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> Over 60% of our traffic and sales came from google. Because you did not diversify strongly enough. Certainly, Google is a great way to get lots of traffic bu
by chime 15y ago
> Over 60% of our traffic and sales came from google.
Because you did not diversify strongly enough. Certainly, Google is a great way to get lots of traffic but if 60% of your sales comes from a single source with whom you do not have a signed contract, it is your own fault if you cannot handle your business when the sales tank. It is no different than putting 60% of your investments in a single stock and seeing the company fail, wiping out 60% of your savings. Sure, you didn't cause the company to fail but you did plan very poorly. People keep blaming Google when this happens. But who told you to rely on Google for 60% of your sales, especially when you haven't paid them or signed anything with them with respect to search engine rankings?
Please note that my reply is directed more to the owners of the ecom site than you personally.
- jshen 15y agoI think you missed my point. We can handle our business when google drops us, but the volume from google is large enough that it required hiring more people. If that goes away, we'd fire those people. I agree with your larger point, but let's be honest, when people are shopping for things online they usually type it into a search engine (if they don't go to amazon directly). Depending on the type of product you are selling you may not be able to get around this.
- aaronwall 15y agoA lot of the biggest brands see more "search" referrals that are just their brand name going through search engines. As web browsers replace address bars with search boxes the search engines in a very real sense act like a utility the redirects the traffic flow through a page with ads on it. If you rank fine then no big deal, but if you don't show up for your own brand then that is brutal. Of course most the sites hit by Panda were not hit so hard that they don't show up for their site name (unless their site was named after a generic commercial keyword where there were lots of other competitors already) but in the cases where it was a lot of those businesses were just hosed. It is yet another way to boost big brands...not only put weight on brand related signals, but make the generics more likely to get clipped by the algorithm at some point. That forces non-brands to build brand assets & re-enforce them display ads and such. Google is even buying a ton of display ads that advertise display ads. And a lot of those ads highlight how display ads have increased branded search queries for the brands that are buying them.