SEM Beware: Google deals blow to search engine marketing

Think the almighty Google PageRank was an impossible organic nut to crack? Even fearsome Matt Cutts won’t be able to finessse his way through the Sisyphean search engine marketing challenge that will be the “new and improved” Google.com.
Google has turned its back on its core tenet of purported organic search democracy on the Web and in its wake has dealt two major blows to Webmasters and search marketers the world over:
1) Google top ten organic SERP result set is gone,
2) Google pits Web pages against other content in a perpetual SERP smackdown.
The “best answer is still the best answer” Marissa Meyers cheers. Really? Her proclamation on its face is misleading.
Despite Google’s top-tier cheerleading contingent, Google engineers and the top Googler himself know that Google does NOT provide its users with the “best” answer, far from it.
CEO Eric Schmidt was asked by a search conference attendee last summer:

When a user does a search, they oftentimes come back and say, “Well, the first result, that’s the most trustworthy one, the most truthful one. I put my faith in it.” And maybe this is a problem of less-savvy users more than more savvy users. Do you think that Google will ever try to do something to say, “Hey, users, pay attention – you’re not always going to be getting something highly truthful. You’re not always going to be getting something that you should believe in.” Is there some type of disclaimer that you guys would ever think about? I know that it doesn’t exist right now, but…

Schmidt:

That’s sort of like “objects may be closer than they appear in the mirror.” I’m not sure that there’s a lot of confusion on this. I think most of the people that I talk with understand that Google is not a truth machine and does not represent it to be so. We do the best we can.
As we get better we might have the problem you’re describing. People might say, “This thing is so good, it’s a close to a truth machine as you can.” But then I’m sure someone will come up with stuff, probably invent some way to make sure that untruthful things get there. So I don’t think in our lifetimes we’ll ever get to a perfect answer.

Vice President Adam Bosworth says that for Google, fuzzy problem resolution “works really well” in search because “imprecision is better than nothing” and searchers ”don’t know if we are right.” We make educated guesses and people are pretty forgiving, Bosworth happily underscores.
So, what are searchers and Webmasters to do if there will be even less rhyme or reason to Google SERPs from here on in? Is Google organic search worship worth it any more? NO.
Sergey Brin may want to take over the search world completely and believe that he can, but that doesn’t mean that it is in the best interest of the Web world to continue serving as a docile co-dependent.
RISE UP, WEBMASTERS AND DRIVE YOUR OWN, BRANDED, HIGH-QUALITY DESTINATION WEB TRAFFIC YOURSELF!
Now more than ever: Who Needs Google?

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