Dealing with the shifting Google tide

by DazzlinDonna 

I subscribe to John Battelle’s feed, but I subscribe to a lot of feeds, so I haven’t paid much attention to how Mr. Battelle specifically feels about Google. Nevertheless, my impression has always been that he looked upon them quite favorably, but if I’m wrong, I’m sure someone will correct me. In light of my impression, however, I was really surprised to read what he wrote today on his blog, in reference to Google’s announced recommendations button (similar to StumbleUpon) that I discussed earlier. Mr. Battelle said:

Let’s push the search interface as far as it can go. It means one thing – the faster we go, the sooner the next Google breaks out….

What??!! Is the media love of Google really over? Is everyone holding their breath, waiting for the next Google killer? I’m not sure exactly when the shark-jumping moment came about, but over the last year or so, Google has somehow managed to lose considerable favor with the media. There have certainly been lots of little tide-turning moments along the way, but it’s getting more noticeable lately than ever before.

Are you prepared to switch sides in your search marketing efforts when (and if) the Googlopoly crumbles? Are you entirely dependent upon Google or have you positioned your sites to take advantage of other search engines, and even forms of traffic generation beyond search itself?

Google is often quoted as saying that we should create sites for users and not search engines. I’d like to note that we should also market to those users wherever they may be…not just those on Google.