Usability Consultancy, Website Reviews, Website Optimisation

Can Google Keep Up?

Internet Marketing is a fiercely competitive business, we all know that. The big question in the minds of most SEOs is something like "how can I beat the search engines?" - or, in other words, "how can I 'game' the search engines?"...

That, I can assure you, is never my question because I firmly believe in the main reason that the best search engines exist, and that is to provide the most relevant search results for searchers. Sounds simple doesn't it. But, it's obviously not as simple as that when thousands of people ('expert SEOs') are constantly figuring out how to stay one step ahead of what Google (and co) will do next, rather than work completely within the scope of what the search engines can deliver to the 'honest' folks who simply want to provide relevant results.

For those who know me well enough and anyone who has been to my SEO workshops and internet marketing training courses you'll know how often I rant on about how much I hate the way the Internet has been hijacked by greed and 'under the radar' tactics that spoil all the enjoyable aspects of the web.

Just the other day I was looking for some software I had been asked about at a recent workshop, and I was amazed at the results. Shown on the left is what appears to be a fairly innocent list of search engine results in Google... But...

Approximately 7 of the pages listed are virtually duplicates of the product developer's main sales page.

Duplicate Content!

That in itself annoys the crap out of me because Google is supposed to be steadfastly against the use of duplicate content, but, I can't knock the internet marketing techniques being used.

Basically they have promoted multiple websites that all provide the same sales pitch but dressed each page slightly differently with different page titles and descriptions – which are enough – it seems – to fool Google to believing each page is unique.

Is it really that easy to pull the wool over the eyes of Google?

It seems so... Unfortunately!

A few years ago it would have been fairly simple to turn to Google and search for a product review and get several links in the search results that did, in fact, go directly to original content about the product searched for – but just lately I've seen a big change in trend and many searches bring up results that are dominated by sales page after sales page that are almost all the same.

So the big question:
Is Google losing the battle against website marketing?