The Death of Google Search?

Dramatic title, isn’t it? It may look a bit clickbait-y, but there’s no denying that Google Search hasn’t looked healthy for a few years now. ‘Death’ is a strong word; it’s probably not going anywhere in the next few years, but its ivory tower could start to crumble within the next decade.

All good things must come to an end, right?

Is Google Search getting Worse?

Google is a huge part of our lives. It’s the go-to for information, shopping, social media, reviews, or even something as simple as checking a recipe before we make dinner.

It earned this reputation too, since its inception in 1997 it has been providing us with all the info we need, helped us find our jobs, and is often considered the best tour guide in the digital world.

However, Google Search nowadays isn’t the bastion of reliable information we need. Search for anything and you’ll have to scroll past multiple paid ads (whose deep pockets are the only reason they’re there) and even the newly introduced AI Overview, which still is fraught with outdated or misleading information.

It’s even worse if you are looking for a product. A line of images from various suppliers looks great, and can help you find what you need, but this doesn’t guarantee quality. If you prefer to support smaller businesses, instead of Amazon, Temu, and the other retail giants, it’s almost impossible to find them unless you dig deep.

If you have to scroll down half the page to find what you’re looking for, that’s not a very good search engine. And the results you do find may still be biased or have tricked Google into promoting them (more about that later).

Why is Google Search Bad?

So what happened? Google still is the no.1 search engine by a huge margin – and the most-visited website in the world – so why is their product worse than it used to be?

Well, the phrase ‘too big to fail’ springs to mind. We see this a lot, especially in tech. If you’re THE company, dominating the stock market and stomping out any rivals, there’s a lot less pressure to provide the best product. Apple, Amazon, Temu, and more rely on brand recognition, convenience, and advertising, not the quality of their products.

In the early days of Google Search, they almost operated at a loss. Any income they had was being reinvested back into the company, making the product they were selling as good as it could be.

Now, everyone goes to Google, no matter how much better Bing or its other rivals may be. They’re at the top of the food chain, with no desire to innovate unless they need something to show off to shareholders. They no longer care about the product; they just want profit margins to increase.

The way they’re doing this is by prioritizing companies that directly pay them money. That’s how sponsored ads came to be. If you have the capital, you simply pay Google a fee and they’ll make you no.1 whenever you want to be. SEO is irrelevant; their website can be a blank page, and it would make no difference.

We see this a lot with products. Items that are being reviewed terribly because of their poor quality are still being promoted, simply because the company can afford it. But because it’s the first product you see, people will continue to buy it, and so the cycle continues. Positive reviews used to be a core element of SEO, now they’re only relevant if you want to grow organically.

The Impact on SEO

We can’t deny that SEO has, in some ways, negatively affected Google’s search results. With a few tricks or a savvy content strategy, your business can appear higher than your rivals. These tricks are harder to pull off now, SEO used to be a much easier thing to optimise for, but it’s still not a level playing field.

This by no means you should stop using SEO. The game may be rigged in some people’s favour, but that’s not a reason to cut your losses and stop playing. We’ve shown dozens of times that a tiny company with a small budget can outpace much bigger competitors. If you have a quality product to sell, we’ll increase the traffic to your site so as many customers as possible find it.

Thankfully, one thing Google’s algorithms continue to do is promote quality content and websites that work well. This means that if your website is better than others, it will appear higher on Google search. Organic SEO takes time, but Google’s decline has not made success impossible if you aren’t willing to pay their fees.

Google Gemini

This year, AI is by far the biggest topic in the tech world.

Compared to other big companies, Google was relatively late to jump on the AI bandwagon, crafting their existing generative AI systems and purchasing companies like Bard to create a rival to OpenAI’s infamous LLM (Large Language Model): our old friend ChatGPT.

This was exciting for tech aficionados who wanted to see what a company with infinite resources could bring to the table, to really test what generative AI was capable of.

The result was disappointing at best, terrifying at worst. Powered by Gemini, Google’s ‘AI Overview’ search results were packed with misinformation and poor communication. It was immediately obvious that having access to all the world’s information doesn’t guarantee a successful AI model.

Despite it’s incredible successes, Google has never been particularly good at innovation. Since the turn of the century, we’ve seen Google announce tonnes of new products, only for them to be quietly cancelled soon after. Google Glass, Video, Talk, Bump, Trips, to name just a few.

Now, many argue that it’s hard for large companies to innovate, and many of its failed products did lead to better ones in the future. It has a few major successes too: Maps, Gmail, and of course Search, are why it’s one of the world’s biggest companies.

Announcing a new product is a proven way to boost share prices in the short term, keeping stakeholders and investors happy. Gemini, if it isn’t improved soon, could be the next product that is quietly swept under the rug if the AI bubble bursts.

How does this affect the success of Search? Well, the bad press Gemini received upon launch made Google look vulnerable for the first time in a long while. If it continues to only care about the money, its competitors could start to coax users away from Google, especially if Search continues to be frustrating or unreliable.

What’s Next for Google?

In a recent blog, we talked about how Bing, who has always been stuck in almighty Google’s shadow, is starting to steal more of the pie. It has a much better search engine – a product that it cares about improving.

We’d never suggest that a growing business takes its site off Google and move to Bing. After all, the majority of traffic is still coming from the juggernaut. But it’s important to keep in mind that Google isn’t ‘too big to fail’, and a few more missteps could make it time for a change.

We’re not Google employees. As an SEO company, we optimise sites for all search engines, and only focus on Google because that’s where the searches happen. We care about transparency, explaining to our clients exactly what SEO is, and how it should be done. So if the time comes when Google isn’t the place to ply your trade, we’ll be sure to let you know.

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