Thanks to “Caffeine”, their new software, Google is capable of introducing changes faster than ever – and they are doing exactly that.
What are they trying to accomplish?
Their basic business model is much like that of a TV station: Give away the content, sell the eyeballs to advertisers.
Anyone can search on Google for free.
Because they do a great job of providing the best visitor experience, they own around 2/3 of the U.S. search market. Then they sell their ad space for billions of dollars in the form of AdWords – their pay-per-click or “sponsored links”.
Staying on top means continuing to improve the searcher’s experience. Delivering faster results that are more exactly what people are looking for. Eye-tracking studies show they are doing exactly that. These days, people find what they are looking for much more in the first couple of listings, compared to five years ago.
That means staying ahead of the competition. So Microsoft (“Live” and now “Bing”) can spend tens of millions of dollars to very little result. Google also unashamedly picks up what other search engines do right, and includes them into their own search page and methods.
Thanks to Caffeine, Bing can do something today – and within days or weeks, Google is doing it to – if it works.
There is one more huge consequence of this rapidity of change. “Black Hat” SEO is becoming a hopeless task. I’ll explain tomorrow.