Why does Google Suck? Here's our Take
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Before we get started, take a sec to check out our product because Google penalizes bounce rates...thank you!
Sure, Google took off with a promising hype leaving Yahoo, Lycos, AltaVista, and others behind. Today they are, more or less, a monopoly. Yes, Google sucks, it's an opinion and we live in a free world, do we?
Why does Google suck?
1. Google apparently has no competitor, hence little motivation to improve their core product: Internet search
2. Webmasters worldwide are now actually doing Google's job and wasting hundreds of thousands of hours of valuable human resource energy per day trying to "optimize" their pages. In fact, all they try to do is to get the Google algorithm to make their page visible and accessible to online customers. Are you sick of wasting time trying to promote your page? You're not alone!
3. Spammers always win, no matter what. Legitimate websites run by honest people fall short reaching the target because Google evidently cannot come up with a way to reduce spam.
4. Google's spam filters harm legitimate websites and many webmasters are not aware of it. Even when they become aware of it, they do not know how to fix it.
5. Google's search has not changed much since the beginning, at least the user experience. What where they doing for an entire decade?
6. Google created an enormous hype on the stock market. Every new "innovation" they came up with failed to deliver; yet, investors don't seem to mind, as long as the search market remains in the monopolist's hands. Google still makes almost all of its money through pay-per-click advertising.
7. Pay-per-click advertising is full of fraud! Are you sick paying for clicks that are fraudulent? We are, too!
8. As soon as you put an ad up, you are under the radar of hundreds of competitors, thanks to Google. Before actual customers come to your website, you have hundreds of competitors checking you out...and you are paying for each click.
9. Are you tired of not finding what you are searching for? Try another search engine
10. Once they became a monopoly, Google made the search just good enough so they don't lose their market position. The Google search is kept at that low-quality level so that companies have a good reason to pay for pay-per-click advertisement. It's not the user who is at the center of their strategy, it's their own financial interest.
11. Google claims that because of spammers, it had to add "spam filters" that limit the exposure of new pages. In reality, they want to make sure that companies get no free visibility and pay for each online visitor.
12. Google is obsessed with links. They proclaim "content is king", yet unless your website has 100,000 links pointing to it, it will never show up anywhere in the search results. The idea that links are an indication of quality is probably the biggest fallacy of Google's algorithm.
13. Have you noticed that Google stopped showing its index size? The last number was 8 billion, after that they are surprisingly mute about this subject. Otherwise they would have to admit that they haven't increased their index in years....
14. Google doesn't show international pages and segments each "market", effectively hiding valuable information beyond your national borders. Isn't the Internet supposed to be global?
15. Google stores all you search information. Think about it. Most people do not realize how they could be personally identified years later by an investigation of their search history.
16. How do you know this private information won't get into the hands of hackers one day? Or maybe after Google is sold off (like what happened to Yahoo recently and nobody thought this was possible ten years ago), what will happen to all these records?
17. There is speculation that Google is selling data off to advertising agencies. Have you ever received mail advertisement right after you visited a certain website? Example: you look for vacant properties in a certain building and then receive a letter from that company.
18. Have you noticed how the bottom search box disappeared? Some speculate Google wants to drive more traffic to the top by removing the search box at the bottom. Of course, that's done to put your eyes on the ads, which naturally appear at the top (the most expensive ones).
19. Google runs an AdSense program that allows people to earn money from visitors clicking on the ad. Some webmasters argue the program is a fraud: the amount paid out is a tiny fraction compared to what the advertiser pays Google. Both parties are better off by arranging the ads on their own and by talking directly to each other.
20. You discover a new keyword phrase which is successful. Before you know it, some giant competitor of yours buys the keyword information from Google (or so-called keyword spy websites, which essentially get it from the big G) and then outranks your business in no time. So you are better off not advertising through Google unless you are the leader already.
21. Newcomers pay up to tenfold amounts per click compared to "old" customers of big G.
Do you have trouble finding what you want through Google?
So, do you have problems getting traffic to your site?
Well, it's all because of Google!
OK, Google Sucks, Now What?
Google is not the only one to blame. The people who use Google are giving power to Google. If you want change, you need to change your search habits and switch to other search engines, such as Duck Duck Go, Cuil, or even Bing.
What we, the public Internet users, need is a well-balanced market of search providers in which no provider prevails.
It is in our best interest to change our search habits and give the search newcomers a chance! The more often we visit them, the more power we give them. They will be working on improving their search capabilities once they see visitors coming. Maybe their results aren't as "good" now, but with repeat visits they'll get better and better!
Here's what you can do: change your Internet Explorer or Firefox homepage to another search engine and give it a try!
Update 2013: Cuil is dead now. But have you checked out Bing lately? They got *a lot* better!