Content Is Not King, Google Is King

One of the most common expressions that one hears from webmasters and SEO experts - content is king. In other words, quality content on the web will rise to the top and miraculously achieve visibility in all the search engines.

In certain rare instances this may be the case, but for the most part, in recent years, this statement is no longer valid. Things have really changed on the world wide web.

Quality content is not king, Google is king.

Webmasters and online marketers should learn this hard truth, if they want to compete on the web in the most lucrative keyword markets. Google controls the flow of the most valuable keyword traffic on the web and site owners have little or no say in what content receives visibility in Google's listings.

These listings or Google's rankings are entirely at the whim of Google - they can lower or raise your rankings at the drop of a hat. The long series of Panda Updates proved that point to many affected webmasters - many of them who believed they were unfairly penalized by Google.

In essence, Google controls 65% or more of the lucrative keyword traffic on the web, this majority share has made Google top dog, head boss or simply king of the web. Call it what you will, but Google has the final say on what content gets displayed.

That fact needs to be repeated.

Regardless of quality, Google has the final word on what gets displayed in its index and listings. Some experts even believe Google is ditching SEO and Free organic results from their popular online search site. Organic results are being displayed lower and lower in the listings... in some cases below the fold for the many important lucrative keywords.

All the while Google is supposedly penalizing webmasters and marketers for placing links (especially affiliate links) above the fold on their webpages. Google can benefit from these listings above the fold but webmasters can not - otherwise their sites and pages will be penalized by Google.

If you're wondering why all this is important, just this simple rule alone regarding links being above or below the fold has resulted in millions, if not billions, of dollars changing hands. In other words, Google is directly controlling clicks/traffic that's worth billions for the receiving companies and businesses which get the click.

Naturally, since Adwords is Google's bread and butter, they would like to see the majority of that traffic and business go to their advertisers and clients. There's nothing wrong with this practice, unless Google is unfairly manipulating the results to favor its own interests?

That's why some believe Google is lessening the importance of SEO and free organic results, if they can pull all their listings via data from Google Analytics, Google Chrome Users, YouTube Stats, Google+... they can have a completely "in-house" ranking system which no outside body can dictate what gets ranked or displayed.

One which will also be harder to "game" than the present system, which is ripe with link buying, SEO services, affiliate marketers... gaming the rankings to get top spots. Truth be told, in very competitive markets, there is nothing natural or free about ranking high in organic results. They are all paid listings for the most part.

Given all this corruption of search results, why shouldn't Google develop its own ranking systems? If Google is not taking data or information from the public domain, then the public should have little or no say in what Google does with their own information. Is this Google's path or roadmap for the future? Could it be a clever way of fighting any "anti-trust" or "monopoly" issues?

Just look at the uproar over the recent introduction of "Google Plus Your World" - with many webmasters and site owners saying Google is guilty of too much "self-promotion" because only the profiles and posts from its own social network Google+ are displayed in personal search once the user is logged into their Google account.

Twitter and Facebook profiles and posts are at a great disadvantage because they're not displayed in the most prominent search engine on the planet? Google says they are denied access to the data from Twitter and Facebook, otherwise they would list it.

Again, since all this is done "in-house" and their own data, Google can display it any way it wants, regardless of SEO or organic search results. Is Google once again sacrificing relevancy to further their own interests? The same thing they're doing with placing their own ads above the fold and other results much lower.

Like any company which gains a monopoly, there is a great risk for misuse of that power. Google is not immune, many say Google will settle for nothing less than total control of the entire web - search, video and social. At the moment there is nothing stopping them from achieving that goal, especially if they use agressive tactics like the ones described above.

Only thing about kings, they sometimes lose their heads. Not very likely in this case because Google is going nowhere, but unless they change their current direction of heavily self-promoting their own products, Google could lose a lot of respect among the general public. Once your good reputation is gone, it is very hard to get it back... any old Panda could tell you that.

All views, opinions and conclusions expressed in this article are solely those of the author who is a full time online affiliate marketer. He earns a living by ranking high in the search engines for lucrative keywords. His main site offers Free Guides on everything associated with running a business from Corporate Business Gifts to Online Fax Providers to Internet Marketing Tools. Titus Hoskins Copyright.

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