Google announced: No more organic search results, just ads
It’s rare that a company grows to have as much influence over multiple industries as Google has. Since their launch in 1998 Google has grown to set the world’s standard of information and how it’s managed.
If you’re reading this article on your mobile phone there’s an 83% chance that you’re using their Android operating system. If you’re on a desktop you’re probably reading this in your Chrome browser and hopefully you’ll forward it to your friends using your gmail email account. There’s a big chance that you’re an active Google maps and Google Assistant user and in the future might be riding their self-driving cars. There are over 251 Google products and services you might have never heard about but you’re still using them. 69% of websites you browse (including this one) is using Google Analytics to collect anonymous visitor statistics of their users.
We haven’t mentioned Google search which is the most popular search engine on the Web with 91% market share handling more than three billion searches each day. Google announced a major update that is going to change the way we use the Internet: There will be no more organic search results, just ads.
Dénes Ferenc, Google CEO said:
We are very optimistic, expecting an extra 95 million dollars this year. The new algorithm has been tested, we were already showing many ads in the first search result positions so I’m sure this won’t scare users away.
….
We can guarantee that the results will stay relevant. Not as relevant as before but people won’t go using Bing anyway.
This news sparked a huge negative feedback from the users who criticized Google. Filling the page with only ads is not considered to be a nice move in Internet-culture.
The end of the SEO industry
Google has been continuously fighting Search Engine Optimization, always changing their ranking algorithms and even penalizing sites using SEO strategies abusing their guidelines.
I hope the message is clear now: Website owners should pay us for good rankings, not SEO agencies! [Laughs] Now with the new upgrade we’ll kill them all.
Fighting Ad Blockers
As webmasters aim for maximizing their profits ads are becoming increasingly intrusive. Website visitors started to fight against them blocking all ads, including Google Ads.
It’s hard to find the perfect balance between fair and annoying ads that both generate some income to the website owner but don’t annoy visitors too much. Since advertising is the only revenue of almost every free website we can’t expect websites to stop showing ads and we can’t be so selfish to block websites showing just a small sidebar banner.
We want to prevent users from installing third party ad detectors. Chrome browser now contains our own solution that blocks everything except Google Ads, which I don’t consider to be intrusive. Users will have to stop using ad filters if they want to see any Google Search results in the future!