The beginning of the end thank goodness. Only way to keep Wall Street happy will be mobile. Invites out for Come out and play and they would want to have something big in their hands to play with.

But then who's going to be using Adwords?

New websites, and sites that want to promote a product/service that search isn't providing enough traffic for?

You make a good point and tbh I haven't really thought it through. It was just something that popped in my head because I was always taught that positive re-enforcement is better than negative. I don't know how true that is or how it could translate to a profitable model for google.

I'm as unhappy about the panda-penguin-disavow-tweak-every-single-freaking-day nonsense as anyone. It's killing too many 100% white-hat businesses but we all know that so I'm thinking a fundamental change in their thinking is needed.

I'm as unhappy about the panda-penguin-disavow-tweak-every-single-freaking-day nonsense as anyone. It's killing too many 100% white-hat businesses but we all know that so I'm thinking a fundamental change in their thinking is needed.

+1

Getting rid of the head of their spam team smug would be a good start. Obviously he is not doing his job right. Fact is google started going down hill since the first day he showed up. Killing Google with his draconian arrogant way of thinking and actions. Full stop.

Another 20% drop is what everyone needs, including Goog. Because then the market will demand heads and maybe then they will finally get rid of the bad apples destroying this company name and millions of other web businesses in the process.

P.S.
Just tried Goog again after a few months of using bing exclusively. I couldn't stop but to think "ho...the scum" while shifting through the piles of junk they served in response to my query.

We were spending $70,000/mo+ on Adwords. When the huge Panda updated occurred around March 2012 it bumf**ed us big time sending all our keywords right to the back of the serps. We dropped spending to $5k/mo. The rankings have recovered but our spending is way down, this month the bill is about $3k/mo.

The only advertisers in my niche these days are huge companies that don't really monitor their serps conversions because if they did they would realize they are losing money on each click.

So Google reports that clicks are up but price per click is down.. The increase in clicks is most likely attributed to YouTube showing ads on nearly every single video recently. I've NEVER clicked on a YouTube ad on purpose, however I have clicked on them accidently when trying to get rid of the annoying ad.

@np2003 I think that is what is happening out there. The smaller adwords advertisers are usually spending some of their organics earnings on their adwords ads. I am thinking the big strategists in Google didn't foresee that as a possibility when they started this whole drive advertisers at adwords strategy they embarked on this year.

The other thing is that now the brand names control organic serp. So why would they bother buy adwords?

Larry on the "Knowledge Graph"

If you search for Tom Hanks movies, chances are you want movies with Tom Hanks and thanks to our Knowledge Graph that’s what we show now, right from the results page: clean, fast, and organized. And if you’re shopping, say for Ugg boots, we now give you pictures, details about the different boots, prices and information about the local inventory, again right from the results page, clean, fast, and organized. There’s much more we can do to get you the right information at just the right time.

Full transcript:

[seekingalpha.com...]

Capturing commercial intent:

And we believe being able to do product listing ads gets us closer to intent because if somebody types a Nikon D800 then we know they are looking to buy or looking to get more information about a specific product and the fact that we can show them reviews pictures and pricing information gets us closer to action. And we believe in the medium term that’s going to create more monetization and a better monetization for us as opposed to having just 10 blue links of ads we’d send them to other websites.

This would go a long way in understanding the anti-SEO "updates" and possibly the zombie traffic issues.. They are actively discerning user intent and steering those queries to monetized areas. Any notion of an internal "firewall" between organic and monetized results can be safely jettisoned.

[edited by: TypicalSurfer at 2:25 pm (utc) on Oct 21, 2012]

TypicalSurfer, that is a fabulous quote and verifies what I have been feeling since August. I think in a previous thread I voiced my concern that Google can "cherry pick" the traffic and leave us with the crumbs. If you are an Adwords advertiser, this means the value of your traffic declines, thus resulting in reduced bids if you are "on the ball" and monitoring ROI closely.

You have to wonder what this means during a down economy. There was already a small set of buyers. Now Google steers the most likely buyers to Google shopping, what does that do to the value of adwords on those terms?

You have to wonder what this means during a down economy. There was already a small set of buyers. Now Google steers the most likely buyers to Google shopping, what does that do to the value of adwords on those terms?

It looks like there will be some morphing from adwords to Google shopping .. perhaps a mix, I'm thinking a query with commercial intent will be begin to look like goto.com results from a decade ago (all paid results).

For example, we’re pleased that as of yesterday, Google Shopping completed its transition to a fully paid model based on product listing ads.

----

I think in a previous thread I voiced my concern that Google can "cherry pick" the traffic and leave us with the crumbs.

Yes, I hypothesized in the zombie traffic thread that they were processing the query before sending it to an appropriate (for them) index or result set. It looks like commercial queries are simply processed differently on their end.

[edited by: TypicalSurfer at 2:16 pm (utc) on Oct 21, 2012]

Love that Earnings Call. When did Larry Page morph into Stephen Hawking? :-)

I predict their next move will be to drop G+ (we can only hope). You might be able to BUY Facebook, but you'll never be able to COPY its success. Stick to search, it's what you do best...and that ain't saying much these days.

With 14 billion in revenue I have two words for Larry: "Davinci Veneers"

And we believe being able to do product listing ads gets us closer to intent because if somebody types a Nikon D800 then we know they are looking to buy or looking to get more information about a specific product and the fact that we can show them reviews pictures and pricing information gets us closer to action. And we believe in the medium term that’s going to create more monetization and a better monetization for us as opposed to having just 10 blue links of ads we’d send them to other websites.

@TypicalSurfer - Where is this quote from? I'm not seeing it in the link you provided.

Where is this quote from?

Google's CEO Discusses Q3 2012 Results - Earnings Call Transcript

[seekingalpha.com...]

@TypicalSurfer - Thanks, found it. Quote isn't from Larry Page but Nikesh Arora. What got my attention was the line "and a better monetization for us as opposed to having just 10 blue links of ads we’d send them to other websites." That's the first time I've seen a statement like that from Google.

That's the first time I've seen a statement like that from Google.

Google has 2 faces, one for the SEO/webmaster community sandbox and one for the rest of the world.

and never the twain shall meet... :)

If this thread shows anything, it's that Google has made a LOT of enemies.

This may just be the first stumble - but there are thousands of webmasters they've screwed over on the way up, who will only be too happy to help them fall back down.

Yes Google has lots of webmaster enemies.
But ebay also has lots of seller enemies, and they keep growing.

Why do companies like Google and ebay like to mess with their search all the time.

And we believe in the medium term that’s going to create more monetization and a better monetization for us as opposed to having just 10 blue links of ads we’d send them to other websites.

In other words Google intends to abuse it's market position even more in the future. I trust that this admission has been noted by the interested regulators who are deciding on what action to take against the company.

So Google has come to the conclusion there are better ways to monetize visitors than exposing them to ppc advertisement?

What would that be?

one trick pony thats trying every trick in the book.

if its not broke don't fix it... goog had a nice little niche but it decided to try to take over the world and now its backfiring.

greed? hubris?

What about Google Maps and Google Earth, they are great and very useful.

But they should ditch Google Shopping/Products/Froogle and Google Wallet and Google +.

Stick to search and they should be OK.

What about Android ? Are they an OS company as well ?

Too many pies.

But still without Android, the world would be stuck with Apple Ipads and Iphones.

You have to be, and stay unique, to survive.

Everything else is just forcing earnings and you can only squeeze so much blood out of stone.

I would suggest a massive reinvention might be in order here.

But still without Android, the world would be stuck with Apple Ipads and Iphones.

As an app developer, I have no problem with that. Developing for Android is a nightmare because of the fragementation of the many different devices. What works on one Android, device might not work on another. With Apple, it works on all of them or none of them.

Android app store will never catch the appple store in terms of sales. Most apps on android people get for free not to mention who knows what virus your going to get on your phone. There is no QA for submitted apps like there is when you submit to Apple.

You fail to recognise that for many people there is no option. Google has a virtual monopoly in the UK. They provide greater than 90% of the traffic that I receive. They control search and I need traffic to run my home based business. Yes I am gambling with Google but I have no alternative unless you are proposing that I sign up for benefit?

Internet search is now too important and far reaching for it to be trusted to a commercial company that has been proven to ride roughshod over the laws of just about every country in the world.

+1! Whatever they did last Wednesday (again) has really killed us off this time. If it lasts then we'll have no alternative other than to use black hat methods to claw traffic back. Good work Google.

I'm not surprised by all of this at all.

Google has been going downhill for a while now.

As soon as they bought DoubleClick, the writing was on the wall.

Google will go down in history as the biggest adserver in the world to date ..

I still sort of got to give them credit on the monetization of search tho'.. they succeeded where others had failed in that regard

It is up to us webmasters help tip back the scales and take back the absolute power most of us gladly handed to those greedy crooks.

Placing a yahoo/bing/whatever sitesearch box at the top fold of your pages would be an excellent start.

Now if only the Bing team would finaly wake up and provide an easy to embed site-search solution. That would be really great.

Yahoo does...

i strongly feel that the downfall of Google has started. The company hasn't come up with anything as meaningful as Adsense.

All the other efforts they are doing, haven't been able to generate much of revenue or profit to talk about.

And, they still don't care about Adsense publishers.

I think, they have exhausted the adspace already and they can't put any more ads. So, the profits won't soar as they were doing for past few years.

All good and bad things do come to an end at certain point.

The problem they have stems from advertisers paying less per click, this is because more viewers are using mobiles and these people are perceived as being less likely to buy from a mobile and are considered more as passive viewers rather than actual buyers so advertisers are lowering their click budgets accordingly.

Gee I wonder if this will put the kibosh on mining asteroids for water?
IMHO, Google's demise began on 5/2010 with the May Day update.
Larry's love letter and their "don't be evil" policy solidified my distrust in them.
The irony is that they demanded trust from us while becoming less trustworthy themselves.
New management is in order. Focus on what is working and get rid of what is not.
G+ was the most shameless ripoff I've seen in a long time.

So would the solution for Google be to fire those who came up with the plethora of banjaxifcations and revert to a pre-May Day/pre Animal Farm indexing strategy and search structure?

Regards...jmcc