"Google Sucks All the Way to The Bank"

Not our words, though we agree with High Rankings CEO Jill Whalen in this post.

“My theory was that if Google could make the main search results “just relevant enough,” but not quite provide what the searcher was looking for, the searcher would be more likely to click the sponsored results (ads) that are highly relevant and have exactly what the searcher wants. The searcher is happy, and Google makes money…”

Wait right there, you say to yourself. Google is purposely providing second-rate links so that users are more likely to click on advertisers’ links?

Isn’t the first rule of business to keep customers happy? Do sub-par links makes customers happy?

Yep, they do – when you remember that Google’s customers are the “over one million of advertisers, from small businesses targeting local customers to many of the world’s largest global enterprises, who use Google AdWords to reach millions of users around the world.” (Taken from Google’s Investor Relations FAQ)

Whalen continues: “Even though today Google is technically just an advertising platform that happens to offer Internet search, they built their reputation on providing superior results. Because fixing what’s broken in the current algorithm can’t be very difficult for the brilliant minds that work at Google (Hint: ignore all anchor text links in blog comments, for one thing), we can only assume that they don’t want to fix them — at least not yet… Most likely the fixes will only be forthcoming if and when they start to lose searchers and/or people stop clicking on the ads. Which doesn’t seem to be happening.”

In other words, Google just has to make users believe that the answer your looking for is just one click away.

Oh, not it? Getting close, one more click away.

Sorry, sorry. Just one more click away…