Google - Seo Strategic Partner Or Competitor

By Author: Larry Tang
Total Articles: 507
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Since Google announced its acquisition of DoubleClick, there has been a great deal of angst from SEO Firms and SEO professionals alike. The reason: An SEO Company named Performics was included in the purchase as a part of DoubleClick's business. SEO companies were concerned that the giant of the industry, Google, would now have a vehicle to unfairly compete with all Internet Marketing Companies by providing access to information that is not currently made available to SEO Firms in delivering their Internet Marketing Services to their clients. In addition, there have been many concerns expressed about the cost and price in fear that Google might package, discount or even give away high organic search rankings in special arrangements also not available to competing Search Engine Marketing Companies.

While these concerns are, of course, natural and understandable, I suggest that Google has far more to lose by engaging in such acts of obvious anti-competitive behavior. Common sense tells me that Google is pretty smart and they are not ignorant to business or anti-trust history. You need only look at the Telecommunications ...
... ACT of 1996 to see what Google would be faced with if it went down the slippery slope of anti-competitive behavior. To summarize, the ACT forced the incumbent Local Exchange Carriers (LECs e.g Verizon) to provide all monopoly services such as local dial tone at terms and conditions that were identical to the terms and conditions it charges itself. In essence this was the backdrop for fair competition. This involved rigorous accounting and exposure for the LECs and stifled their growth and diverted their attention from new opportunities for a number of years. They are still struggling to find and reinvent themselves. Just look at the stock performance of any LEC or Long Distance Service Provider for the past dozen years; they have been stuck in the mud. I maintain that Google is surely aware of this.

Recent developments support this belief and certainly should ease the concerns of SEO Professionals everywhere. On April 2, 2008, Google announced that they are splitting Performics into two separate companies: affiliate marketing and search marketing. More importantly, they are selling the search marketing business to a third party. On their official GoogleBlog, Google stated that, It's clear to us that we do not want to be in the search engine marketing business. Maintaining objectivity in both search and advertising is paramount to Google's mission and core to the trust we ask from our users. For this reason, we plan to sell the Performics search marketing business to a third party. We believe this will allow us to maintain objectivity and the search marketing business to continue to grow and innovate and serve its customers. While we have not yet identified a buyer, we've received preliminary interest from a number of our current partners. Search Marketing will continue to run as a separate entity until the division is sold.

These are words, not actions at the time of this writing. However, Google didn't have to go on record, yet they have and without ambiguity.

We need to give Google the benefit of the doubt until they really give us reason to do so. Search Engine Marketers are true assets for Google. The better job we do, the more valuable their Google Ads are and that drives revenue and growth. Search is Google's core business and is responsible for virtually all of their profitability. They don't want to threaten that by through unfair or anti-competitive practices. This would lead them into a bunker mentality; not dissimilar to what telecommunications giants did. And, contrary to what many are thinking, Google has yet to demonstrate that they are very good at much else than search. None of their other ventures or experiments has yielded much in the way of profits; at least not yet.

Lastly, SEM firms need to not see Google as the be-all and the end-all of their business. While it is true that Google has an overwhelming share of search engine traffic and are leaving Yahoo and MSN as distant also-rans, Internet Marketing should not just be about Google or the other search engines; in fact we are not about Google we are about generating relevant TRAFFIC. There are many methods, growing every day, of generating great traffic without the need just to optimize for The Google. We should see ourselves more as Website Relevant Traffic Optimizers.