Google’s U-Turn

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October 23rd, 2007 by Nick

It's not news that Google is trying to take over the world. Google set off with a very clear plan of action. Besides the sound bite friendly motto “do no evil” the remit of producing a simple result driven engine has worked wonders.

When search engines began there was as much focus on their own content as providing a good database of other relevant sites. Portals such as AltaVista and excite provided as much content as most users would need. News, information and a wealth of other content could be found on these home page friendly site.

After the NADAQ crash the engines that emerged set out to be different. Search was the new battle ground, providing the most relevant results, quickly and in an easily usable manor. This was where Google succeeded.

Both Yahoo and MSN have continued with their portal style layouts. While search is the big feature, secondary sites relating to money/finance, shopping etc. still offer a big draw to these engines.

Google went with the minimalist approach of providing the best search results they could achieve and straight to the point. The design of the Google front page is now almost a classic. With the staff of Google receiving complaints if the home page word count ever breeched 50.

This focus on search results yielded huge benefits with users setting Google to their home page in their masses. With this traffic came advertisers.

Now for the U turn. Google are beginning to build up their services. Google Health being a subject of many blogs this week. Google Product having a face lift and Google Maps increasing in popularity. Google are even thinking of giving Second life a run for it’s linden dollars.

Again this is not news, but the cumulative effects maybe felt. By Google providing one clean cut engine and their results that have been worked so hard for, traffic growth has been immense. By diluting the search traffic across their site Google are becoming weaker and more like the less successful competitors.

This will not sink the ship of adwords by any means. Google incorporate the PPC ads in to every step of the way (Although Google Health may be handled a little more sensitively). This dispersal of traffic has made it more important to approach adwords carefully and it is now a must to embrace every aspect of the Google portal to get the same benefits as the once Google search engine. Where once a single adgroup may have sufficed. Now a PPC ad, a local business ad and a Google base listing or XML feed would be the most complete way to advertise.

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