Good morning, Marketers, is Google getting worse…or is it the web?

That’s the question ex-Googler Marissa Mayer posed on a recent Freakonomics podcast episode. “When you see the quality of your search results go down, it’s natural to blame Google and be like, ‘Why are they worse?'” Mayer said. “To me, the more interesting and sophisticated thought is if you say, ‘Wait, but Google’s just a window onto the web.’ The real question is, why is the web getting worse?”

It is always easy to blame Google – but clearly Google wants to deliver high-quality search results and maintain search quality through algorithm updates, E-A-T and more, as we heard directly from Google’s VP of Search Hyung-Jin Kim earlier this week at our opening SMX Next keynote

Another interesting tidbit we learned from Mayer: Google ended up accidentally running an eight-year experiment where 1% of Google search users saw no ads. After analyzing the results, Mayer discovered that this group did fewer Google searches than the other 99% of searchers who saw ads. 

Danny Goodwin,
Managing Editor, Search Engine Land & SMX

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