6 ms·

I own a small (~500k in sales/annum) ecommerce site. Enough for 3-4 employees, premises and a small owners salary. About 50% of our sales come from organic sea

I own a small (~500k in sales/annum) ecommerce site. Enough for 3-4 employees, premises and a small owners salary. About 50% of our sales come from organic search results (Google). We write a lot of content, have long form product pages, put out YouTube videos, sponsor blog posts, etc etc. but we have NO IDEA what really works, despite paying for services like ahrefs. All we know is that when we drop off the first page of Google (which is increasingly filled with content and ads instead of search results) our sales take a dramatic hit. And that hit could easily make or break the business and the people we employ. So Google, when you make updates like this, it has real implications on millions of small businesses. It’s not just a feature for “user engagement” or “customer satisfaction”, it’s a big deal.

LeoPanthera 4y ago
I feel sorry for you, but in your position, my absolute first priority would be finding sales from sources other than Google. They're a private company and they have no obligation to you whatsoever.
- albertgoeswoof 4y ago
  I agree, that’s why half our sales come from elsewhere (social media, mailing list, subscriptions etc.) But we can’t ignore the power of organic search. For most people it’s where they start when shopping With the level of power google has over us, can they really hide behind the defense of being a private company? What are the changes being made to the algorithm? Why isn’t this public knowledge? Perhaps we should augment any decline in traffic from Google via paid search ads on Google. If google really is operating as a private company, maximising shareholder value, deliberately pushing businesses onto this path is a perfectly logical strategy for them to pursue. The unfortunate implications on society is a consolidation of wealth and power and a widening gap between those who have and those who do not.
  - zikzak 4y ago
    Do you submit a feed to Google? https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/7439058?hl=en https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/7439058?hl=en
    - rurp 4y ago
      Not to be snarky but is there any evidence this goes somewhere other than /dev/null? I've seen support forum threads with hundreds of posts, many of them from users saying they had submitted feedback, and can't think of a single time it visibly made a difference.
      - pyr0hu 4y ago
        He is not talking about submitting feedbacks, but using the Google Merchants for providing a feed for their products.
        beckman466 4y ago
  - zepearl 4y ago
    If I interpret your statement correctly, you're basically asking, in a summarized form, this: Is it right for Google, by changing their (non-public) algos, to de-rank to lower levels your website? ? (therefore multiple themes like a potential conflict involving their public_vs_private services, impact of changes on the global users, can search algos be non-public, lack of alternatives, etc...)
- zxienin 4y ago
  Are there successful examples of ".. sales from sources other than Google", or ones where majority is not via GS (google search)? Short of good examples, this tough love comes of misplaced. GS is THE dominant search engine. They WANT to be in that spot. It sounds strange to me, that google put themselves in such spot, and project that no one should have obligation towards them.
  - Barrin92 4y ago
    a lot of small ecommerce companies use social media these days. I talked to a guy running a men's grooming product company recently and they almost exclusively use TikTok/Youtube/instagram and have put a lot of emphasis on having a community around it and relying on word of mouth rather than buying ads on google or Facebook or relying on search.
    - jeromegv 4y ago
      There are tons of strategies, that is one of them. Many people use it. Doesn't mean this is the right one for everyone. This comes with risk too. You are at the mercy of the tiktok/YT/IG algo instead of the Google algo. There's lots of work that goes into making content that is engaging and liked on social media. Having your community is not enough because even if you have 20K followers, if your content is not engaging, people won't see it in their feed. As for relying strictly on word of mouth? Sure, but that's likely a minority of brands. Most people need the distribution from one of the big tech co.
  - albertgoeswoof 4y ago
    Here's some examples that we use: - Instagram Posts + Stories - Weekly Email to Mailing List subscribers - Subscription for Free Delivery/Benefits (like Amazon Prime) There are a lot of people that come direct as well or through Google searches for our brand name, especially repeat customers (about 70% of our customers have ordered before). These people can be word of mouth, ads we take out in other publications, non-sponsored blog posts from others etc.
    - 4y ago
- quattrofan 4y ago
- XCSme 4y ago
  > They're a private company and they have no obligation to you whatsoever This is not really a bad thing, just treat them as a partner, they even do things for "free". They could stop working for/with you at any time, this shouldn't stop you for making the most out of the collaboration for now, but it's harder to plan for the long-term.
ProAm 4y ago
Time to buy google ads so you'll always be on the first page.
- deepsquirrelnet 4y ago
  Rephrased: “have you thought about paying Google for ‘protection’ against their updates”
- drusepth 4y ago
  Alternatively, you're also free to pay many of the same manipulators that knocked you off for their SEO services in bumping you back up...
edm0nd 4y ago
Spend 10k a month on ads and you'll be guaranteed to be found as well as bring in new customers. There are ways to position your advertising budget so it generates new and more profit when you drop ads on Google & Bing + social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Tiktok :) But yes, being at the mercy of the search engine Gods is no fun.
altdataseller 4y ago
"We write a lot of content, have long form product pages, put out YouTube videos, sponsor blog posts" Unfortunately, that's all table stakes. A lot of other companies do the same thing.
akamoonknight 4y ago
Apologies for the naivety of this question, but it's it possible to "wean" yourself off of Google (or any one income source)? that is, maybe "pretend" that by default you're only receiving 50% of your total income and then during leaner times you have some buffer to figure something out. I can understand there might be no way to do this in some (or maybe all) industries, but wondering what kind of resilience like this is possible in smaller businesses.
vimy 4y ago
What about Bing, DuckDuckGo, Brave search, .. ? Insignificant compared to Google?
- albertgoeswoof 4y ago
  Yes, it's insignificant. Bing is a few %, perhaps from people who are using the default search engine and think/don't care that it's google
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  Is it possible to tell if a user came from DuckDuckGo?
puranjay 4y ago
I ran a marketing agency and this is the problem with SEO. No one really knows what works. Sure, we know what works right now, but a new update might completely change that. And worse, you might get penalized because Google decided that what it used to think was great (and worthy of top rankings) is now suddenly not kosher. You can do that Google tells you (“create great content”) but you still have to get it found. Unlike social media, this isn’t always a space where you can make the content exciting enough that it gets “discovered” through word of mouth. Not a lot of entertaining content pieces for “affordable door repairs seattle” Leaving this industry has done wonders for my stress levels. There was constant anxiety that you’d wake up one day and find that your rankings have tanked overnight.
whack 4y ago
Google is aware that this is a big deal. It is a big deal to them as well. Search is their golden goose and they are terrified of doing anything that would break it or worsen it. No one has ever accused the Search team of having a "move fast and break things" culture. That said, their interests aren't perfectly aligned with yours. Their main priority is producing a scalable algorithm that outputs rankings that users are happy with. If their A/B tests show that a new algorithm makes their users happier, then they will use that new algorithm (after an extremely long period of A/B testing and due diligence and gradual rollouts). The fact that your specific website is helped or hurt by their new algorithm, is not their priority. If they decided to prioritize stability over user satisfaction, I can guarantee that you, me, and most people will eventually abandon Google entirely in favor of a different search engine that gives us results that we're happier with. This is exactly why smart companies continually try to innovate and change, even if they need to break a few eggs in the process.
- stingraycharles 4y ago
  I agree with everything you said, but there’s one additional nuance: what may be best for the user, may not be what’s best for the business. I’d say that if there’s a general trend over the past decade, it’s that search results haven’t necessarily lead to a better user experience, but Google did a lot of fighting with spam sites, in addition to more ads / integrations with their wider ecosystem. All this makes for a lot of quality hits in the whole experience, and I totally understand the frustration of people who depend upon their rankings. I don’t think there’s a solution, though, as Google needs to keep evolving, especially to fight SEO spam that tries to game their algorithms.
- dbg31415 4y ago
  So why not be more transparent about what their goals are here? Nobody has to spell out specifics, but the broad strokes on what they are trying to achieve, or issues they are trying to solve, would be nice.
- epolanski 4y ago
  What do you mean by happiness of results, how would you measure it.
ganbatekudasai 4y ago
That's a reasonable perspective, but as someone with no stakes in it I would hope that Google prioritizes its users first and foremost. Note that: * I am not saying that these interests are mutually exclusive. * I am also not asserting that Google search is presently doing a good job serving its users, far from it in my personal opinion. I certainly want "customer satisfaction" to be the big deal, however. I'm not quite sure why you put that term in quotes.
ushakov 4y ago
Google Search is like a mob you either pay for the ads or else your potential customers will be presented with a competitor, who did pay for the ads (more than you) same thing happened to Basecamp: https://twitter.com/jasonfried/status/1168986962704982016 https://twitter.com/jasonfried/status/1168986962704982016 this is the kinda thing you do when you have an illegal monopoly on search-based ads
- josho 4y ago
  > illegal monopoly It's not illegal to have a monopoly, so I'm curious to learn what makes their monopoly illegal?
wodenokoto 4y ago
I'm assuming you are investing heavily in SEO optimization because it is cheaper than just buying the ad-space on google search. Do you have an estimate on the price increase of dropping all that content creation/blog sponsoring, and just purchase the traffic directly "at the source"?

LeoPanthera 4y ago

I feel sorry for you, but in your position, my absolute first priority would be finding sales from sources other than Google. They're a private company and they have no obligation to you whatsoever.

albertgoeswoof 4y ago
I agree, that’s why half our sales come from elsewhere (social media, mailing list, subscriptions etc.) But we can’t ignore the power of organic search. For most people it’s where they start when shopping With the level of power google has over us, can they really hide behind the defense of being a private company? What are the changes being made to the algorithm? Why isn’t this public knowledge? Perhaps we should augment any decline in traffic from Google via paid search ads on Google. If google really is operating as a private company, maximising shareholder value, deliberately pushing businesses onto this path is a perfectly logical strategy for them to pursue. The unfortunate implications on society is a consolidation of wealth and power and a widening gap between those who have and those who do not.
- zikzak 4y ago
  Do you submit a feed to Google? https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/7439058?hl=en https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/7439058?hl=en
  - rurp 4y ago
    Not to be snarky but is there any evidence this goes somewhere other than /dev/null? I've seen support forum threads with hundreds of posts, many of them from users saying they had submitted feedback, and can't think of a single time it visibly made a difference.
    - pyr0hu 4y ago
      He is not talking about submitting feedbacks, but using the Google Merchants for providing a feed for their products.
      - beckman466 4y ago
- zepearl 4y ago
  If I interpret your statement correctly, you're basically asking, in a summarized form, this: Is it right for Google, by changing their (non-public) algos, to de-rank to lower levels your website? ? (therefore multiple themes like a potential conflict involving their public_vs_private services, impact of changes on the global users, can search algos be non-public, lack of alternatives, etc...)
zxienin 4y ago
Are there successful examples of ".. sales from sources other than Google", or ones where majority is not via GS (google search)? Short of good examples, this tough love comes of misplaced. GS is THE dominant search engine. They WANT to be in that spot. It sounds strange to me, that google put themselves in such spot, and project that no one should have obligation towards them.
- Barrin92 4y ago
  a lot of small ecommerce companies use social media these days. I talked to a guy running a men's grooming product company recently and they almost exclusively use TikTok/Youtube/instagram and have put a lot of emphasis on having a community around it and relying on word of mouth rather than buying ads on google or Facebook or relying on search.
  - jeromegv 4y ago
    There are tons of strategies, that is one of them. Many people use it. Doesn't mean this is the right one for everyone. This comes with risk too. You are at the mercy of the tiktok/YT/IG algo instead of the Google algo. There's lots of work that goes into making content that is engaging and liked on social media. Having your community is not enough because even if you have 20K followers, if your content is not engaging, people won't see it in their feed. As for relying strictly on word of mouth? Sure, but that's likely a minority of brands. Most people need the distribution from one of the big tech co.
- albertgoeswoof 4y ago
  Here's some examples that we use: - Instagram Posts + Stories - Weekly Email to Mailing List subscribers - Subscription for Free Delivery/Benefits (like Amazon Prime) There are a lot of people that come direct as well or through Google searches for our brand name, especially repeat customers (about 70% of our customers have ordered before). These people can be word of mouth, ads we take out in other publications, non-sponsored blog posts from others etc.
  - 4y ago
quattrofan 4y ago
XCSme 4y ago
> They're a private company and they have no obligation to you whatsoever This is not really a bad thing, just treat them as a partner, they even do things for "free". They could stop working for/with you at any time, this shouldn't stop you for making the most out of the collaboration for now, but it's harder to plan for the long-term.

ProAm 4y ago

Time to buy google ads so you'll always be on the first page.

deepsquirrelnet 4y ago
Rephrased: “have you thought about paying Google for ‘protection’ against their updates”
drusepth 4y ago
Alternatively, you're also free to pay many of the same manipulators that knocked you off for their SEO services in bumping you back up...

edm0nd 4y ago

Spend 10k a month on ads and you'll be guaranteed to be found as well as bring in new customers. There are ways to position your advertising budget so it generates new and more profit when you drop ads on Google & Bing + social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Tiktok :) But yes, being at the mercy of the search engine Gods is no fun.

altdataseller 4y ago

"We write a lot of content, have long form product pages, put out YouTube videos, sponsor blog posts" Unfortunately, that's all table stakes. A lot of other companies do the same thing.

akamoonknight 4y ago

Apologies for the naivety of this question, but it's it possible to "wean" yourself off of Google (or any one income source)? that is, maybe "pretend" that by default you're only receiving 50% of your total income and then during leaner times you have some buffer to figure something out. I can understand there might be no way to do this in some (or maybe all) industries, but wondering what kind of resilience like this is possible in smaller businesses.

vimy 4y ago

What about Bing, DuckDuckGo, Brave search, .. ? Insignificant compared to Google?

albertgoeswoof 4y ago
Yes, it's insignificant. Bing is a few %, perhaps from people who are using the default search engine and think/don't care that it's google
yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
Is it possible to tell if a user came from DuckDuckGo?

puranjay 4y ago

I ran a marketing agency and this is the problem with SEO. No one really knows what works. Sure, we know what works right now, but a new update might completely change that. And worse, you might get penalized because Google decided that what it used to think was great (and worthy of top rankings) is now suddenly not kosher. You can do that Google tells you (“create great content”) but you still have to get it found. Unlike social media, this isn’t always a space where you can make the content exciting enough that it gets “discovered” through word of mouth. Not a lot of entertaining content pieces for “affordable door repairs seattle” Leaving this industry has done wonders for my stress levels. There was constant anxiety that you’d wake up one day and find that your rankings have tanked overnight.

whack 4y ago

Google is aware that this is a big deal. It is a big deal to them as well. Search is their golden goose and they are terrified of doing anything that would break it or worsen it. No one has ever accused the Search team of having a "move fast and break things" culture. That said, their interests aren't perfectly aligned with yours. Their main priority is producing a scalable algorithm that outputs rankings that users are happy with. If their A/B tests show that a new algorithm makes their users happier, then they will use that new algorithm (after an extremely long period of A/B testing and due diligence and gradual rollouts). The fact that your specific website is helped or hurt by their new algorithm, is not their priority. If they decided to prioritize stability over user satisfaction, I can guarantee that you, me, and most people will eventually abandon Google entirely in favor of a different search engine that gives us results that we're happier with. This is exactly why smart companies continually try to innovate and change, even if they need to break a few eggs in the process.

stingraycharles 4y ago
I agree with everything you said, but there’s one additional nuance: what may be best for the user, may not be what’s best for the business. I’d say that if there’s a general trend over the past decade, it’s that search results haven’t necessarily lead to a better user experience, but Google did a lot of fighting with spam sites, in addition to more ads / integrations with their wider ecosystem. All this makes for a lot of quality hits in the whole experience, and I totally understand the frustration of people who depend upon their rankings. I don’t think there’s a solution, though, as Google needs to keep evolving, especially to fight SEO spam that tries to game their algorithms.
dbg31415 4y ago
So why not be more transparent about what their goals are here? Nobody has to spell out specifics, but the broad strokes on what they are trying to achieve, or issues they are trying to solve, would be nice.
epolanski 4y ago
What do you mean by happiness of results, how would you measure it.

ganbatekudasai 4y ago

That's a reasonable perspective, but as someone with no stakes in it I would hope that Google prioritizes its users first and foremost. Note that: * I am not saying that these interests are mutually exclusive. * I am also not asserting that Google search is presently doing a good job serving its users, far from it in my personal opinion. I certainly want "customer satisfaction" to be the big deal, however. I'm not quite sure why you put that term in quotes.

ushakov 4y ago

Google Search is like a mob you either pay for the ads or else your potential customers will be presented with a competitor, who did pay for the ads (more than you) same thing happened to Basecamp: https://twitter.com/jasonfried/status/1168986962704982016 https://twitter.com/jasonfried/status/1168986962704982016 this is the kinda thing you do when you have an illegal monopoly on search-based ads

josho 4y ago
> illegal monopoly It's not illegal to have a monopoly, so I'm curious to learn what makes their monopoly illegal?

wodenokoto 4y ago

I'm assuming you are investing heavily in SEO optimization because it is cheaper than just buying the ad-space on google search. Do you have an estimate on the price increase of dropping all that content creation/blog sponsoring, and just purchase the traffic directly "at the source"?