What Every Google User, Advertiser, and Shareholder Needs to Know

Last summer was kind of stressful.  After careful consideration, and 2 years of Internet-business income history, I decided to quit my job (salary, benefits, company car, all gone).  The very next day, Google decided my site was “poor quality” and “irrelevant” — and would no longer let me advertise with them.  Given my reliance on search-advertising, and their near-monopoly position in that arena, this was devastating news.  All of a sudden, what had been just fine for the last 2 years wasn’t good enough anymore.  The traffic plummeted and the sales I’d planned to replace my salary with fell off a cliff.

Their reasoning was this: my site provided a poor user experience, that, allowed to exist over the long-run, would lead to fewer customers clicking on Google’s ads, meaning lower profits for them.  Simple enough in theory, only they failed to see that the pages were highly relevant or take into account the thousands of happy customers my site served each month.  Would the customers really have bought all those shoes if the experience was so poor?  It should be self-policing; why would I waste money sending customers to pages they didn’t want to see?

Before the economy tanked, nearly half of all online shoppers reported using a comparison shopping engine to help find the best deal.  Over the last year and a half, I can only imagine that figure is much higher.  In shutting me down, Google made it harder for shoppers to find information they have been proven to seek and value.  At best, it makes you wonder how they interpret their own famous “Don’t be evil” code-of-conduct, and at worst, they open themselves up to restraint of trade allegations.

In shutting me down, Google lost a 5-figure-a-month revenue stream, which would be impossible to justify to shareholders.  Let alone the unknown ranks of other advertisers that suffered the “Google Slap.”  (Yes, this apparently is common enough it has been given an official name.)  As a publicly traded company, it’s clear Google cared more about their own agenda than maximizing shareholder value.  Are there other companies making so much money, they feel like they can turn it away?  Normally that wouldn’t be such a big deal, but when Google does it, the result is searchers only get to see what Google wants them to see.

Don’t be evil?

After three months of pain, lost-sleep, tweaking the landing pages, and begging for reinstatement, I got a note from Google admitting “there was an error” in evaluating my quality score.  Better believe I printed that email and put it in a safe place!  It only took them 90 days and tens of thousands of lost dollars to admit they were wrong.  But at least they did.  And just as quickly as I’d been turned off, I was back in business with “Great” and “highly relevant” pages.  They’ve willingly accepted my ad dollars again for almost a year now.

And such is the backstory of my love-hate relationship with big G.  Can’t survive without ‘em, and have to play by their rules.  As their search market-share creeps higher each month, we should all start to think of the implications of one company controlling so much of our access to information.  If this site is gone tomorrow, you’ll know why.

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