes.

I make a good living online but it is really thanks to Yahoo as (despite what I read) ranking in Google becomes increasingly difficult.  Is the end nigh?  Well one can only really hope for greater search competition.  The day Google only has a 30% market share or less will be a great one.  It is a virtual monopoly and, in my view, it should be broken so consumers have more choice.

Matt Cutts might say write great content but even that looks more and more likely to be ignored as they begin to favor of big brands over smaller businesses.

The other story of note is that Yahoo is updating it’s search.  This is always a nervy time for me as I rely on them for my profits.  In November I recieved a huge boost which doubled my traffic (and therefore my earnings) overnight.  I hope to benefit similarly this time but am all to aware that things could just as easily go in to reverse.

For now we can only carry on doing what we’re doing as it is exceptionally difficult to anticipate future trends, but, there is no doubt that 2009 could be the most challenging for search marketers to date.  As several noted last year (Shoemoney in particular) search as we know it could be dead.

What are your thoughts?

Filed under: SEO

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