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At this point in time, anyone working in Search Engine Marketing or Search Engine Optimisation will look to Google as their guiding light, so to speak. Rightly so as for many years they have been the dominant source for reliable search engine results.

Nearly a decade ago Google gained numbers and has raised in popularity to its current number one spot, due to its simple quick loading home page and efficient, reliable search results. Over a number of years they have added to their dominant position through acquisitions of smaller firms in so many different Internet related and technology related fields it’s hard to keep a track of, let’s not forget this company has more money than sense.  

Given their dues though, Google have provided us with a better end product than the others so far and through innovation and vision have created an incredible company which has kept Google.com as the number one destination on the Internet and sub company Youtube.com together swiping two of the top three positions on the web. Amongst other things as a webmaster, I have found Google to be ‘relatively’ transparent and fair, as long as you can stick to their rules.

Some of the potential threats Google face in the future is Microsoft’s Bing search engine, admitted by their very own Chief executive Eric Schmidt [1] which is corroborated by industry members at SEO roundtable, citing 33% of voters (currently: 232 total voters) believe that Bing is Google’s biggest threat[2]. Bing is shortly followed by Facebook, who are introducing a search service to their already hugely popular social networking site Facebook.com; this project will prove to be one of interest amongst the SEO, SEM professionals out there and will diversify Facebook, perhaps in much the same way Google has moved into other vertical markets over the years.

Some healthy competition let’s not forget is healthy both for Google and us as consumers. Competition makes the search engines strive to new levels and essentially build the best products that they can, Bing is a fine example of such an action.

Interestingly many within the SEO industry strongly believe that Google could in fact be the cause of its own demise according to 23% of total voters. Going with this outcome, this I believe stems from their original design. Google originally designed a search engine which was simple and quick, while it still remains quite quick and features can be enabled or disabled the search experience especially recently has been disrupted. Additional features have been added such as Google places, Google preview and Google instant which have increased the search complexity. Continued addition of such features is great for Google and their market dominance, and will no doubt help keep customers using the site more often and for longer periods of time. But for me and many others moves away from the reason we utilise their services in the first place.

[1] http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gJL1jBNwMhcjiDZl-P1EVe8Lalpw

[2] http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/022969.html

Author Byline:

This Guest Post is by Isaac Bullen who writes for The Caring Host who provide their customers with a Green Web Host and a fair hosting guarantee for every customer.