Search Engine Leeches, Dependency & Losing Perspective

[dannysullivan]

Over the past six months or so, I've seen a real rise in the number of people yammering on (and I used that charged word purposely) about needing to free themselves from search engine dependency.

The latest comes from respected usability guru Jakob Nielsen, over in Search Engines as Leeches on the Web (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/search_engines.html). Search engines such up too much value he says out of the same companies that form their core content.

My response is over in Search Engines As Leeches, The Difference Between Paid & Free Listings & Keyword Price Rises (http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060109-132719), where I explain how Jakob's comments will likely resonate with some people but for the wrong reasons. At his core, he's concerned about keyword price rises rather than organic listings.

I guess I'm old, tired, grumpy or whatever, but I missed the memo where the search engines asked anyone to enslave themselves for traffic. What's going on that so many people feel this way? I'd really like to explore that more in this thread.

We have had over the years various people worry, posit, suggest or whatever that search engines are like the gatekeepers of the web. If you're not in the top ten results you don't exist and so on. Some have even felt they need to be regulated because of it.

I still see people having those types of worries even today. At the same time, we also have more and more people talking about how they don't need to depend on search engines. When WebmasterWorld (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=8876) banned spiders, you even had people cheering them on wishing they could do the same, live without search engines.

Hey, anyone can live without search engines if they want. Just put up a robots.txt file now and ban them. That will give you a fast track way to weaning yourself away from search.

Where I think people are going wrong is similar to what I wrote in the WebmasterWorld bans spiders discussion. Balance and perspective are being lost.

No, you don't 100 percent of your traffic from search engines. They are and always have been fickle creatures. Rankings can go at any moment, and 100 percent dependent on them is dangerous. That's true even if you are wisely doing a mix of paid and organic, since paid prices can rise as well.

But no, you don't want 0 percent of your traffic from search engines. In virtually all cases, anyone who purposely ignores search engines traffic is an idiot. Yep, a charged word again, but true.

Everyone uses search engines to find things. And not everyone knows your site. I don't care if you're Slashdot, WebmasterWorld, Search Engine Watch or flippin' Google for that matter. There's always a new generation of people coming onto the web. They're going to turn to search engines to find something to help satisfy their desire. You can be one of the possible places they visit and perhaps gain a lifetime visitor through search. Or, you can stick your head in the sand and say you want to be completely search independent and leave those visitors to everyone else.

There's no questions sites can be successful without search. There are an always have been alternative ways to get traffic. From day one in my writing here, I've always encouraged people to diversify and think beyond search engines. When I do my Intro To Search Marketing session, which I've done for ages, it's one of the top tips in my last slide -- don't depend entirely on search engines.

But don't ignore them, either! While you can be successful without search, you can be more successful with it. A well rounded marketer is going to do a variety of offline and online tactics to attract visitors. Search should be part of that, not the entire part but neither ignored.

So much for my rant, which I guess I hope mainly helps stress the point that anyone who is still operating in a "search is everything" bubble needs a wake-up call. But at the same time, don't let that pendulum swing so far the other way that you abandon thinking about search. Get balanced.

[vayapues]

I started a series of children's websites about 8 years ago. KidsAstronomy.com, KidsNumbers.com, KidsBiology.com, and on and on and on.

Combined, the sites are approaching 10 million impressions monthly. For me, the best source of traffic has never been search engines, in fact, search engines only make up a small portion of my traffic.

The vast, and I mean VAST majority of traffic comes from individual teachers. On the downside, my traffic almost falls off the face of the earth in the Summer, and weekends. It has taken 8 years to build the traffic to where it is. Even if I fell off of the search engines tomorrow, my traffic would hardly fluctuate at all.

[projectphp]

Well said Danny!

One thing though: shouldn't the SEM community be proud that people have overblown how important it is? I mean, would TV Ad execs ever bemoan the fact TV ads are seen as a panacea? If we want to be a "real" marketing industry, we need to start (what is the word marketing people use instead of lying) and not be so quick to tell the world our flaws.

SEM's value is exactly what it is, and I see no reason for insiders to denegrate it.

In many ways, that article is vindication of the industry. You know you have "made it" as an industry when a competitor for the same budget (which Jakob almostt admits he is) has a dig. No one has a go at a competitor that isn't doing much business, only those that are (becoming?) a force. Radio vs TV vs Newspaper vs SEM. SEM rarely held such a place before!

That article is weird beause it talks about search as if the game should end. Crazy talk! There are same "games" that, no matter how annoying, once we start playing them, we can never stop. The classic example is the web itself.

My father once said to me that these days (the late 80s), businesses needed to have so many things top survive. A phone, a computer, a fax, business cards, and now this new fangled "Car Phone" that he needed to stay in contact. We can add website to that list now, and a whole host of other items (and costs) that go with needing a web presence.

Once the web game got started, we were all stuck playing it, and dedicating funds to it. Like Taxation, the game has no end, and rarely any clear "winners", but it is a game in which one merely hopes to stay alive in, and needs to have a foot in.

If SEM has reached the point where it is an integral part of marketing spending, and major advertising competitors are having a go, I think that speaks volume sof how good SEM has been in getting not just a foothold, but a strong standing in the marketing world.

[Chris_D]

Of course - if Jakob were a marketing expert - instead of just a usability expert - he'd have a made a very subtle - but incredibly important point.

Search engines are generally good at delivering NEW PROSPECTIVE client traffic. Not ALL traffic.

Healthy businesses with happy customers/ committed clients / business partners and community members - who are the BULK of most website's visitors from the website logs I've analysed over the past 5 years - get MOST of their traffic from returning visitors i.e. bookmarks.

I visit this forum at least daily. When was the last time I used Google - or any other search engine - to find it?

When did you? Most traffic volume (from my experience) is returning visitors via bookmarks.

Search - like yellow pages = new client acquisition.
Everything else - like white pages = repeat business

From my 20 odd years in the IT/ communications industry - the general rule of thumb was always been that selling to an exisiting customer has always cost around 10% of the cost of acquiring a new one.

What's changed?

"Everything old is new again"..... that's what gives old blokes an advantage :)

[Jill Whalen]

So much for my rant, which I guess I hope mainly helps stress the point that anyone who is still operating in a "search is everything" bubble needs a wake-up call. But at the same time, don't let that pendulum swing so far the other way that you abandon thinking about search. Get balanced.

Yep, definitely agree. But I think that Mr. Nielsen was also saying something similar. I don't think he was saying not to use paid search at all. He even seemed to admit that PPC was a worthwhile way of finding *new* customers who might otherwise not know of you.

It seemed to me that he was mostly stressing that you had to also be able to keep those customers returning, as that can be a whole lot cheaper than constantly trying to find new customers.

[massa]

Maybe I missed the "big picture" with his post but I didn't get that his point was to not want, wish for or work for search engine traffic. I thought his point was that the underlying motivation of search engines is changing from wanting to be a library of sites to send people to, to becoming a destination site which would in essence make them not the sender of traffic as much as the stealer of customers.

We've all known since the days of Jimworld that we shared an odd if not uneasy kind of symbiotic relationship with search engines. They needed our content and we needed their traffic. I have a hard time believing Jacob was simply over-stating the obvious to the extreme. That's why I thought he was getting at the question of, what if they changed the deal? What if they kept taking our content but stopped sending the traffic to us and instead kept it for themselves?

[mtweed]

I've always had the mindset that search engine placement was only one aspect of an entire marketing campaign. Anyone that relies solely on placement will definately be disappointed at the results.

[massa]

>Anyone that relies solely on placement will definately be disappointed at the results.<

Not to be contrary, but I certainly can't agree with that statement. I've been very far from dissapointed more times than I can recall at the results from an endeavor that relied on nothing but placements. I'm pretty much not dissappointed today as fatter of mact.

[dannysullivan]

That's why I thought he was getting at the question of, what if they changed the deal? What if they kept taking our content but stopped sending the traffic to us and instead kept it for themselves?
Maybe he had a variety of concerns and it's all getting muddled up. Many of the concerns are valid:

1) It's easy to get too dependent on search engines.

2) Search engines can be viewed as taking from content owners but until recently, not giving them a heck of a lot of tools for support in being indexed.

3) Bid rates are going up.

4) Better conversion analysis means that people are pushing those rates up.

5) People making use of conversion tools offered by the search engines are helping them understand in aggregate that there's more room for higher bids, since conversions are happening below costs that can be paid. Hence the desire to make it easy for people to use these tools.

6) Search engines are well back into being sticky portals again, in many ways.

7) Search engines could try to put walls back up especially as Lycos once did. Remember when you'd do searches on Lycos in like 1999 and have a real challenge finding a link that led out of it?

There are more points I could throw in, and not all paranoia but real, honest concerns. The problem I think with his essay is that he started out with what seemed an issue about organic listings, throws in a paid example as his proof and spinkled in some other things. In contrast, I could take the list above and build any of those with much better examples to better support a "search engines as leeches" argument.

Site owners definitely need to be wary of things. But biggest thing is probably back his main point, however he arrived at it. Don't depend on fickle search engines for all of your traffic.

[projectphp]

3) Bid rates are going up.
See, that to me makes no sense as a bad point. Doesn't every marketing medium hit an optimal level inevitably? No one paid a billion dollars for the English Premier League TV rights 20 years ago. Now Murdock does.

Costs go up, margins come down until the pricing is at the optimal point at which businesses are able to make money, and new competitors can not undercut existing businesses and stay profitable. That is how business (is suppossed to for society) work.

I think Nielsen's article is exactly what all his articles are: an attempt to get people to talk about him and say things like "respected usability guru Jakob Nielsen". As usual, he hit the perfect spot. Just enough to talk about, just enough holes and just controversial enough.

Effect: Branding Branding Branding for Mr Nielsen :)

Or am I become an old cynic in the last few days of my twenties?

[cre8pc]

Well, usability is my thing and I admit to being completely confounded by Nielsen's article.

There are such interesting behavorial studies coming out on user behavior and search engines results that I felt were building a bridge between building better web sites for people and search engines.

I can't find the value in complaining about search engine dependency and finding ways to blame them or the mechanics of how they work for any conversion problems.

Take just one line from this one study (http://hcil.cs.umd.edu/trs/2005-31/2005-31.htm):

Several participants commented that they would like the ability to organize results in multiple ways, possibly customizing their own organization scheme.

Why the push to be liberated from seach engines and turn to other forms of marketing, from a usabilty guru? Well, of course. Duh. Marketing was never just about rank or PPI.

Making search engines more accomadating for people to use, on the other hand, would require some focus on usability. :cool:

This whole thing reminds me of the game of Twister.

[andrewgoodman]

Over the past six months or so, I've seen a real rise in the number of people yammering on (and I used that charged word purposely) about needing to free themselves from search engine dependency.

So much for my rant, which I guess I hope mainly helps stress the point that anyone who is still operating in a "search is everything" bubble needs a wake-up call. But at the same time, don't let that pendulum swing so far the other way that you abandon thinking about search. Get balanced.

Hi Danny,

I'm glad you put it forth in this way.

Now that you mention it, the whole idea of search engine / portal dependency was one of the guiding themes of our self-appointed coverage of the space when we started publishing Traffick.com in 1999.

So, although no time to deal with it in depth right now... I think I'm going to have to disagree with you.

This is fundamentally a matter of distribution, and control over it. The major media companies, be they studios, networks, telcos, and, if you wanted to keep going... railways... chemical companies... pharmas...

The media world has changed so much. The Internet has changed the way we access information. Cable has exploded. VoIP trumps phone monopolies, maybe. Just for starters of course. We could go on.

But this isn't SOLELY about bits & bytes and ideas and models. It's not solely a story of empowerment and diversity of options. Consumers and end users are looking for businesses, and they must find them somewhere. It's in the major distributors of listings' interest that that somewhere be "their" somewhere.

There is a reason investors reward companies that achieve unfair advantages -- as Microsoft did. They suck up power and resources, and while the party lasts, you bet your booty there is a whole ecosystem that is dependent on them.

Media barons are more tenuous today than they were when it was possible to control a whole industry. But there is still considerable concentration in industries like radio and yes, in Internet search. Where there is concentration of assets, surely we can agree there must be power to set the agenda, and to exact a toll from businesses who wish to get consumers' attention.

No matter what other online or offline promotion avenues you hope to use, someone surely has to discover you in the first place. You're not completely screwed if you're not visible in search engines, but for businesses, invisibility is a bad thing.

As for Jakob's piece, definitely some debatable points there. I think probably the language of "leeches" makes it seem more provocative than it really is. And I did agree with your point in comparing the scenario he posits for rising ad rates in the search realm, with some offline promotional opportunity, like TV - a point I would also have made.

[Jonathan Mendez]

Danny,

I think it's great that you responded to Nielsen's essay. I was very disturbed after reading it myself.

You are spot on with your point regarding LCV. Many organizations don't take these metrics into account yet from search. As we begin to be able to determine this value and increase it through other online means like eCRM, businesses will begin to further understand what is obvious to so many of us in search. Search is tremendously undervalued as an advertising medium, even as it stands today. Looking ahead search will continue to provide substantially more value to businesses than other advertising mediums. While we currently have advantages in providing measurable data to our clients over other mediums we are only beginning to track and understand the crossover value of search with other online media, properties, content, and as you mentioned, the offline and branding value.

Additionally, as search marketers we continue to help businesses leverage technology to provide more relevancy and increased conversion rates through advances in analytics and tools like multivariate testing. Yet again, most organizations are not doing this today. They will soon and the value of their businesses will rise. Though I doubt they will be "handing over that all that added value to the search engines" as Nielsen states.

This hand-off Nielsen hypothesizes is never going to happen. In fact, the opposite looks more likely. Online business value will continue to go up and search inventory (and value of the search engines) will continue to go down. I know I'm not alone in already experiencing my clients desiring to purchase more inventory that isn't available. Therein lies a real long-term problem for businesses and our industry. So what do we suggest businesses do in these instances? Focus more on the very things Nielsen suggested like newsletters, affiliate programs, eCRM, etc.

Nielsen needs to come to grips with Search as a business...and a pretty darn big one too. Rather than sucking value out of the web search is actually creating value and helping the lives of millions of consumers and citizens across the globe. I couldn't be prouder to represent it and present its value to the leading businesses in the world.

Jonathan Mendez

[andrewgoodman]

Just to clarify what Jakob was saying, as far as I was concerned, anyway...

Take the hypothetical/counterfactual scenario where (a) There are leading search engines that *don't* extract a fee from advertisers for getting clicked on; (b) Many users use those engines; (c) the SE is good enough, in some way, that spam is in check.

That situation has existed at certain points in time, minus (c).

So this is not an emotional argument about who has the right to cry and moan, but it is food for thought about the effects that occur when so much money moves from one set of economic actors (large set) to another (just a few companies controlled by a few people). Imagine a different time and place where there were not-for-profit SE's that really didn't think they had a claim to any share of the wealth that could be created by heavy user traffic. (There would be less disruption to business, though this might simply mean backroom deals to get free SE exposure, and some businesses getting wealthy without giving back, etc.; but it would be a wider distribution of business growth not all concentrated in one or two companies. Jakob mentioned that one of the impacts of that hyper-profits in companies like Google is that they can give away tools and services, and doing that of course affects the growth prospects of companies that would charge for the same stuff.)

It's an argument that says: here's what *search could be like* (all free traffic, all the time). You could modify that slightly and just posit a world in which search engines made *less* profit, extracting less net wealth from companies in the ecosystem. (Remember, Jakob didn't sugar coat what he was saying -- he used the phrase "the obscene profitability of search advertising.")

It's an argument that obviously has a social-impact side to it that says that we shouldn't just stand by and treat the economy as a disembodied thing. If there is something we don't like about it, we can say so. (Scandinavians are like that.)

It's an argument that would probably take issue with the net transfer of wealth that has gone from advertisers to earlier media monopolies as well. The argument could be made that publishers/networks etc. have historically had too much power to extract too high a premium from companies (too high is obviously a non-market value judgment, but then again, the idea of a market is perverted once markets become monopolistic.) "Too high" could simply mean -- the car companies like GM could have created much better products and competed much better if they had only spent 25% of those obscene ad budgets, and plowed the rest back into product development and worker training. In fact, it would have been a very different world had all auto companies made this decision. In recent books Godin writes provocatively about the "television-industrial complex" of the 1950's and 1960's -- spend heavily on ads, build brand, plow profits back into more ads, continue cycle. His characterization of that era is critical. He is saying that this state of affairs hindered innovation, and created an ever-escalating clutter of messages that has made it harder and harder to reach consumers cost-effectively.

True, no one had a gun to GM's head, but it has taken a long time for companies like this to even consider the idea that the net transfer of their wealth to the purveyors of advertising opportunities is hurting them terribly in the marketplace, threatening their very survival. (Godin's Free Prize Inside makes a similar point, in a bunch of different ways. Quit marketing so much & build a better product, and people will find out about it.)

It's probably far too early to give up on search, since a GM would transfer far less of its wealth to Google than it does to TV. Far, far less. Search is still a great deal, and building a better mousetrap and using the diverse marketing muscle referred to by Grehan in recent columns will get you a lot of free SE traction.

But it's not silly to make the point. There is a social impact. The ecosystem is changing, as SE's extract more net wealth. There is less left over for companies that must pay the paid search toll, and thus, some kinds of companies may be weakened unless they wake up and stop chasing down the paid search trail like stupid bloodhounds.

The funny thing about it is, I think Google has actually taken this into account by looking at Quality in both the search and paid search algos. They have left reasonable spaces for relevant and creative companies to show up at low cost.

Weaning yourself from search dependency is a good idea to bring up if it reminds a few marketers to stop throwing money at bid wars, and even that they cannot purely win just by spending money on usability, since ceteris parabis whatever, everyone will soon fix the most glaring usability probs on their sites, if they are spending enough money to show up in search results.

Some larger ideas here -- radical ones I realize, but I think this is the alternative universe (not so distant, some of it, in the past era where B2B companies could just be found for free) Jakob was alluding to, might be along the lines of:

- The only reason there is such a large net transfer of wealth from all in the (say) health care consulting sector, to Google and Yahoo, is the fact that they bid each other up. If everyone agreed to bid under 50 cents for all keywords, the net dollar result would be a weaker search engine balance sheet and a stronger health care consulting sector. Obviously, talking to your competitors and agreeing to lower bids is something no one could recommend, but as a principle that would have that effect if put into practice, it's fair to point it out;

- If users boycotted the major search engines in favor of those who showed fewer ads, cheaper ads, or those who returned a % of profits equally to all advertisers, the net imbalance in strength between SE's and the companies in their ecoystem would be righted in favor of a more balanced distribution of profits;

- If more users stuck to nonprofit forms of information and companies spent less money and time trying to bother those users, social knowledge would grow and less resources would be wasted by companies. (This is already something the SE's facilitate, though, by promoting those very types of informational results that so often come up in SERP's.)

Probably we are not soon going to see massive shifts, but I think it is absolutely fair to have the conversation insofar as search engines have become very powerful economic forces. Every time one company with a few major shareholders controls the fate of the world, you're bound to get a few complaints. I still don't see many people using alternatives to Windows or Microsoft Office... although you could. In fact, the eventual realization that Microsoft is too powerful has caused some people to adopt other browsers. It's that kind of sentiment that will have both marketers and users searching for alternatives to Google.

It is of course fair enough to cheerlead for search as still a great deal in comparison with other marketing methods. (And no one's putting a gun to your head.) But in some industries, companies are being weakened just as Google is being strengthened. Which is a 180 from the days when many companies got free exposure on search, no companies paid a dime, and the search engines went out of business because they hadn't yet figured out how to extract their toll.

You may say Jakob's a dreamer... but he's not the only one. :) And he's described the current search ecosystem quite accurately, from a dollars and cents (and who has them) standpoint.

[AussieWebmaster]

Is it a sad comment on us that we are ripping into this topic across two platforms now and I have not looked to see if other forums have picked this topic up....

Search engine placement is a marketing method... be it organic or PPC - we are trying to get placed to get traffic. Is there the potential for the engines to have a huge impact on that traffic when they change or dramatically increase cost or method of listing (as Yahoo! threatens) - of course.

But telemarketing was a great way for many businesses to get customers and it was worked hard until the governemnt got involved and created the "No Call" lists... it hurt but people adapted...

If the engines make changes we adapt... if they change dramatically and we have to find another way for people to find out about us I am sure we will come up with creatives ideas....

massa had one with the post-its in the bathrooms....

BMW got great exposure from its viral films...

There will always be a way.... it will be different but it will in time work.... hey search is not really as old as the web - at least in its current reincarnation...

[andrewgoodman]

Not to beat a dead horse, but the strong suggestion from Nielsen's end is that Google is "overmonetizing," weakening its ecosystem, and may, therefore, be evil.

I know that sounds strange, but companies have choices. Look at Craigslist. $50 million in annual revenue, tops, and no plans by Craig Newmark for a lavish IPO.

It's not all or nothing, but I think it is indeed food for thought, that big companies have to figure out ways of giving back. Google is a particularly strange company in that the advertising side is so money-hungry (esp. the way they run AdSense), and then huge other parts of the company are R&D, free stuff, etc. It's, like, schizophrenic. Indeed you hear that many Googlers, especially the founders, are poised for unprecedented levels of philanthropy. But at companies/projects like Craigslist and Wikipedia, moderation in monetization is built right into how the company does business. It's not "monetize at all costs, so we can do good, as we define it."

[AussieWebmaster]

Not to beat a dead horse, but the strong suggestion from Nielsen's end is that Google is "overmonetizing," weakening its ecosystem, and may, therefore, be evil.

I know that sounds strange, but companies have choices. Look at Craigslist. $50 million in annual revenue, tops, and no plans by Craig Newmark for a lavish IPO.

It's not all or nothing, but I think it is indeed food for thought, that big companies have to figure out ways of giving back. Google is a particularly strange company in that the advertising side is so money-hungry (esp. the way they run AdSense), and then huge other parts of the company are R&D, free stuff, etc. It's, like, schizophrenic. Indeed you hear that many Googlers, especially the founders, are poised for unprecedented levels of philanthropy. But at companies/projects like Craigslist and Wikipedia, moderation in monetization is built right into how the company does business. It's not "monetize at all costs, so we can do good, as we define it."

I need to get on your pro bono list Andrew... I have a couple of sites I never have enough time to get to....

PS. Craigslist sold a piece of itself to EBay.... guess that cash gave Craig a little breathing room.

[bragadocchio]

PS. Craigslist sold a piece of itself to EBay.... guess that cash gave Craig a little breathing room.

Actually, it didn't. He wasn't involved in the sale.

One of the folks who was given an equity interest in Craig's List sold his ownership to eBay. More here:

EBay Buys Stake in Craigslist (http://www.craigslist.org/about/press/ebay.stake.html)

[AussieWebmaster]

Actually, it didn't. He wasn't involved in the sale.

One of the folks who was given an equity interest in Craig's List sold his ownership to eBay. More here:

EBay Buys Stake in Craigslist (http://www.craigslist.org/about/press/ebay.stake.html)

Sorry for the inaccuracy.... so Craig did not directly profit... well the shares were given in exchange for something he may have had to pay for otherwise....

[vayapues]

That's why I thought he was getting at the question of, what if they changed the deal? What if they kept taking our content but stopped sending the traffic to us and instead kept it for themselves?

A search engines power comes from, or is directly rooted in, the service they offer. If they change the service, their power will disapear within a matter of months. This is why you can rest assured that they will continue to act ethically.

Most of the content online is copyrighted, and all of us have the right to deny a search engine access to indexing it. If they were to 'change the deal' SEO's everywhere would simply block them from accessing their content. I don't mean technically block them, I mean legally block them.

[vayapues]

Google is a particularly strange company in that the advertising side is so money-hungry (esp. the way they run AdSense),

That is capatilizim mate.

[AussieWebmaster]

That is capatilizim mate.

Didn't you get the code of ethics of a SEO... It is never about the money....

[andrewgoodman]

That is capatilizim mate.

Read a history book. Even capitalists need to worry about the environment around them. Henry Ford was a pretty rugged guy, but knew for example that people like his workers needed to be able to afford his products.

And of course the externalities / game theory that go into *sustained* profit are important in the ad biz. It's very important that we understand the Tragedy of the Commons aspect of too much advertising/spam, for example. It killed portals like AV, harmed email marketing, and would kill Google if they weren't so careful about usability.

There is no such thing as "pure" capitalism, but I guess you may be just starting out in your learning.

Capitalizim ?? isn't about profit maximization at all costs. And so what about the parts of Google that are loss leaders? Are these kommunizm.???

[The PR Guy]

Maybe I've been in PR too long -- that's public relations, not PageRank. The New York Times often acted like the "gatekeepers" of the world before the advent of the web. And, if the story I was pitching wasn't on page one, I never thought the Times needed to be regulated.

So, search engines in general and Google in particular have become the new gatekeepers. Get over it. Learn to pitch your best content -- and recognize that on a slow news day it might get picked up, but on any given Monday day, it might not. And if it isn't picked up, then recognize that its the editor's job to put the most relevant stories on Page One and maybe there were other stories that were more relevant than yours. It happens.

Greg Boser has a great line that I wish that I had coined. So, let me repeat it here: "Sites Positioned Above Mine is my definition of SPAM." He's dead on target. Too many people assume that they are entitled to a top 10 ranking for the two-word search term of their choice, and anybody ranked ahead of them must be using black hat SEO.

But, with billions of pages now indexed by the major search engines -- and with hundreds of thousands of marketers waking up to the importance of search -- all of us are going to have to work even harder to earn our positions -- on even three- and four-word terms.

Unfortunately, it is a sign that our industry has gone mainstream. Big time.

[andrewgoodman]

I need to get on your pro bono list Andrew... I have a couple of sites I never have enough time to get to....


Not quite sure what you meant by that one, Frank. We're discussing a $100 billion technology company and its huge impact on the economy, not my little sub-10-persons firm that last time I checked didn't own any jets. It's not about pointing fingers at how philanthropic individuals are... it's about the real externalities occur when some types of companies come to dominate their own industry, and begin to affect how other industries do business.

[andrewgoodman]

Actually, it didn't. He wasn't involved in the sale.

One of the folks who was given an equity interest in Craig's List sold his ownership to eBay. More here:

EBay Buys Stake in Craigslist (http://www.craigslist.org/about/press/ebay.stake.html)

Correct. Craig's ex-employee somehow had 25% of the company, and went for the gold. For the record, I probably would have, too. :) But the point is, Newmark is different, not just because he isn't personally cashing in, but because he thinks about how charging for listings will affect the different sizes of companies in various industries. Maybe he's been watching too much Star Trek, I dunno... but it is fun to watch that company.

[andrewgoodman]

Maybe I've been in PR too long -- that's public relations, not PageRank. The New York Times often acted like the "gatekeepers" of the world before the advent of the web. And, if the story I was pitching wasn't on page one, I never thought the Times needed to be regulated.

So, search engines in general and Google in particular have become the new gatekeepers. Get over it. Learn to pitch your best content -- and recognize that on a slow news day it might get picked up, but on any given Monday day, it might not. And if it isn't picked up, then recognize that its the editor's job to put the most relevant stories on Page One and maybe there were other stories that were more relevant than yours. It happens.

Greg Boser has a great line that I wish that I had coined. So, let me repeat it here: "Sites Positioned Above Mine is my definition of SPAM." He's dead on target. Too many people assume that they are entitled to a top 10 ranking for the two-word search term of their choice, and anybody ranked ahead of them must be using black hat SEO.

But, with billions of pages now indexed by the major search engines -- and with hundreds of thousands of marketers waking up to the importance of search -- all of us are going to have to work even harder to earn our positions -- on even three- and four-word terms.

Unfortunately, it is a sign that our industry has gone mainstream. Big time.

I find it sad that "get over it" passes for discussion. I got over it years ago, and work in the business. But here, we're discussing ideas. I happen to think Nielsen has thoughtful ones.

As for you, PR Guy, I'm glad you're around to explain this stuff to us. Keep it up. Not many in this community have the experience to see the parallels between the Times and Google, and so forth. But the interesting difference is that since the Internet happened, we were led to believe it was a game-changer. I still do, to an extent. Workarounds for big monopolistic media are what the 'net is all about, while big monopolies also have fun trying to consolidate in the IP-world. That's what Jakob's trying to get started, isn't it? A classic workaround movement, a la Napster and anything else you can name. More importantly we need to talk keyword prices down, to scare the scaredy cats away so we can keep on affording this stuff. Work with me will ya?

[vayapues]

Capitalizim ?? isn't about profit maximization at all costs. And so what about the parts of Google that are loss leaders? Are these kommunizm.???

Capitalizim is about what ever you want it to be about. That my friend, is what makes capitalizim so great. If Google decided today (which would be completly contrary to their history) that they are going to max out profits at all costs, they would make a lot of money, for a very short period of time, then they would fade away.

However, andrewgoodman what makes capatilizim so great, is that if they did, it wouldn't matter to the rest of us, because Yahoo and MSN would be right there to pick up the peices.

That is why our system survives despite itself.

[AussieWebmaster]

Not quite sure what you meant by that one, Frank. We're discussing a $100 billion technology company and its huge impact on the economy, not my little sub-10-persons firm that last time I checked didn't own any jets. It's not about pointing fingers at how philanthropic individuals are... it's about the real externalities occur when some types of companies come to dominate their own industry, and begin to affect how other industries do business.

I was just hoping I could get you to do a little free SEO work for me.... the rest was just dressing to elict that response....

I agree altruism by the wealthy is shown only by a handful in the internet/computer world... though that is about average - indeed this industry has a higher than average number of them.

In the vein of domination look at Google Analytics.....

[The PR Guy]

Andrew, the game hasn't changed -- only the names of the players are different.

From Joseph Pulitzer's New York World, to William Paley's CBS, to Larry Page and Sergey Brin's Google, media moguls have always had clout. Hopefully, they "do no evil." And the little guys only win when they have a very superior media product -- and smarter marketing. (Becoming, in turn, the next big guys to be knocked off down the road in the next wave of change.)

Now, I'm not advocating that we "get over it" and do nothing. I'm just saying that we "get over" the fact that there are "gatekeepers" who influence what does and doesn't turn up on page one, becomes the top story on the evening news, or get a #1 ranking on a relevant search. Our job as marketers is to understand how all this works so that we can pitch effectively for our clients -- some of whom are little guys and some of whom are big.

If it is harder for the little guys, that's not new. It has always been harder for the little guys. It just means we need to work smarter -- and it also helps to have a superior product. No amount of clever marketing tricks will ever save a commodity product with an uncompetitive price.

[andrewgoodman]

Capitalizim is about what ever you want it to be about. That my friend, is what makes capitalizim so great. If Google decided today (which would be completly contrary to their history) that they are going to max out profits at all costs, they would make a lot of money, for a very short period of time, then they would fade away.

However, andrewgoodman what makes capatilizim so great, is that if they did, it wouldn't matter to the rest of us, because Yahoo and MSN would be right there to pick up the peices.

That is why our system survives despite itself.

It would appear, then, that we have nothing to discuss, and the details of any business and how it works in relation to its environment (other businesses) do not interest you.

[andrewgoodman]

Andrew, the game hasn't changed -- only the names of the players are different.


Sure, sure. As Abraham Simpson says, "the fax machine is nothing but a waffle iron with a phone in it." :p

But more to the point, it isn't just about little vs. big, or about pitching clients. Greg, I wish you'd talk about this topic as if we were talking about the Internet, and search in particular, which last I checked has special qualities. This is SE Watch forums and the present discussion is about the cost of showing up on SERP's, is it not?

For example, it isn't just about size. The concept of search is so granular, that you can hold a discussion, as I thought Nielsen was doing, about a niche in some B2B enterprise software field, and you'd be discussing a number of large, established companies, where none are guppies and none are big enough to have economic power over other sectors. It's here that you could try to apply an economic analysis that would show more wealth being transferred from that whole sector over to Google than it was previously, and advise players in that sector that such a net transfer was happening and to take appropriate action. Multiplied across enough sectors, it's probably a phenomenon worth discussing.

But, since any attempt to agree with Nielsen seems to be met with responses that boil down to optimism, vs. pessimism... or debating whether capitalism is good, maybe I should just go have a beer with Jakob if I actually want to consider the content of what he wrote.

Raise your hand if you have a business or a wide variety of clients whose budgets actually do depend heavily on paid search. It's a bit different if you feel you can fall back on free results or press releases, which don't have the same associated costs. Average PPC costs in your industry go up 10X due to crazy counterproductive bidding wars? It hurts. (So Jakob suggested reducing SE dependency, which seems to have bothered people because after all, it's not an original point, so why give credit where it isn't due? Sheesh.) A further point worth making: if you have direct familiarity with bidding wars in these industries, leads are infrequent, there is a long sales cycle, the breadth of relevant keywords isn't huge, and indeed a small number of highly technical niche keywords might be the only ones worth anything in the field, likely to attract those responsible for million-dollar buys. So you'll see CPC's of $18 per click and so on, because the number of vendors and buyers is so small (which raises the question, why use search at all... a fair question indeed... it would have been a lot more appropriate when it was all free or cheap). It doesn't matter a great deal to you or me or the economy in general, but it matters a lot to those particular players, who happen to be the types of companies Nielsen and co. advise. So ... it sounds like he's trying to give them good advice, to keep their eyes open to the costs of different lead gen methods, in case those costs reach $20, $30 per click. People tend to get stuck in a rut and whole annual marketing budgets can get blown by folks trying to win a bidding war... at least in narrow ego-driven industries.

Now, to get back to the broader point that there have "always been media gatekeepers," -- yes, even in unfree societies where they could tell you what to think! Anyway, the point about there being just a few major television networks in the day (for example) is not a trivial one. The emergence of such massively powerful media monopolies doesn't just happen. These are regulated industries, considered to have special responsibilities within society, special duties and responsibilities as well as rights. Probably the wrong forum to discuss the whole history of broadcast regulation around the world -- but where the number of frequencies or channels was limited, giving certain economic interests the right to broadcast in those slots was enormous power indeed.

That is part of what makes the emerging Internet paradigm a challenge to all that. We've seen that again and again. There aren't just a few channels, there are seemingly a lot of ways to "get found" and to generate new media and new forms of information dissemination, and that should cheer us all if we're in favor of freedom.

But in turn that means that the dominant portals/search engines that control whether someone can "get found" now have special duties and responsibilities in a familiar sort of way, especially if they act anti-competitively or begin censoring results for political or other reasons. To say it's entirely their choice as to how to present information is patently untrue. Like the news media of old, they will be regulated, and that regulation will happen differently in different countries. Complicating matters, those old forms of media are still around, so might have a vested interest in actually encouraging government to regulate the new. Or, they form new business combinations that will change the game again. We've barely scratched the surface of the major questions that will be asked of these media outlets, possibly by government actors or by society in general. Seeing that potentially unfolding was probably why Google went and cashed up twice in the public markets. At this point at least they are so well off that they are relatively unassailable, a la Microsoft.

[vayapues]

It would appear, then, that we have nothing to discuss, and the details of any business and how it works in relation to its environment (other businesses) do not interest you.

Depends on what you mean by "interest".
As long as no one is breaking the law, then I am not interested in the sense that I care, or that I am going to get upset. If they want to steal my customers, and are in a position to do it, more power to them. They havn't broken any laws.

But, am I interested in what they are doing, in the sense that I want to be educated, so that I can plan my next move, absolutly.

Google, and the others should behave ethically, I say should. But if they don't want to, that is their choice. If they don't, they will lose their position of power much faster then they got it. Someone else who is "ethical" will pick up the peices and carry on. The industry will go on, with or without them. That is the bottom line.

In otherwords, I am not saying that we should let big companies take advantage of the little guy. I am arguing that in today's economy the whole thing is really moot issue. There are, as has been pointed out, still gate keepers, but today's so-called 'gates' are wider then ever, and spread across the fence every few feet.

In today's economy, no one has the ability to shut anyone else down. There are simply too many cheap ways of reaching customers there are in otherwords, too many gates for anyone to get control of all of them, or even control of a small percentage of them. Sure the so called gate keeper has the advantage, but it is only a very slight advantage. They abuse it, they will loose it quickly, and someone who plays nicer will take their place. So let them abuse it, I don't care. I will do just as well with the guy who takes their place.

[vayapues]

But in turn that means that the dominant portals/search engines that control whether someone can "get found" now have special duties and responsibilities in a familiar sort of way, especially if they act anti-competitively or begin censoring results for political or other reasons. To say it's entirely their choice as to how to present information is patently untrue. Like the news media of old, they will be regulated, and that regulation will happen differently in different countries.

I really hope not. More regulation is exactly the opposite of what this industry needs. It will only drive everyone's costs up, and make all our lives harder.

Regulation made sense when there were only three major so-called gate keepers. But today, when gates are wider then ever, and spread across the fence every few feet, regulation is not needed. If you argue that we need it, can you provide any evidence? Your arguements seem to be based on what might happen, or what you think will happen, not on what is actually happening.

No one is being charged an arm and a leg to reach clients via the Internet. Online marketing is obscenely inexpensive. I can reach millions around the globe in a matter of minutes, with virtually no cost what-so-ever. No one can stop me. No one can close the gates on me. OK, maybe a few gates can be closed, but I will simply step two feet to the right or left, and go through another gate.

CPC rates might being going up, but they are still way below the cost of other forms of marketing, even in competive industries, if you are doing an effective job, and getting good conversion, your final cost is low compared to the money you make. Even if costs go a lot higher, or if Google were to up their minimum from a nickle to 50 bucks, it wouldn't matter. The industry would self-regulate, we would all simply migrate to another of the infinintly available gates to get the word out about us.

Regulation would be a horrible mistake. Unfortuntly, politicos often need a cause, and this could be an easy target. Sigh!! Lets hope we can dodge that bullet.

[The PR Guy]

Raise your hand if you have a business or a wide variety of clients whose budgets actually do depend heavily on paid search. It's a bit different if you feel you can fall back on free results or press releases, which don't have the same associated costs. Average PPC costs in your industry go up 10X due to crazy counterproductive bidding wars? It hurts.

Andrew, this is exactly why we got out of PPC advertising a year ago. We do organic SEO, press release SEO, even RSS SEO. But we were "feeling your pain" in early 2005 as we read the first big annual SEMPO survey, which reported that more than 88% of all the money spent on PPC goes straight to the search engines. The second big annual SEMPO survey, which was just released last week, shows more than 89% of all the money spent on PPC goes to the search engines.

Meanwhile, our clients expected us to work overtime to manage ever increasing complexity. And several of those clients thought that we were getting the standard 15% commission that virtually ever other media in the world give to agencies -- with the notable exception of the search engines. When we explained that we didn't get an agency commission, a least one client thought we were trying to pull a fast one. So, with ever smaller margins and ever larger headaches, we decided to get out of PPC.

I think this is why you and I seem to be talking past each other instead of to each other. You say "search" and mean "PPC" and I say "search" and mean "organic listings" or "free listings" or "news listings."

So, at SES New York in late February, I'll buy you a beer -- a good Canadian beer, not that cheap American stuff! :D And we can talk about why the search engines don't give agencies a 15% commission for pioneering a field that isn't easy to understand and even harder to master.

[AussieWebmaster]

Andrew, this is exactly why we got out of PPC advertising a year ago. We do organic SEO, press release SEO, even RSS SEO. But we were "feeling your pain" in early 2005 as we read the first big annual SEMPO survey, which reported that more than 88% of all the money spent on PPC goes straight to the search engines. The second big annual SEMPO survey, which was just released last week, shows more than 89% of all the money spent on PPC goes to the search engines.

Meanwhile, our clients expected us to work overtime to manage ever increasing complexity. And several of those clients thought that we were getting the standard 15% commission that virtually ever other media in the world give to agencies -- with the notable exception of the search engines. When we explained that we didn't get an agency commission, a least one client thought we were trying to pull a fast one. So, with ever smaller margins and ever larger headaches, we decided to get out of PPC.

I think this is why you and I seem to be talking past each other instead of to each other. You say "search" and mean "PPC" and I say "search" and mean "organic listings" or "free listings" or "news listings."

So, at SES New York in late February, I'll buy you a beer -- a good Canadian beer, not that cheap American stuff! :D And we can talk about why the search engines don't give agencies a 15% commission for pioneering a field that isn't easy to understand and even harder to master.

You can get the commissions from 5% to 15% if you are an Asian based agency... the Europeans were and some still are getting them - but I don't think it will last there...

[searchoptimization]

After twelve years of optimizing for the search engines I have formed a few opinions. First SEO professionals have done more to make the search engines successful than any other group; they have also made search results better and more relevant. About six years ago I was talking to an executive from a search engine that admitted that they did not work very hard at delivering relevant results. He went on to explain that if the natural results were too good they took away from the banner ads and lowered the search engines revenue. Google came along and delivered better results and took a lot more revenue away from them.

One thing we can be certain of is it will all change. Anyone who has played with the new MSN adCenter knows that it is about to change a lot. The last year has seen more evolution and change in the search engines than any previous year. I like how things have changed and how it is more natural and less spam. We all need each other but the real change has been because of the user. People have made search successful because they are tired of ad agencies and big companies forcing marketing messages down their throat. Search is all about the empowerment of the people; we just help them find what they are looking for. Power to the people!

[andrewgoodman]

I can reach millions around the globe in a matter of minutes, with virtually no cost what-so-ever. No one can stop me. No one can close the gates on me. OK, maybe a few gates can be closed, but I will simply step two feet to the right or left, and go through another gate.


The picture of regulation is much more complex than all this. Regulation historically has not simply been a matter of simple interference -- sometimes it has been a way of leading players legitimating and reinforcing their dominance! The FCC, for example, (let's say) would place standards on broadcasters because, in effect, "they made them." The same might be said for railways or other limited positional businesses which are typically oligopolistic. When the laws of the land (again let's say) in Canada only allow seven "chartered" banks to exist, then that regulation both regulates and GREATLY HELPS those selected few big companies.

To your above statement about "no one can stop me" -- that's fine, a nice thought for a Sunday morning if you're going out to play football and you want to win. Or if you're in business. But in discussing more broadly about whether in real life someone really can stop you? Of course they can. What you said sounds like some 17-year-old middle class girl in school saying feminism was pointless, stupid, and useless, because don't we all know I can do anything and everyone is equal.

Do you think, again for example, that all the indictments against corporate malfeasance, the Sarbanes-Oxley business, etc. - are all based on the same kinds of abstract principles of freedom / boundaries that always existed and always will? No, what seems to happen is that a groundswell of social and public actors (those who got screwed) rises up and a general sense of discomfort reaches right to the top levels of government and business, and decisions get made to clamp down. The timing of such movements seems to boil down to a rough-and-ready measure of when some big economic players seem to be getting their way too much, going "too far."

[andrewgoodman]

So, at SES New York in late February, I'll buy you a beer -- a good Canadian beer, not that cheap American stuff! :D And we can talk about why the search engines don't give agencies a 15% commission for pioneering a field that isn't easy to understand and even harder to master.

I think that's something we can all have a beer over. P.S. I'll take 10%.

[projectphp]

Regulation would be a horrible mistake.
So is all regulation, 100%, bad? If not, and we accept that the price of freedom is rules and regulation, your statement is untrue. To try to debate regualtion fullstop, without any specifics, is also bizarre. How do you know SE regualtion would be "...a horrible mistake" if you don;t know what it is proposed to entail? IMHO, that makes the 1uestion not whether regulation fullstop is a good idea or abd idea, but what forms of regualtion are good and/or bad.

And lets be clear here, SEs are alreday regulated, both by common business laws as well as some specific ones, like advertising rules in certain countries (Google cannot show gambling ads in Australia as one such example).

IMHO, regulation isn't the issue in a yes do it no don't sense, but in a what is the best form sense. Do we need specific SE laws, or do they fall under a broader advertising umbrella? If Google has datacentres all over the world, which laws dominate etc etc. These are the questions to ask, not stop the debate short before it begins out of fear.

[vayapues]

Wow, andrewgoodman I hardly know where to begin. I appreciate your comments, don't get me wrong. There are some good points, but your statements don't really support your conclusions.

Again, don't get me wrong, I certainly am not trying to flame you.

You have reached the conclusion that regulation is a needed remedy for a "problem" that you claim exists. But where is the evidence of any so-called problem? ok, we will come back to this.

You remarked that:
The picture of regulation is much more complex than all this. Regulation historically has not simply been a matter of simple interference -- sometimes it has been a way of leading players legitimating and reinforcing their dominance! The FCC, for example, (let's say) would place standards on broadcasters because, in effect, "they made them."
1. Regulation in anyform is interference. That is the very meaning of regulation, to interfere. Sometimes it is for good, and sometimes it is for bad.

2. So the important question here is this: Is it ok for governments to interfere? I would argue, and I think you would agree, that of course it is ok for them to interfere. This in fact is their job. This is why we have governments in the first place. To interfere.

3. This interference however, comes with a price. Along with regulation comes increased costs. Whether you like it or not, regulation will always add a layer of beuracracy that comes with an inherient cost. Lawyers get paid to makes sure companies are in compliance, lawyers get paid to find loop-wholes, Lobbiests get paid to try and bend regulation this way, or that way. Governments have to hire additional staffs to monitor and enforce regulations. Regulations are typically set by panels and boards, who often do not fully understand the industries they are regulating, thus inhibiting the industry in unintended ways. All of this results in more cost, more time, and more frustration. The question is this, after regulation is inacted, is the new total cost higher, or lower then the former or pre-regulated cost.

4. In other words, is this cost worth it? Is the frustration, and time worth it? Certainly it is worth it, IF there is a problem being remedied, a problem effecting the lives of the citizens of that government. And also, IF the medicine is not worse then the intial problem. A secondary, but certainly not nearly as important issue to consider is whether or not the final cost is higher then the former cost. In some cases the costs might be higher, but the regulations are still needed, or important.

Ok, so we now have a formula to use for decisions regarding when regulation is appropriate. There must be a real problem being addressed, and the results of said regulation must be less painful then the actual problem itself.

Do the current circumstances meet this criteria? You have yet to demonstrate that they do. We will come back to this.

To the last part of your quote above, I am not quite sure what you are trying to say. The FCC neither created, nor even was present at the creation of broadcasting. The only regulations on broadcasting have largly been in relation to upholding community standards, ie, no naked people dancing with llamas while selling car insurance. Equal-time has also played a role, but as broadcasting has exploded, and the so-called 'gates' have expanded from three to literally thousands, even equal-time has become a non-issue. If one station does not give equal time, who cares, another will be just as bias to the other side of the issue.

It should be noted, that it was not broadcasting that was regulated, it was actually the airwaves. A small but important distinction.

To your above statement about "no one can stop me" -- that's fine, a nice thought for a Sunday morning if you're going out to play football and you want to win. Or if you're in business. But in discussing more broadly about whether in real life someone really can stop you?
Well, if someone can stop me, that is certainly news to me. Would you mind telling me exactly how?

If google banned me tomorrow, and entirly took my site down (which comes up # 1 on just about every search term I go after, except for one, where it comes up # 7). If they decided to take my customes away, and sell to them directly, instead of sending them on to me, my traffic would go down about maybe 5%. Ok, a little painful, but not much.

If every search engine ganged up on me, and said 'we dont like that vaya, did you read his posts in SEW, lets get that guy', and they all banned me tomorrow, my traffic would drop by a total of around 10%. On average over the last 8 years, my traffic has doubled every year, so by the following year, I will have more then made up for the lose, and gone way beyond.

My book, ads in national magazines, software in classrooms, word of mouth among teachers and home schooler parents, buzz from other sites and magazines, news cast features, press releases, buzz on the bloggosphere, and on and on and on, not to mention direct mailing, both via snail and email, are absolutly untouchable by google, or any other search engine. So in essence, they really can't stop me. If you figure out a way to stop me, please don't tell my competitor. They are a full-fledged company, complete with staff and all. I by myself have been making more money then them, going on 4 years now. Sure would hate for them to wake up and realize, 'oh hey did you know we can stop that guy'.

I won't argue that there are not folks who the search engines can hurt dramatically. There certainly are people who have put all their eggs in the search engine basket. I knew a gentleman who was making a really nice living selling car insurance. He was near the top of the major SE of the day, and was feeling great about life. Then the algos changed. One morning he woke up, and his site was no where to be found. He ended up going out of business, as a result. Is this a case for regulation? Is this even the SE's fault? Shame on my friend for not having a well balanced marketing plan.

I knew another guy who was making around $10,000 a day selling Lord of the Rings well, uh, rings. He woke up late, took his orders, and passed them on to an actual manufacturer. He was a black-hat, and deserved to get banned, which he eventually did. All of the sudden his cash cow was gone. Again, his fault, not the big bad SE.

blah blah blah, if you have read this far, Im quite impressed, as this is a long post. Some have claimed I like to hear myself talk, and well a topic for another day. (just don't get my wife in on that discussion)

Back to the things I said I would come back to above. With SE such a small part of the over-all picture in a well-balanced marketing plan, and given the fact that they really do not, despite arguements otherwise, have the ability to 'stop me' or anyone else from reaching the end-user, has the case for regulation been proved? Well, in the interest of avoiding the need for government regulation on forum posts, I will leave the final conclusion up to the reader.

[vayapues]

So is all regulation, 100%, bad? If not, and we accept that the price of freedom is rules and regulation, your statement is untrue. To try to debate regualtion fullstop, without any specifics, is also bizarre. How do you know SE regualtion would be "...a horrible mistake" if you don;t know what it is proposed to entail? IMHO, that makes the 1uestion not whether regulation fullstop is a good idea or abd idea, but what forms of regualtion are good and/or bad.


The debate is not about whether regulation is good or bad, it is about whether regulation is needed, or not needed.


IMHO, regulation isn't the issue in a yes do it no don't sense, but in a what is the best form sense.

Exactly!!!


To try to debate regualtion fullstop, without any specifics, is also bizarre.
Yes, yes, again, an excellent point. This is exactly what I am after. Perhaps someone can provide specifics about how search engines are abusing their so-called power, in what way, and so forth. Perhaps someone can define the word "Abuse" for us. And "Abuse Vrs. Fair Competition".

And finally, do they have any power in the first place? Power that is, that is not given to them on an individual basis by each and every website admin. In otherwords, do they have any power over me individually, unless I give it to them?