I've said this before a time or more: Google is the new yellow pages, and not much more. Sure they could also be considered a UPostalService 2.0
- one that is openly reading your stuff and building data profiles, partially using that data in order to profit -
Part of this is google's fault, from things like expanding rich snippets, expanding shopping results (which as a consumer I like this direction, just wish it was like it was back in the day - less censored)
Part of this is bigger money can pollute the results better than a micro business.
Google will stay an important piece of the internet, people will continue to use it a lot, mainly due to android / maps / gmail.
The value of their search results has not only been on a decline from an end user searching perspective, but as a business owner / content creator as well - google does not send as much traffic to people's sites as they did say pre-panda 1 one days - for many reasons.
This is changing the value of seo, and the value of google for many.
When google gives you the answer for free (rich snippets) with no click - there is less incentive for place X to publish the answers for google to republish.
Google is updated frequently for locations and hours by businesses - and it's main value imho will continue to be for local / brick / mortar / maps / navigation..
for many other subjects in which people actually search for information, I have been witnessing more and more people, including myself, skipping right over google and going straight to youtube / reddit / amazon / hn / fb / etc - the research there often yields deeper fruit that google is not going to show in the first 5 pages / 50 results (plus 15 ads).. if at all.
google continues to censor and people continue to look elsewhere for info. I don't see this changing.
But yeah, the yellow pages aspect, that is still a thing, and has become quite competitive (and more and more gamed sadly)
Part of this is google's fault, from things like expanding rich snippets, expanding shopping results (which as a consumer I like this direction, just wish it was like it was back in the day - less censored)
Part of this is bigger money can pollute the results better than a micro business.
Google will stay an important piece of the internet, people will continue to use it a lot, mainly due to android / maps / gmail.
The value of their search results has not only been on a decline from an end user searching perspective, but as a business owner / content creator as well - google does not send as much traffic to people's sites as they did say pre-panda 1 one days - for many reasons.
This is changing the value of seo, and the value of google for many.
When google gives you the answer for free (rich snippets) with no click - there is less incentive for place X to publish the answers for google to republish.
Google is updated frequently for locations and hours by businesses - and it's main value imho will continue to be for local / brick / mortar / maps / navigation..
for many other subjects in which people actually search for information, I have been witnessing more and more people, including myself, skipping right over google and going straight to youtube / reddit / amazon / hn / fb / etc - the research there often yields deeper fruit that google is not going to show in the first 5 pages / 50 results (plus 15 ads).. if at all.
google continues to censor and people continue to look elsewhere for info. I don't see this changing.
But yeah, the yellow pages aspect, that is still a thing, and has become quite competitive (and more and more gamed sadly)
small data points / opinions I admit.