It just occurred to me that Google is killing organic SEO. Google's paid search algorithm is allowing the user to be the ultimate SEO. Based on user search behavior -- the type of links clicked on and the amount of time spent on a landing page after leaving Google -- your paid search ads become more relevant, undermining traditional SEO efforts to bring client sites to the top of the SERPs.
Google's paid search algorithm acts almost like a rating system. Google will discover the most popular sites based on user preferences, allowing it to serve highly relevant results based on paid search landing pages. As a result, search engines will likely start serving more sponsored links, and the organic links will start to fade away.
GoogleBot likes info
The object of B2B and ecommerce commercial websites is to sell products and services online. These sites have an increasingly difficult time ranking well on Google because the GoogleBot eats up information and spits out products and services. Therefore, organic links are becoming less relevant and have low quality.
The antidote to low-quality organic links is pay-per-click advertising and strategic ad placements such as links on great information sites. These promotions are very effective, especially when displayed on vertical search engines (VSEs). In fact, this could become the ultimate way to do SEO in the future.
Saga of the broken algos
I'm not the only guy who sees a weakness in the Google search algorithm. In his article, "Are User-Generated Websites Breaking The Search Engines' Algorithms?" Tim Daly suggested that paid search listings could become more relevant than organic listings because of the emphasis on inbound links in search algorithms.
Google rewards sites with links coming from important, authoritative sites. The company's reasoning is that a site with numerous quality inbound links must be popular, ergo it is a quality site. Sites with higher PageRank scores are given higher rankings than those with a lower PageRank. Once Google gained popularity based on PageRank, all the other search engines followed suit, so this ranking system dominates. Perhaps at the time, it was an excellent ranking variable, but it's becoming outdated today.
As Daly shows with his example of Wikipedia's dominance in the SERPs, an abundance of quality links does not necessarily an authoritative site make. This is a subjective take, based on the weight given to inbound links by Google's PageRank. As demonstrated by the questionable accuracy of some Wikipedia content, it takes more than links alone to prove authority.
Bridge over troubled waters
Research shows that general search engines are losing ground to vertical search engines (VSEs). Outsell reported a 31.9 percent search failure rate among business users on major search engines. This means that roughly one-third of user queries yield unsatisfactory results.
Convera went further by saying general search does not meet the needs of today's business and professional users. General search queries result in time inefficiencies and unmet needs as critical information becomes increasingly difficult to find quickly on the web.
In contrast to general search engines, vertical search engines have built-in preference mechanisms and are constantly rolling out improved features. In my opinion, bidding is the best qualifier. VSE users naturally weed out faulty search engine algorithms. Clients bidding high on irrelevant keywords for the sake of attracting traffic would have their budgets zapped, resulting in a dreadful ROI, and business users wouldn't stand for this.
VSEs also have built-in merchant rating systems similar to those of a power seller on eBay. This further refines the search relevance.
Next: General search dilemma
