Google, Trust, and You

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More and more it seems like we’re seeing evidence of Google’s switch to a trust-ranked system, and with it we’ve seen a huge amount of growing pains. All it takes is a few minutes of reading the various webmaster-related fora and you can sense a lot of pain from a lot of people as they’re forced to adjust to a radically different internet environment in 2007. If they’re like, me, they’ve been forced to scramble to make up for problems with both ad targeting and organic traffic.

You just can’t get around Google.

I know I spend a ton of time looking for alternatives to Google. I try my best to cut them out of my business model in any way when I develop any new websites. But the truth is, Google is just so damn big and bad in the search marketing space that you can never, ever avoid them. If you don’t get traffic from Google search, you’ll find yourself in a world of hurt. But as important as Google is to my traffic, I’ve never had a sense of “trust” with Google. They are one paranoid company, and they’re developing such a paranoid way of indexing websites, that you have to really question the wisdom.

The concept of having to “trust” websites is corny. It places an artificial emphasis on “quality” which Google can in no way shape or form judge with their current algo. In fact, looking at almost any result these days turns up the glaring fact that Google can’t judge search engine results all that well at all lately.

So the message I’m getting from Google is: we don’t trust you, the typical hard-working webmaster. Instead, we trust the websites of big monolithic corporations and offlline institutions and the staffs of people the employ. We place offline authority over online prowess. We care more about perceived reputation than actual performance.

Google build a reputation for being one of the coolest internet companies around. They haven’t earned that status lately in the search engine department. Too many people depend on Google to at least provide some stability in their results, or to communicate what switches have been made, and Google has steadfastly refused to do it. Yes, they talk at webmasters a bit, in the same way a rich relative talks to a poor one. But genuine communication is rare. Despite their many accomplishments, Google seems to have grown way too arrogant and seem poised for a fall.

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