I have learned a lot from developing my site; but I feel that Google has changed the game in a number of significant ways, and SBI so far has failed to grasp the real import of those changes, for whatever reason. It’s true that Ken Evoy is conducting an aggressive research campaign, which may reward us. But I’ll be surprised if the findings are anything different from what we already know:
- 1. Results in Google are much more based on stats gleaned by Analytics, and include far more social signals than previously;
- 2. Big brands will continue to dominate the rankings; and
- 3. Google will continue to shake up the rankings for its own ends & to develop its own competing products.
I really feel that at some point Google will try to become not just a search engine, but a knowledge aggregator & mediator using the structured knowledge tags that are appearing in many areas. In other words, Google will begin to compete much more aggressively with webmasters on knowledge based queries; products & services; and will use the Trojan horse of Analytics to derive significant insight into how people actually use the Internet.
Thankfully, there are significant competitors around, significant enough to provide alternative sources of traffic… and so we should not fear the almighty presence of Google, as webmasters. But we should be careful in relying on them too much. After all, Google relies on US first & foremost.