Google steals over half the world's traffic

[nehinc]

I think the problem most people have here is that google can and does do what ever they please.

Of course but there is one constant in the universe,,,,,change , there is no harm in fighting for our way of life , maybe we are done or maybe Google can try to keep things level , I have been online making money since 1999, man how lucky we were then ,,like the wild west ,,now it's well not

 

[leadingsmm]

I noticed here that google does not exist in people minds as search platform anymore. Or it's just me? Mybe I am the only one with this point of view but it didnt came outta nowhere ya know..

I liked this..quote!
Google is everything on Internet (for now).

 

[Nighcore2]

True, but webmasters don't really have enough clout. It's only going to get resolved if governments intervene and class it as a monopoly and take action.

Time will tell.

hope these never happens, i prefer google as a monopoly than goberments having the monopoly, pretty more dangerous

 

[neo]

Google featured snippet, knowledge graph, people also ask etc are already killing even sites that rank on page-1.
First it was only first two pages that used to get clicks.
Then it became only first page rankings get clicked.
Now it is more like first 3 or 5 results get any clicks.

In future Google with the help of AI, might auto generate an entire webpage for every info search query using our content and then willjust add source links at the bottom of the page.

 

[Grayback]

To be fair, it's more convenient to see answers for your search without having to click onto a website.
It hurts webmasters but improves user experience.

 

[Amsterdammed]

Its just fucking stealing money. Its puur white mafia. Monopoly position, stealing content from hard working webmasters. Its just not rite. 1 ant cannot kill a dog. But 1,000,000,000 can.

 

[dream1er]

has anyone got any solution?

 

[Amsterdammed]

every webmaster needs to suu g87gle

 

[ContentExpert]

It's not that they're pocketing the SEO money. Of course that's not necessarily the case. The issue is that it's money that someone is having to spend to rank on G's search results pages. You may not consider this to be an expense that G is essentially forcing us to pay in order to play, but I sure as hell do. Sure, the money may not be directly going to G, but that's not the point. The point is that we still need to pay it. They are making SEO companies richer. You're correct. 100%. No dispute. However, they're doing it with our money.


I don't disagree, and I am onboard with both your understanding of these changes making sense. I, too, am a user of G services, and I can (and do) have an appreciation for how easy, effective, and efficient they make their search engine for me as a consumer. It's the reason I prefer G to Y, B, D, Ask, and all the others. I'm often impressed and relieved that my search queries can sometimes be answered without having to click through and sift through filler content, while hoping not to have to back out of a page to find somewhere else to sift through more fluff or those dreadful sites with pages that have a sentence or two and want you to continuously click through to page 50 to get your question answered. I get all that, and again, I'm onboard.

Where I disagree (to an extent, of course), is your perfect world rhetoric about how when "you want to rank you can provide worth while content and format it in a way that google likes". Sure, this sounds good, and it will work if your goal is to rank for the keyword: twelve silvery sunsets over the ocean while eating potato chips. However, if your objective is to rank for keywords competitive enough to make your contributions worthwhile enough to compensate you for your investments spent, simply providing well-formatted, quality content won't get you to page 1 on it's own. Go start a new perfectly formatted website with amazing content centered around payday loans, and please report back when you've organically reached page 1 for that keyword. I know there are much less restrictive longtail keywords you can rank for without any off page SEO and will bring in some traffic, but my point is that we, as website owners, often depend on search engines as a viable traffic source for bringing our targeted audiences to our websites. When the best search engine decides to enhance their service to the point to where its end users no longer need to click through, and while I do appreciate how easy they're making it for its users (as again, I am one of said users), it creates a disconnect.

I don't know what the solution is and I won't pretend to. But, I also will not pretend to not see the issue this causes. Even if it's not such a big deal, today, what happens a year from now? Three years? Five years? G will continue to evolve and none of us knows to what heights their evolution will reach and/or how much said evolution will exclude the livelihoods of the people who create the very content their algorithms are so ready to scrape and deliver straight from their platform.

Very, very well put.

 

[Kikerinka]

What you say is completely true, but how much of your traffic google "steals" depends a lot on the niche, and the "complexity" of the topic.

For example, I have the featured snippet for 5-10 keywords.
But I wouldn't say that it leads to less traffic directly to the money site in question.
This is because it's always a complex topic, and what's in featured snippet simply doesn't satisfy the searcher. So they click over.

But generally (for everyone in the business) SEO is getting more and more tricky. I've been saying this for the past two years....
Prices for any worthwhile link-building campaign (not to get to a fcking page 2, but at least TOP 5 results) are way tooooo high for many niches.
You just can't turn a positive ROI with these campaigns. The profits better ranking brings just won't cover the expenses...

Then, even if you rank top 5, Google takes a lot of traffic away-which means that your ROI drops again.

It's difficult for everyone, but I still enjoy playing the game

 

[thelivingphilosophy]

I say break them up. They big 5 are at that point now where they are getting dangerously powerful (or maybe they passed that five years ago?) I don't think it will kill any of them if we split them up and we can keep the internet a (relatively) decentralised place. The main tug is that as Greyback said it's just a whole lot more convenient dammit

 

[itznehamali]

Unpopular opinion but I don't really see a problem with this. The bulk of google questions are simple enough not to warrant diving into a website.

Ex.) When is X, How much is X, Where is X, How far away is X.

I would be genuinely annoyed if I googled when is a holiday and I had to look into the actual web page.

If you loosing money to people just reading the SERPS try targeting content that cannot be answered in less then a paragraph or offer a service.

As far as google stealing content if a person were to find your content valuable beyond their simple search then they will defiantly click thorough. Think W3 Schools. When I google how to concatenate in sql I find my answer with out even having to go into their website but I know as a user that If I have future SQL questions I can reference their website directly.

Also same query here...

 

[neo]

To be fair, it's more convenient to see answers for your search without having to click onto a website.
It hurts webmasters but improves user experience.

Wouldn't it be better for the user if Google scrapes the full content of first 3 results, strip all the affiliate links and directly display inside Google?
User do not have to see any ads. Will it not make a better experience for the user?

 

[sienticx]

google steal my family time too...but he transfer me with $$$$

 

[MasterSocial]

And it's not going to get any better unfortunately.

 

[Yoblo]

has anyone got any solution?

Yes, and I'm surprised I haven't seen it mentioned (though I didn't read this whole thread).

From here:

How can I opt out of featured snippets?
You can opt out of featured snippets by preventing snippets on your page using the <meta name="googlebot" content="nosnippet"> tag on your page. This will remove all snippets on your page, including those in regular search results.

 

[dream1er]

how google acquired 94%, i mean what went wrong with bing with 1% and ddg only 4%, theres big loss of facebook that it doesnt go for seo - seo=0%.
look at google images, it alone has 20%, i mean how and why.
this is the end. google can do anything in future and you cant do anything, unless google do a big fuckup.

 

[rafark]

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

This. Google has done all the marketing, invested millions in infrastructure for more than 2 decades, etc. to get people -the masses- to use their site. As the BHW reps ( ) have said in the past, it's a privilege not a right.

 

[xcalibur]

This guy right here is absolutely right. I've noticed a drop in revenue since so called snippets started showing from my website on top of SERPs. Exact required info is shown right there, so why will users go to my page and view/click an ad?

 

[xcalibur]

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

Again spot on!