Google steals over half the world's traffic

[assaultclass]

I agree with @filterframe

The majority of the searches where users find their answers in Google and do not click through to your website are not actually searches for buyer/commercial keywords, so they won't affect you anyway. Also, Google is probably not gaining from this either unless ad click rates are going up as well. Also, they created the market, as @Gogol mentioned. Without Google, there would be no SEO or making money online.

Lastly, take a look at the top sites online and you'll see a single site alone getting 10 million clicks per month. There's enough traffic to go round.

 

[Extruser]

Wow that is really not that much though.

I appreciate your opinion, but personaly, I think a 5% ad click rate is amazing.
Imagine 1 billion searches per day (I know there are more, but for the sake off simplicity).
That means 50 million clicks on an ad! @ $1 per click on average...
Not bad.
It must be said, lots of people don't even know they're clicking on an ad...
But the money is in the pocket.
Well, in their pocket

 

[Total Noob]

I am surprised by the replies in this thread, to say the least.

 

[ThopHayt]

A lot of these "zero click searches" is stuff like people wanting a phone number for a business, a currency translation, a dictionary definition, and other quick searches that just want a key fact. Ever search "20 euros into dollars" and got your answer by Google's widget? Then you've been a "zero click" too.

The only aggressive territory here has been Google playing around with getting people to buy stuff directly through their Google shopping without leaving to the seller's store. I saw something like this not long ago with Nike... you could buy it without having to go to Nike.com and Google even offered me 20% off my first order. I didn't buy it, but the point stands. That type of stuff is what will bleed profits away from some.

-ThopHayt

 

[bartosimpsonio]

I appreciate your opinion, but personaly, I think a 5% ad click rate is amazing.
Imagine 1 billion searches per day (I know there are more, but for the sake off simplicity).
That means 50 million clicks on an ad! @ $1 per click on average...
Not bad.
It must be said, lots of people don't even know they're clicking on an ad...
But the money is in the pocket.
Well, in their pocket

5% CTR is very high for the kind of volume Google does.

Tons of small and highly optimized sites don't reach 5%

 

[KHer0]

I am surprised by the replies in this thread, to say the least.

In the past few years, this is actually what the forum turned into. People who don't know what they are saying and I doubt any of them ranked any respected keyword, or made any money from SEO

@OP

Google is going crazy year after year. There is a significant drop in earning year after year even though ranking is the same and god only know what will happen next, but I am 100% sure it won't be in our side.

The ONLY way for this greed to stop is a new competitor. Other than that, you can either satisfy yourself with what you get, or leave them and get nothing at all

 

[WIZDAHL]

SEO earnings have been steadily declining thanks to Google's anti-competitive and downright blackhat practices. They are legit going crazy year after year as one of the posters mentioned above. They are becoming the "Facebook" of search by steadily reducing the organic CTR.

 

[Stitches and Burns]

Now I know why it's named Google.

Go... ogle...

 

[GoGuerilla]

There's something called copyright. It says the person who produces content owns it.

If I scrape images and make $$$ off of it, it's my traffic. And the image authors can sue me for royalties.



Good question. But it depends on the masses.

Individually I need them more than they need me. Collectively if webmasters could somehow unite, Google would be gone without us. It all depends on how many people Google is able to piss off at once.

I see more and more folks who usually are pro-Google complaining.

E.g:

View attachment 119528

If you're saying it's copyright then simply noindex your site and google will stop 'stealing' your content

Then you can bring in your own traffic

 

[assaultclass]

If you're saying it's copyright then simply noindex your site and google will stop 'stealing' your content

Then you can bring in your own traffic

LOL. Brutal

 

[nosnido]

I don't blame them tho. Their focus is to present the customer better content suggestion.

 

[LogGutsy]

Its their game. I found somewhere that it is said that internet was built and on top of it you have those giants like amazon, google, facebook etc. and our job is to build and sustain on top of those platforms because they are what people are calling the internet.

Google can do what they want cuz they are the ones creating rules over here, not you nor anybody else. What they are looking for is ease of use for the user : less actions it takes for the user to find what they want the happier the user is. They just want to bring step count down so that people are more happier with using google. If they want to stay at the top they need to innovate and create a better environment for the user experience.

Our job is not to complain but to acknowledge what is happening and move forward. You and me and others can't change google, but we can adapt to it.

 

[Toz]

I find it funny that I watched this, yesterday:

Then today, I see this thread about G.

As graciously as @filterframe tried to sweep their actions under the rug, it still doesn't mitigate the fact that this revelation, this hindsight knowledge will go on to piss a lot of people off, as Google essentially (both directly (ad expenses) and indirectly (seo expenses)) charges us money to be visible in their search engine. We want said visibility so that we can get these end users on our websites to read our content, click our ads, buy stuff, subscribe to our lists, join our communities, etc. We can't do that if Google wants to keep our intended audiences inside their own playground. This is like a sandbox 2.0 of sorts.

The sad part to this is that we don't currently have much of a viable alternative. Sure, there are some upcomers, such as Omnity, who have been known to say that their search algorithms will be better than G's, but as of now, we have no equal. And that's before even addressing all the other stuff G has for us to do.

That being said, I do agree with the author of that video, and I'm buying his "Life After [G]" book, this weekend.

 

[Purush]

Ironically, if you do exactly what Google does, Google will ban you!

this is highlight one.

 

[UltimateBeast]

All the peeps here saying that google does all this to help its user and etc.. Really, do you still believe this? We IMers are also users of google (though in a different way). They do not give a shit about us and they are definitely not doing this for us users. They just want to be the whole internet,so that when people think about internet, they shall only think google.
And this is happening lately. If this continues to persist, freedom on internet will be a total myth.
Creators design the content so that they can interact with the users directly, then who gives google right to steal that content and show it as they want.
And about us needing them, yes it is correct, because there is no other competitor. But it is our mistake only. We have given so much value to big G from start that we are completely relied on it. If some influential IM leaders would have stood out and made a competition for them years ago, this would never had happened.

 

[wisdomkid]

Seems like Google has been unfair to someone

Please, he's saying the sh*tty truth.
Not rising up to defend the giant when he's wrong will make it right.

 

[assaultclass]

I find it funny that I watched this, yesterday:

Then today, I see this thread about G.

As graciously as @filterframe tried to sweep their actions under the rug, it still doesn't mitigate the fact that this revelation, this hindsight knowledge will go on to piss a lot of people off, as Google essentially (both directly (ad expenses) and indirectly (seo expenses)) charges us money to be visible in their search engine. We want said visibility so that we can get these end users on our websites to read our content, click our ads, buy stuff, subscribe to our lists, join our communities, etc. We can't do that if Google wants to keep our intended audiences inside their own playground. This is like a sandbox 2.0 of sorts.

The sad part to this is that we don't currently have much of a viable alternative. Sure, there are some upcomers, such as Omnity, who have been known to say that their search algorithms will be better than G's, but as of now, we have no equal. And that's before even addressing all the other stuff G has for us to do.

That being said, I do agree with the author of that video, and I'm buying his "Life After [G]" book, this weekend.

The money you spend on SEO don't go into Google's pockets, LOL. They are directly making SEO companies richer, not indirectly charging you for SEO.

 

[AngelSeo]

"We’ve passed a milestone in Google’s evolution from search engine to walled-garden. In June of 2019, for the first time, a majority of all browser-based searches on Google.com resulted in zero-clicks."

https://sparktoro.com/blog/less-than-half-of-google-searches-now-result-in-a-click/


In a nutshell:

Over HALF of all searches performed in Google resulted in no click to the content author properties.

Google shows the content straight on the SERPs, stealing your hard work and investment.

Meanwhile the most valuable ads are shown on the SERPs as well. (5% of all searches result in ad clicks.)

Google is scraping the WWW and stealing everyone's content for their own profit.

Ironically, if you do exactly what Google does, Google will ban you!

Yet the same people cried like a babies over EU trying to stop this. Oh well.

 

[filterframe]

I find it funny that I watched this, yesterday:

Then today, I see this thread about G.

As graciously as @filterframe tried to sweep their actions under the rug, it still doesn't mitigate the fact that this revelation, this hindsight knowledge will go on to piss a lot of people off, as Google essentially (both directly (ad expenses) and indirectly (seo expenses)) charges us money to be visible in their search engine. We want said visibility so that we can get these end users on our websites to read our content, click our ads, buy stuff, subscribe to our lists, join our communities, etc. We can't do that if Google wants to keep our intended audiences inside their own playground. This is like a sandbox 2.0 of sorts.

The sad part to this is that we don't currently have much of a viable alternative. Sure, there are some upcomers, such as Omnity, who have been known to say that their search algorithms will be better than G's, but as of now, we have no equal. And that's before even addressing all the other stuff G has for us to do.

That being said, I do agree with the author of that video, and I'm buying his "Life After [G]" book, this weekend.

I understand that profit and CONTROL are the main things that google is after. I am just saying no matter what motives the company has these changes make sense.

It does not make sense to have a search result have 10 links with only meta descriptions. 9/10 google searches can be answered in a paragraph or less so why make the user do research.

If you had a product you would choose to push updates that will make the UX simpler and more straight forward because that is what retains customers and brings in new users.

To go with your comment on google charging money to be included in SERPS. If you want to rank you can provide worth while content and format it in a way that google likes (this does not have to cost anything other then time). Ads are for those who have a presence already but want to get the edge over their competitors. Sure ads can bring traffic to an empty source but they have a way bigger impact when paired with an established brand.

You have to remember that you choose to run this race and when you run with google you have to play by their rules.

If you're saying it's copyright then simply noindex your site and google will stop 'stealing' your content

Then you can bring in your own traffic

People want google to do all of the work for them and then give them all of the credit.

 

[RAYRAY7]

You have to love the PARADOX in the SEO world:

Way back, I warned a group of my buddies that this company is not playing with a full deck.

We create the content and all Google does is organize the created content into relevancy. From that organization they've made billions upon billions of dollars. Brilliant Indeed!

What baffles me, is why a solid competition have not emerged. The created content is on the world wide web for anyone to gather.

Please do not mention BING, YAHOO, DUCKDUCKGO etc, as they're all very small players.

I thought bing will provide solid competition to Google but that is not the case.