Google's bottom line: Why you shouldn't expect any favours

When you read Google's mission statement about 'organising the world's information,' or their number one goal to provide the 'best user experience possible ... (and) ... serve you, rather than our own internal goal or bottom line,' it's easy to forget that they're a publicly traded, self-serving company. There is an inherent danger involved in this for anyone carrying out online marketing. You can forget that you're dealing with a ruthless, pragmatic business, and not the benevolent custodians of an open resource, and that can make you careless about the way you approach their guidelines. Here's a brief look at how Google control their business, and why you should do your best to pay attention to their business needs.

Playing FTC under the table

If you want to get a window into how Google really views their users versus their bottom line, the 2012 FTC report into their practices is a good start. The report paints a stark picture of how Google 'reduced innovation and increased transaction costs among advertisers and third-party businesses, and also degraded the quality of Google's rivals in search.' Their practice of 'scraping' content from other companies and then bullying them into submission with threats of complete exclusion from search results meant that companies could not reap the 'benefits of their innovations' and that ultimately they have 'diminished the incentive' of online companies to invest in 'new innovative content.' The net result is more revenue for Google and a less exciting, less competitive web for users as a whole.

So that effectively puts the mission statement to rest. If you're curious about the results of these findings: the people involved in the report recommended that court action be carried out against Google over the points raised, but this was ultimately overruled by the higher-ups. The only reason we have part of the report at all was an accidental leak.

Enough business bashing

So Google is a business - that's the real bottom line. This isn't a bad thing necessarily, and in a way it makes the role of an SEO specialist all the more straightforward. There is no altruism involved in the process, you simply have to create content that serves Google best by meeting their guidelines, and you'll be rewarded for your results.

The happy thing about all this - or to put it another way, the ultimate irony - is that even if the FTC have shown fairly conclusively that Google isn't about putting the user first, new SEO content has to do just that. Google is pushing for more relevance, better content, and higher compatibility across a range of devices, because it helps their ad revenues, and you need to comply with that because if you don't, your ability to market your business online will suffer as a result.

See the light

So there you have it, despite the mission statements, the friendly homepage doodles, and the talk about putting users above the bottom line, it turns out that our relationship with Google is all about doing business after all. Once you've made that connection as an online marketer, it's a lot harder to be unpleasantly surprised.