Is reliance on Google a mistake?

[fisicx]

Many many years ago ranking on any search engine was relatively simple. The number of website was small (compared to today) and competition a lot less. Then black hat SEO forced the search engines to adopt different techniques to determine rank and webmasters (as they were once known) has to work harder to rank their websites. Links were key to success until the spammers overloaded the system and things changed again. It's now getting even harder to rank a site even locally especially as AI results are dominating.

Then along came Google My Business (now Google Business Profiles) and a whole new set of rules and criteria. For a while all was well until the 'local guides' dumped millions of junk reviews forcing Google to rethink how they ranked local businesses. And now we have AI running the show causing all sort of mayhem.

Clever businesses are moving away from Google and finding new sources of leads. General search, local search and GBP have become less important for many as there are far more good sources of leads than just Google.

My contention is businesses should no longer rely on the free marketing channels offered by Google. It's likely to get much worse before it gets better. If it ever gets better.

 

[JS Girard]

I think a lot of people have been saying what can be summarized as "you cannot afford to ignore Google, but you should be figuring out other ways to get good leads" even before things started going to shit.

 

[fisicx]

My main business no longer needs Google. I get the occasional lead but all the big clients come from other sources. Never, ever, ever rely on a single channel (eg GBP) for your leads. As many have discovered it can disappear overnight leaving you with nothing.

 

[JS Girard]

My main business no longer needs Google. I get the occasional lead but all the big clients come from other sources. Never, ever, ever rely on a single channel (eg GBP) for your leads. As many have discovered it can disappear overnight leaving you with nothing.

in my experience, B2B and B2C are very different beasts as far as GBP goes. I still think Google cannot completely be ignored even if it's not a direct source of leads because if a prospect ever needs to look you up/research you, they're probably going through google in some way.

 

[fisicx]

in my experience, B2B and B2C are very different beasts as far as GBP goes. I still think Google cannot completely be ignored even if it's not a direct source of leads because if a prospect ever needs to look you up/research you, they're probably going through google in some way.

I agree. But ranking for your company name isn't the same as ranking for products or services you supply.