I don't know if you've searched for anything lately but if you have then you might have noticed that the quality of results being delivered is much poorer than it used to be. Having looked over the weekend to find local retailers and events and searching last week for reviews on LED televisions prior to making a purchase I was pretty shocked to see the irrelevant and often poor quality information and websites that were being presented.
Google may be trying to penalise SEO companies and website providers for over optimisation, spamming and static back link building but I wonder if in the process of doing this they have actually harmed the most important person in the search equation? The Consumer.
After all, it is the consumer who is using the internet to search for the products and services they need and if they can't find something relevant, useful and interesting in a short space of time they are going to get frustrated. So what does this mean for the future of search?
Will people start looking for new search engine alternatives that can offer them different results? Will shopping around for a search engine just become part and parcel of the whole shopping around online process? Or will people just ignore the sites that offer them nothing and keep on scrolling?
The latest Google algorithm updates have been focused on improving search but only time will tell who ultimately benefits from this.
Posted by Frances Berry
