THE GOOGLE POLICE
Apparently Google is now going to start charging more for poor quality landing pages. so that they can create a ‘great user experience’.
I’m all for providing users with a great online experience which is informative and aesthetically appropriate, however I do think that Google are going a little too far on this matter. Who are they to monitor and stipulate what is ‘poor quality’ and what isn’t. If you ask me I think Google needs a bit of healthy competition otherwise we are going to be manipulated by a Big Online Brother, who by the way is already collecting or should I say archiving emails from users all over the world.
Google have in the past banned some businesses who abused the meta word policy from appearing in their search results , as a result they have transformed the way in which most of us create our content so that we can ensure that we gain higher rankings and appear at the top of the search results page. In doing so they have also created certain rules in a virtual environment which is otherwise rule-less. Hmmm interesting…
For more info see Googles pricing policy.
July 10th, 2006 at 8:37 am
I’m afraid I’m siding with Google on this one:
* They are not telling /all/ web authors to create “quality” pages (whatever the definition of quality). Rather, they’re protecting the brand image of their advertising services, by insisting on minimum requirements from advertisers who use their services. This is effectively a contractual business agreement between two parties, and Google is applying economic disincentives to raise the quality of keyword links.
* I know how annoyed I get when I search for something, and a huge mass of irrelevant links are presented. Google’s landing page guidelines seem a good deal to me, especially as a user who uses their search engine a great deal. If advertisers who are trying to game the system are prompted to improve their practices, I know I’ll be much happier.
Cheers,
Joe