Retailers got a taste of the power of Google this month, as the search site changed the way it combs through the Web, knocking some companies in its rankings - and in the wallet.
Google’s November update tries to crack down on some ways that companies game the search engine - for example, by embedding keywords in their pages to get prime placement in search results.
A tiny bookseller from Peoria, Ill., who loads his page with hidden text containing popular titles, for instance, could appear next to giants such as Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com.
Google continues to tweak its ranking formula, trying to produce the most “authoritative” sites, not the ones with the best tricks. And during this past week, just in time to kick off the holiday shopping season, those changes have bumped many retailers off the top of the heap.
“Small companies rely on Google rankings for most of their business,” said Serge Thibodeau, who runs a company called Rank for Sales that customizes retail Web sites to improve their placement. “Many, many people are angry about this.” NY Post Reports
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4 responses so far ↓
Sebastian Blck on Nov 29, 2003 at 8:46 pm
I would like to comment on google’s new format, is not so great any more, when search results include nonrelated topics I think it is great that google has offered the chance for other search engines out there to take back some of there stack in the search engine market.
Loren on Nov 30, 2003 at 4:06 pm
Good point Sebastian. With MSN, GigaBlast and Yahoo’s Inktomi lining up to knock Google off its pedastool, this would be a bad time to be serving irrelevant results.
Anne on Jan 28, 2004 at 4:54 am
GG is number one for SE now, if the result for search term is not good quality enough, GG will be blamed by user. GG will end up soon.
Congratulation for new born SE. and big competitor like Yahoo.
poker on Jan 13, 2005 at 9:33 am
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