Did Google make it harder for small businesses online?

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Do you think Google has made it harder for small businesses to have success online?

For example - a small business hit by Penguin might not have the money corporations have to advertise so it can ruin their business by taking away their rankings for however long it takes for an update to come out.

Or that it can also be easier for a company with hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to get a link from a sites like CNN as compared to a small business and those links can certainly boost a sites rankings.
#businesses #google #harder #make #online #small
  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    It's no different than any other form of advertising. Those with more money to spend have more options.

    It's the way it should be.
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  • Profile picture of the author Xelaetaks
    Hear that. I guess I mean on the organic side. Google didn't seem to be as focused on adwords as they are now. Years ago at SEO conferences Google seemed to be into helping small businesses out, with seeing how many sites got screwed by Penguin (not everyone that hired bad SEO years ago is a spammer like Matt Cutts told someone awhile ago) it raises questions on what Google's intentions are.
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by Xelaetaks View Post

      Hear that. I guess I mean on the organic side. Google didn't seem to be as focused on adwords as they are now. Years ago at SEO conferences Google seemed to be into helping small businesses out, with seeing how many sites got screwed by Penguin (not everyone that hired bad SEO years ago is a spammer like Matt Cutts told someone awhile ago) it raises questions on what Google's intentions are.
      I disagree with you there.

      First of all, Google has been heavily focused on AdWords for a long time. It's how they make money. It's why they exist. And no, they are not trying to drive companies to use AdWords by decreasing their rankings. That theory is just plain dumb. For every site that tanks, another takes its spot. What if a heavy advertiser sees an improvement in rankings and decides to cut their budget? How does Google know which companies to tank? They have to make sure they are tanking companies that have a marketing budget to spend on PPC. I could go on and and on about that, but the whole argument is plain stupid.

      Second, companies are responsible for what anyone they hire to do work on their behalf does. Companies do not hire a marketing firm to do a television ad campaign without approving the work.

      If they hired an SEO that was using spam to get results, I'm sure they weren't complaining when they were ranking fine and taking the spots of companies that deserved it more.
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      • Profile picture of the author Xelaetaks
        Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

        I disagree with you there.

        First of all, Google has been heavily focused on AdWords for a long time. It's how they make money. It's why they exist. And no, they are not trying to drive companies to use AdWords by decreasing their rankings. That theory is just plain dumb. For every site that tanks, another takes its spot. What if a heavy advertiser sees an improvement in rankings and decides to cut their budget? How does Google know which companies to tank? They have to make sure they are tanking companies that have a marketing budget to spend on PPC. I could go on and and on about that, but the whole argument is plain stupid.

        Second, companies are responsible for what anyone they hire to do work on their behalf does. Companies do not hire a marketing firm to do a television ad campaign without approving the work.

        If they hired an SEO that was using spam to get results, I'm sure they weren't complaining when they were ranking fine and taking the spots of companies that deserved it more.
        Then do you think Penguin is fair how it is implemented now? Do you think the Google disavow tool works?

        A lot of small businesses have reported their rankings killed by Penguin from SEO they had done years ago and people aren't sure if disavow tool works when Google employees tell us we can recover by using it along with removal. I'd at least appreciate if Google can be more straight forward about all this especially for online businesses trying to recover on Google.
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        • Profile picture of the author yukon
          Banned
          Originally Posted by Xelaetaks View Post

          Do you think the Google disavow tool works?
          Sure it works, you tell Google all about the links you've bought/built. Google builds their database.
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          • Profile picture of the author Xelaetaks
            Originally Posted by yukon View Post

            Sure it works, you tell Google all about the links you've bought/built. Google builds their database.
            Then you think they are misleading webmasters by telling them using it can help their site?

            Google employees have said using it can suggest to treat links pointing to your site as a no follow link that you disavow, that it can be used for negative SEO links used against you and also they have also said that using disavow tool isn't an admission of guilt.

            Whether they are being honest about all this makes a big difference imo with how they effect online businesses.
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            • Profile picture of the author yukon
              Banned
              Originally Posted by Xelaetaks View Post

              Then you think they are misleading webmasters by telling them using it can help their site?

              Google employees have said using it can suggest to treat links pointing to your site as a no follow link that you disavow, that it can be used for negative SEO links used against you and also they have also said that using disavow tool isn't an admission of guilt.

              Whether they are being honest about all this makes a big difference imo with how they effect online businesses.
              Google never does anything without generating tons of data. Why harvest data If it's not going to be used? Google is nothing without data.

              Think about this for a min.:
              • Q) Who disavows links?
              • A) People that are trying to game the SERPs.

              Disavowing is link sculpting, Google isn't a fan of link sculpting.
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              • Profile picture of the author Xelaetaks
                Originally Posted by yukon View Post

                Google never does anything without generating tons of data. Why harvest data If it's not going to be used? Google is nothing without data.

                Think about this for a min.:
                • Q) Who disavows links?
                • A) People that are trying to game the SERPs.

                Disavowing is link sculpting, Google isn't a fan of link sculpting.
                People that get negative seo'd also disavow links sometimes even thousands. Google employees have said if you get bad links pointed at you to disavow them so not everyone disavowing is neccesarily spamming.
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                • Profile picture of the author yukon
                  Banned
                  Originally Posted by Xelaetaks View Post

                  People that get negative seo'd also disavow links sometimes even thousands. Google employees have said if you get bad links pointed at you to disavow them so not everyone disavowing is necessarily spamming.
                  That would still be links to manipulate the SERPs.

                  How could Google possibly know it wasn't some uniformed link buyer buying a junk link blast & having regrets?
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                  • Profile picture of the author Xelaetaks
                    Originally Posted by yukon View Post

                    That would still be links to manipulate the SERPs.

                    How could Google possibly know it wasn't some uniformed link buyer buying a junk link blast & having regrets?
                    They can't know but that is the whole problem with their penguin penalties. Right now it gives big incentives for people to negative seo their competitors. It's messed up but people will do that.

                    Rather than trash a website cause of links - I think they could benefit from rather discounting all these sites.

                    It isn't like a spammy directory is gonna get links from CNN a local paper or something so they wont rank anyway and at the same time wont be able to solicit people for money to remove their links, since their site is useless to Google anyway.
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                    • Profile picture of the author yukon
                      Banned
                      Originally Posted by Xelaetaks View Post

                      They can't know but that is the whole problem with their penguin penalties. Right now it gives big incentives for people to negative seo their competitors. It's messed up but people will do that.

                      Rather than trash a website cause of links - I think they could benefit from rather discounting all these sites.

                      It isn't like a spammy directory is gonna get links from CNN a local paper or something so they wont rank anyway and at the same time wont be able to solicit people for money to remove their links, since their site is useless to Google anyway.
                      The odds of getting hit with neg link blast is slim unless it's some spammy niche like payday loans. Besides, If a site dropped neg links what's stopping the dropped page/site from doing a neg link blast on the other guy? Waste of time when building links to rank a page would be a more practical idea.

                      Keep in mind, competition will never go away, for every guy that drops 9 more move up & get a taste of traffic.
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                      • Profile picture of the author Blaine Smitley
                        Originally Posted by yukon View Post

                        The odds of getting hit with neg link blast is slim unless it's some spammy niche like payday loans.
                        You're scaring me.

                        One of the customers I cited in my last post called me last night and wants me to build him a payday loans site geo specific to our city.

                        A lease site.. I told old boy $500.00 per month.

                        I'd hate to build and rank it then get it shot down by some scrapbox wielding killer. I may have to rethink the whole thing.
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                        • Profile picture of the author yukon
                          Banned
                          Originally Posted by Blaine Smitley View Post

                          You're scaring me.

                          One of the customers I cited in my last post called me last night and wants me to build him a payday loans site geo specific to our city.

                          A lease site.. I told old boy $500.00 per month.

                          I'd hate to build and rank it then get it shot down by some scrapbox wielding killer. I may have to rethink the whole thing.
                          It's the payday niche, $500, what's that 1 or 2 sales a month for the client to break even?

                          If that's Louisville I know a city that large has a lot of payday businesses, which means a lot of competition online & offline. BTW, I've crossed that bridge over the Ohio on I65 plenty of times.

                          Tell your client to get his checkbook out.
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                          • Profile picture of the author Blaine Smitley
                            Originally Posted by yukon View Post

                            It's the payday niche, $500, what's that 1 sale a month for the client?

                            If that's Louisville I know a city that large has a lot of payday businesses, which means a lot of competition online & offline.

                            Tell your client to get his checkbook out.
                            He says he's got to do 6 new loans a month to get the $500.00 back.

                            The payday loans industry is highly regulated in Louisville.

                            The authorities have a database where lenders have to record and track them so that no person can have anymore than 2 loans going for up to but not over 500.00 per month max.

                            In other words in the city of Louisville you can only hock your future paychecks for up to a thousand dollars at any one time. And then only with 2 different lenders max.
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                            • Profile picture of the author yukon
                              Banned
                              Originally Posted by Blaine Smitley View Post

                              He says he's got to do 6 new loans a month to get the $500.00 back.

                              The payday loans industry is highly regulated in Louisville.

                              The authorities have a database where lenders have to record and track them so that no person can have anymore than 2 loans going for up to but not over 500.00 per month max.

                              In other words in the city of Louisville you can only hock your future paychecks for up to a thousand dollars at any one time. And then only with 2 different lenders max.
                              I just looked at a local payday, they charge $15 per each borrowed $100 so your 6 sales looks about right If they're all $500 loans, $75 profit per each loan/customer.

                              I guess when they max out the payday loan they'll run next door to the title loan [sad].

                              Yellow Page says Louisville has 65 payday business/locations, I'm sure there's more smaller businesses that don't advertise.

                              Looks competitive to me.
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                          • Profile picture of the author Blaine Smitley
                            Originally Posted by yukon View Post

                            BTW, I've crossed that bridge over the Ohio on I65 plenty of times.
                            Geez Yukon. After 20 years of talking about it and umpteen millions of dollars spent on research projects they're finally adding a new bridge to the I65 corridor.

                            The massive pylons are going in now. There will be a north bound and south bound bridge, and they're saying it will be done in 2016. They're redoing the whole road structure on both sides of the bridges too.

                            These days crossing the bridge during rush hour is a nightmare

                            I avoid it all costs. But it's hard to do any business in this area without crossing the bridge into Louisville. Currently I'm right on the other side of the river but may well move to "the ville" next year.
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        • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
          Originally Posted by Xelaetaks View Post

          Then do you think Penguin is fair how it is implemented now? Do you think the Google disavow tool works?

          A lot of small businesses have reported their rankings killed by Penguin from SEO they had done years ago and people aren't sure if disavow tool works when Google employees tell us we can recover by using it along with removal. I'd at least appreciate if Google can be more straight forward about all this especially for online businesses trying to recover on Google.
          Honestly, I never thought about it. Why does it have to be fair? It's their product. They can manipulate it any way they want. People act too much like they have a right to rank in Google.
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          • Profile picture of the author Xelaetaks
            Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

            Honestly, I never thought about it. Why does it have to be fair? It's their product. They can manipulate it any way they want. People act too much like they have a right to rank in Google.
            I understand that, but that also means people can call them out if they are rigging it against small business websites. That also means tons of great websites get seen by much less people cause of how they do it. i guess it's kind of sad if they don't care if they screw over tons of small businesses who aren't spammrs? :/ I still use Google all the time but sometimes find bing can bring up some good sites that seems to be missing from Google.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Originally Posted by Xelaetaks View Post

    Do you think Google has made it harder for small businesses to have success online?
    Are you kidding?

    Google leveled the playing field.

    Name one other targeted traffic source where a mom & pop business can compete with million/billion dollar businesses.

    The good thing about mega businesses (ex: Walmart.com) is they have such a HUGE variety of products to sell they spread themselves out so thin only targeting a small percentage of their products/keywords in the SERPs. A lot of those types of HUGE businesses blast millions of webpages at the SERPs picking up easy longtail traffic (weak competition).

    Ebay even indexes weak internal search pages on Google SERPs. If that's not desperate I don't know what is.
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  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    They care about people who use Google. That's it. Nobody outside of internet marketers are complaining about Google.
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  • Profile picture of the author Blaine Smitley
    Originally Posted by Xelaetaks View Post

    Do you think Google has made it harder for small businesses to have success online?
    Me personally no I don't.

    Google has made it easier to rank a small business site than it's been in years. Follow their guidelines my man, and cheat a little here and there. The keyword in the last sentence was "LITTLE".

    I'm leasing a site now to a small business here in Louisville that's #1 in local and #1 in Organic for their number 1 key phrase. They're rocking it with......................... 4 back links. That's all it took to dominate in a city with over a half million people. His top competitors site has over 200 backlinks.

    I have another site that I lease to another small business in the mortgage industry. It's all over the front page between the #1 spot and #5 spot for about 10 variations of mortgage lending and refinancing. And this was done with................. Right around 10 backlinks. The top competitor is Zillow and the real yellow pages. Gee I wonder how many back links they have? I really don't even care though.

    5 months ago I built a website for a guy in Nashville TN. He's owning his market and has over 40 of his top key phrases in the top 10 on all three search engines including the #1 local positions....... With less than 5 backlinks. His top competitors both have between 100 to 300 back links.

    Do I think Google has made it harder for small businesses to have success online? OH HAYEL NO.

    Google just made it easier. Go read up on what they want and give it to them.

    If you design the site with what Google wants, It doesn't take but a few of the right back links to rank a local business site.

    The key phrase in that last sentence is (RIGHT BACK LINKS)
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    • Profile picture of the author Xelaetaks
      Originally Posted by Blaine Smitley View Post

      Me personally no I don't.

      Google has made it easier to rank a small business site than it's been in years. Follow their guidelines my man, and cheat a little here and there. The keyword in the last sentence was "LITTLE".

      I'm leasing a site now to a small business here in Louisville that's #1 in local and #1 in Organic for their number 1 key phrase. They're rocking it with......................... 4 back links. That's all it took to dominate in a city with over a half million people. His top competitors site has over 200 backlinks.

      I have another site that I lease to another small business in the mortgage industry. It's all over the front page between the #1 spot and #5 spot for about 10 variations of mortgage lending and refinancing. And this was done with................. Right around 10 backlinks. The top competitor is Zillow and the real yellow pages. Gee I wonder how many back links they have? I really don't even care though.

      5 months ago I built a website for a guy in Nashville TN. He's owning his market and has over 40 of his top key phrases in the top 10 on all three search engines including the #1 local positions....... With less than 5 backlinks. His top competitors both have between 100 to 300 back links.

      Do I think Google has made it harder for small businesses to have success online? OH HAYEL NO.

      Google just made it easier. Go read up on what they want and give it to them.

      If you design the site with what Google wants, It doesn't take but a few of the right back links to rank a local business site.

      The key phrase in that last sentence is (RIGHT BACK LINKS)
      I hear that. I'm trying to recover my site that destroyed by Penguin over a year ago.

      I've now realized removing links is essential so I'm going through great lengths to do so, even paying some money.

      I hope this can prove worthwhile. There's a lot of products on my site that I think if I can get it out of a penalty it can be a legitimate business once again. I hope this effort can pay off.
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      • Profile picture of the author Blaine Smitley
        Originally Posted by Xelaetaks View Post

        I hear that. I'm trying to recover my site that destroyed by Penguin over a year ago.

        I've now realized removing links is essential so I'm going through great lengths to do so, even paying some money.

        I hope this can prove worthwhile. There's a lot of products on my site that I think if I can get it out of a penalty it can be a legitimate business once again. I hope this effort can pay off.
        I hope it does to. It's a heart breaker to build something you're making money on only to lose it due to something that at the time you did was only common place.
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        • Profile picture of the author Xelaetaks
          Originally Posted by Blaine Smitley View Post

          I hope it does to. It's a heart breaker to build something you're making money on only to lose it due to something that at the time you did was only common place.
          Thanks. It is quite the trip. I guess a flip side could be to get a penalty cleared and competitors getting hit by something similar. I think it could be possible Google may update Penguin more frequently than last time at least if they were being honest when they said they are looking for ways to update it faster.
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  • Profile picture of the author IMLab
    Originally Posted by Xelaetaks View Post

    Do you think Google has made it harder for small businesses to have success online?
    There is still a fair chance for small businesses to succeed online provided that they offer something unique or special. If you are just another business who offers services or products that are exactly the same as thousands of others, then surely it will end up for you as a marketing game more than anything.

    Over the years Google changed and improved its algorithms. That does not mean though it became harder for new businesses to rise. It only made spammers have harder times messing around.

    Good luck with your marketing journey!
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  • Profile picture of the author serpyre
    That depends, if you are backwards looking, no, if you are now then neutral to yes, and if you are forward looking yes.

    Business conditions have changed, small business were allowed to increase their exposure over 'natural' levels, now those levels are being readjusted so going forward small business will be squeezed out. We were taught by consultants who have seen extreme events at the highest levels, they work through almost all adverse conditions. Most have experience in 'perceived' conditions, they won't hold up as conditions become worse so most small business will be pushed down.

    So did they, no, do they now, yes.
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