If you want your online business to be worth a flip these days, you have to market for Google results. They’re pushing 75% of all online searches these days and just to put this into perspective, I’ll plug in a few numbers to illustrate how important Google is to an online business.
An average conversion rate for internet sales probably falls around 2-3% of traffic you receive, we’ll use 3% for this example. Your site receives 10k visitors per month and the average sale price of what you offer is $100. Let’s see what Google means to your business:
| Others | ||
| Traffic | 7500 | 2500 |
| Conversions | 225 | 75 |
| Sales | $22,500 | $7,500 |
Need I say more?
But why do I say “Search Somewhere Else”?
It seems like Google is getting into everything we do now. They keep track of every step you take if you’re using any of their products. If you’re marketing for Google, then you’re more than likely using some of their products. Any of their products will place cookies on your computer and they log everything you’re doing. Since they came out and said they track our IP and cookie search logs, if you do anything remotely questionable (which everything will be questionable at some point with them), then why give them any sort of insight?
Using your customer data to improve things is a common thing these days. The problem I have is how Google uses this information to possibly hurt businesses and people’s livelihoods. So many stories pop up where a website disappears from Google and they have no idea why. Sometimes it’s warranted, sometimes it’s not. Unless you know where to go or who to speak to, being dropped from Google can literally shut a business down. This all sounds very similar to what people had to say about Microsoft back in the day and it doesn’t make sense that someone should have that much power over so many people.
With this in mind, if you do any marketing on Google, it would probably be a wise move to limit your use of Google services and/or products, but when you do, make sure you do what you can to limit their visibility. When you want to search, use one of the other search engines like Yahoo, Live or Ask.
7 comments ↓
precisely why I love Yahoo search, IM, mail, etc..
they might be doing it, too, but who cares…it’s Yahoo!
Wow – who would think the very people you give business to would use it against you!
Between Google and Facebook, my whole life is on the internet. It’s scary to think that these websites know EVERYTHING about EVERYONE! (at least the people who use them)
I guess privacy is an antiquated notion in the Brave New World of Web 2.0.
Precisely why I still use Yahoo email and Yahoo Messenger!
Yeah, like what Bake Show says, it’s scary to imagine someone knows everything that you’re doing online…
How does it matter? Even if they log my habits, I get to choose what I buy, right?
On the other hand, I feel like I owe them support for giving me three times the business.
Plues, they have really figured out user convenience. If I have nothing to hide, how does it matter what they log?
I may sound a little weird, but the fact remains that when google penalized everyone and their cousin for whatever, most of the earnings from my blog went up.
I don’t use advertising, paid links or anything. All the traffic I get, piddly as it is is completely natural, and rising steadily.
No matter what google logs, I don’t see how it harms me.
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