Chapter 7 The Search Economy Peter Byun

The Google Dance = Google’s periodic updates of its algorithms Reason: To penalize people who were gaming their sites so they could be ranked higher Result: Hurt a lot of innocent small internet businesses

The SEO World SEO = Search Engine Optimization 1.White Hats: Businesses that followed legitimate guidelines to help Web sites so that search engines could find, index, and accurately rank them 2.Black Hats: SEOs that took unsavory measures to game search engines. Problem: Nobody was sure which practices were white hat and which were black

Gray part: Affiliate Sites = Redirect potential customers to larger sites that have programs that pay for leads AuctionBytes by Ryle Goodrich -> “Florida” hit, two weeks later Who Decides Gray? -Contradiction between search results for “New York Hotel” and “Digital Camera”

The AdWords Connection People were forced to buy AdWords Some people had suspicions that Google was intentionally implementing new filters to drive advertisers to AdWords

The Marketing Firmament Shifts -Paid search shifted content attachment -> intent attachment -Content attachment: Unpredictable, Untraceable -Intent attachment: Lack of information - Future: Content + Intent

They’re All Search Businesses Music business - half-billion-dollar online business News business - should let others on the Web link to articles Make content that is worth pointing to

Local Is a Search Business Yellow pages will soon be a dead industry The mobile and local search revolution Ex] Universal Product Code (UPC) system Effect -Markets will have to compete on other factors unrelated to price

The Problems Looming The trademark issue -American Blinds: “Google is encouraging and profiting by refusing to ban people from buying others’ trademark terms on AdWords” -Google: “Google is only an intermediary that works without bias.”