The Insane Monopoly and Economy That Is Google Search

The name Google is almost universally synonymous with the Internet. Almost every single Internet user not only uses Google search, but relies on it to find nearly everything on the web. Google has nearly 93% of the search market, with 246 million unique users in the United States and 4.3 billion users worldwide. 

Ok, ok- everyone knows what Google is. 

Or do they?

Most people are so used to the name Google, the experience of searching for stuff online using Google, and having nearly every search tied to Google, that it’s no wonder we basically just refer to “searching” as “Googling.”

Only Boomers actually go to www.google.com, but if you’re on a browser, chances are you’re searching via Google. Google Chrome has about 63% market share, with the next highest chunk going to Safari at almost 20%. Open a new tab to search something on your browser, and chances are you’re searching Google, even if you don’t see that little “G” logo. 

So many users place their implicit trust in Google’s search algorithm and rankings that if they don’t find exactly what they’re looking for immediately, they assume it’s their own fault. Maybe they didn’t use the right “keywords” or phrasing to find the answer, or maybe they need to be more specific. 

And if you’re trying to surface your brand/company/service/product to those users, you are intrinsically tied to Google’s ever-changing algorithmic whims. Because, if your band/company/product/service is not online, you don’t exist. 

We all assume so inherently that Google IS the Internet, since it’s really our most popular and integrated option. But assuming that Google Search is the open-source Internet is not only incorrect, but it’s naive. 

When Google started, its mission was “to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

That was back in 2004 when there were like 25 websites and 4 popular ways to search for them: Google, AOL, Ask Jeeves, and something called Lycos. 

Google pretty much beat them all out over the years to become the most popular search engine in the world, with newcomers like Bing trailing very far behind. 

But now it’s 2023, 19 years later and there’s more than 1.13 billion websites in the world, and the Internet is not just for looking up information. Seventy-one percent of businesses have a website and 28% of all business activity is conducted online. 

That’s a pretty big crowd to try to stand out in. How on earth is your business going to find the right users or customers?  

It used to be pretty simple. If a user searched for a certain term or keyword, and you had it on your website, voila, you would pop up as a result. 

Then, some developers decided they could rank more often or higher than competitors if they had more keywords, competitive keywords, and other synonymous terms on their site. They started “keyword stuffing” their webpages to try to trick the system. 

Well, Google couldn’t have a few blackhats best them so they updated the algorithm in 2011 to make those sites rank lower on SERP and “higher quality” sites rank higher. As a result, news and social networking sites surged in rankings and sites with tons of ads took a big hit. This change reportedly affected almost 12% of all search results at the time. People started complaining that scrapers and copyright infringers were getting more hits than original content. 

Oops! Time for an update. Google released an update a year later to crack down spam, content farms, scrapers, and ad-heavy sites.

But how will Google handle that wiley keyword issue? In 2013 they released another update to the algorithm, this time placing greater emphasis on semantic and natural language queries rather than individual keywords. No more worrying about structuring your searches with the right words, now Google can understand whole sentences and  somehow get the correct meaning to serve you a better result!

Not only did web developers have to basically abandon keyword strategies on their sites, but now Google was introducing new ways of evaluating them like page-linking, on-page title tags/elements tags, URLs, and a new emphasis on “high-quality, relevant content,” whatever that means. 

Ok, well at least they can still find the right customers or users as long as they keep up with all those new things, right? Wrong. It’s a year later and Google decides that actually, location is a super important part of search, so now they’re going to prioritize ranking results by locality, so also, do that.

We’re chugging along and now it’s 2015 and more than half of the population has smartphones and those websites are looking pretty janky on a 5-inch screen. 

Time for an update! Google announced another huge update to the algorithm that will heavily demote mobile-unfriendly websites for searches on mobile devices. 

So if you’re a developer, now not only do you have to keep up with your desktop website, but you’ve also got to design, develop, and deploy a totally different mobile website, and make sure it’s optimized. 

But what’s happening at Google corporate? In 2016, Amit Singal stepped down as VP of Search after 15 years and was replaced by John Giannadrea, an Artificial Intelligence expert. 

Foreshadowing, anyone?

While all of this is going on, Google has been running its advertising business, AdWords, which it started in 2000. What’s a better way to get to the top without having to do that much work? Pay money! How American of them. Basically, you pay Google to place your search result at the top of the page for relevant searches, and they make it look like a regular text-based result so that users click on it. Very cool. They also introduced visual ads in 2016, with product images appearing in search results related to queries. In addition to Google Ads on search, advertisers can also pay to have their ads shown to Google’s partners, for a bit more money and a bit less profit.  Oh, also, they’ll put 4 blocks of ads at the top of the screen, so the organic search results are pushed way down.

Still here? Let’s keep going, we’re almost done!

A few years later, in 2019, another big update to the algorithm was released, this time to support the natural language processing of queries. And in 2021, those become even more specific with similar businesses that are physically closer to the user appearing as search results, rather than just the larger businesses that may be further away. 

2022 rolls around and Google pushes out a Core Update, but uh oh, most news and media publishers, reference sites, and stock photo sites are hugely negatively affected. The good news is that video is now all the rage, so YouTube, TikTok, Disney+, Hulu, and Twitch get the largest gains in rankings.

I wonder how that impacts the way people receive and share information? Eh, it’s probably fine.

Well, now it’s really hard for normal websites to get clicks so they focus all of their attention on creating content, content, content. Sound familiar? Well, Google strikes again with an update called “The Helpful Content Update” aimed at devaluing content that is primarily created to rank well in search engines, rather than to inform or help people. 

Now it’s 2023. Phew, we made it! Just a few more, I promise.

Early 2023, we see a huge spike in volatility on search from the March update, with shopping affected the most. Uh-oh, that’s our cash cow! Better fix it, quick. Six months later, we saw another huge “Helpful Content Update,” rolled out September 14th. 

This update contained some of the most important changes to search rankings we’ve seen in years:

• Google loosened guidance on AI-Generated content

• Previous guidelines always emphasized that human-created content would be prioritized, but not anymore. This is where that Exec-level change up we saw in 2016 finally, unfortunately, comes into play. The original guidance said they wanted to ensure users get “original, helpful content written by people, for people” in search results. The new guidance? Well, they dropped that “written by people” part. Now it’s “original, helpful content created for people.” Interesting. 

• They’re cracking down on third-party content

• A huge number of websites employ a strategy where they host third-party content on the main part of their site or on a subdomain with the idea of harnessing some of that ranking power. Now, if you have third-party content anywhere on your site, you’ll be not just negatively impacted, but blocked from indexing. 

• There are updates to the E-E-A-T guidelines for content

• E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. These are a mix of factors used to evaluate your digital content and then rank it. So what does that actually mean for digital creators, businesses, and users? Well according to Google, “Of these aspects, trust is most important. The others contribute to trust, but content doesn't necessarily have to demonstrate all of them. For example, some content might be helpful based on the experience it demonstrates, while other content might be helpful because of the expertise it shares.” Still confused? Me too. 

To summarize, in one of the biggest algorithm updates we’ve seen from Google, it seems like they’re making it even harder to not only rank for your content, but to even understand how to evaluate your content according to their guidelines to make it rank. They’re purposefully vague in all of their documentation, with phrases like whether your site has “a primary purpose or focus,” or if a reader will “leave feeling like they've had a satisfying experience.” Who can follow all of this, let alone actually create content that follows these guidelines? The answer, I think, is paying someone to do all of this for you, and AI. And who leads the search team? An AI expert. And what has Google invested in AI? Billions. How many billions? Well they just invested $2 billion in the AI startup, Anthropic, to give you an idea. 

Why did I just spend 3 pages talking about the history of Google and specifically, its Ad business and investments in AI? Because like I said at the beginning, if you’re still thinking that Google Search is the open-source Internet, you’re not only incorrect, but naive. Google wants to make money, and not just that, they want to continue to deliver record-breaking profits, every single year. How does the tech behemoth do it? Advertising. It’s not a secret to anyone who watches the stock market. But for an average user or an average business owner, it’s important to realize that Google is Pay to Play. I mean, 43% of small businesses planned to invest in the performance of their site this year alone. 

In terms of that “organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful” stuff? Well, even Larry Page thinks Google’s mission statement needs an update. And if you’re an Ex-Googler like I am (and more than 15,000 others this year) you know that Google quietly dropped the “Don’t be evil” mantra they used for 20 years. Coincidence? 

The cat and mouse game between web developers and Google Search is long gone, with the most recent updates to SERP leaving small businesses and startups in the dust. The only thing Google cares about is profit- and it will keep manipulating the “Internet” until someone stops them or a better alternative emerges. 

Until then, I’m off to try to optimize my clients’ websites and content, just one of my many full-time jobs. Not to mention my own startup business, Gitsul Group. Thanks for reading and I hope you got a new perspective on Googling - oops I mean searching the Internet.