Yup, that’s right it’s St. Valentine’s Day, so I’m declaring my love for Google or its organic search engine to be precise. It’s not because I’m a brain-washed follower, or looking for some swag (that’d be cool though, right?). This is why:
I didn’t grow up with the web. It wasn’t around in the 1970s. I came to it later than some in my niche. I was quite surprised at just how much search engines sucked.
They were profoundly ugly, utterly one-dimensional and inconsistent. Now they are easier on the eye, provide rich results and are inconsistent.
Consistency, you really want that?
I like inconsistency in many things. There I’ve said it. I don’t want a meal in a restaurant in Bath to be exactly the same as the one in Las Vegas. I’m happy that a decent bottle of plonk may have subtle differences to another from the same pressing. I’m even happy when the important people in my life are inconsistent – it makes them interesting, challenging and fun!
Google’s inconsistency is what keeps my attention and God knows it keeps me gainfully employed too. There has been plenty of commenting, griping, moaning, whinging and general nonsense spoken about Google’s organic search engine and how it just isn’t fair.
Well, here’s the thing, it isn’t. So let’s move on.
Change, you can’t cope with that?
We estimate that since February 2011 there have been around 30 major changes to the algorithms that Google uses to grade, rank and select sites for special attention. The velocity of change in organic search is rapacious; some sites have been devoured whole, others mutilated, some mauled and some left unharmed. Pretty gruesome behaviour for Pandas and Penguins, no?
That change is another reason to love Google. If there was no change, the sites on page one for those hero keywords would stay there, forever motionless like great orbs hanging in a dead universe. You could argue that people would eventually stop visiting them. If you want a static listing get hold of a copy of a ‘phone book or Yellow Pages, but even they change once a year. Change requires reaction, inventiveness and thought in order to respond to it – and these are things I also love.
Yes, Google’s organic search is problematic and in many ways impenetrable to understand, but there are basic principles that I think will always keep you in good stead:
- Don’t rely on it as a sole marketing tool
- Care about your users
- Care about yourself enough to embrace change and inconsistency
