Schmidt: Google 'well-positioned' for a recession

Chief exec says company can weather a downturn because it's not dependent on any one particular market.
(From Reuters)

The story "Schmidt: Google 'well-positioned' for a recession" published March 18, 2008 at 6:37 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

Content from Reuters expires after 30 days.

[LynetteWilson67]

Complaint about Google AdWords

Dear Dr. Schmidt,

Laserfiche has had a relationship with Google for as long as Google has been a company. We have been spending more than $500,000.00 annually, on AdWords for at least five years.

We are very concerned about a problem with the relationship between Google AdWords and organic search rankings.

We consider our ranking in organic searches on your site equal in importance to ranking in paid word searches.

In spite of much effort expended on our part on Web optimization, to increase our organic search ranking, we've noticed Laserfiche.com dropping significantly, for several important keywords. To find out why, I did a lot of research and discovered that several of the sites (Ademero.com, Docmanage.com) ranked above us organically, were 'link farming and paid linking'. This is in direct violation of Google's policies.

In early February my Marketing Director and I were contacted by the Google AdWords Group. We brought this issue to their attention and asked for their assistance. A call was scheduled for the following week.

During that call, on February 7th, we were told that the AdWords group and the Google Search group do not communicate with each other and that all they could do was to file a SPAM report. As the importance of this subject cannot be overstated, the conversation became heated, however the AdWords group told us they "basically had no response" for us from the Google Search side.

On March 10th, we had our follow up call with the same people to get a status update and to discuss additional issues:

1. To find out if Google allows paid directory linking. The above
mentioned sites are linked within paid directories like SolidCrawler.com, JoeAnt.com, and WebTemplatesOnline.com.

2. To find out if Google offers a service of paid 'forum feed' to be
placed on our Website. This will allow our Website to be 'read' by Google as having a higher page count.

Their response to both issues was vague and unsatisfactory - that both practices were against Google policies yet they were clearly condoned in these instances. However they repeated that there was no action they
could take beyond filling a SPAM report. Something we have done four times previously.

They concluded the conversation by asking us to spend more money on other Google products.

As a Web designer I have always lauded Google for the purity of their organic search and the fact that cream truly does rise to the top. It now seems to me that this is no longer the case. It is also in direct conflict with your brand statement, "Do no evil".

As your practices affects us, the web sites listed above - which have the greatest organic search ranking - have least commitment to the document management industry. For example, neither is member of AIIM or exhibited at the recent AIIM conference in Boston - a show at which Google and Laserfiche exhibited.

Therefore the least qualified companies have Google's highest ranking's and the Google imprimatur.

This impacts us as a source of confusion at best and practice of fraud at worst.

Speaking for Laserfiche, I would appreciate a clarification of your polices at your earliest convenience.

Thank you for your time and attention.

Regards,

Lynette Wilson
Web Content and SEO Specialist
Laserfiche
[e-mail]

[CPCcurmudgeon]

doesn't surprise me

It's another example of how Google says one thing, but the reality is quite different. As this situation worsens, advertisers and investors will be increasingly skeptical that they're getting good ROI.

[Marcus Westrup]

I can only comment as a user,

But I agree that Google has something going wrong with the protocols they use. The last few years have given me less relevant search results, for search terms that were once trivial to process. If search results are not right, how does this effect rankings?
Is the system becoming broken? Is the database being poisoned? I don't know - but Google my be in for a fall, if these problems are not addressed.

[P. Jackson]

How is this relevant to the story?

Why don't you just send the guy an email.