While I can’t profess to know the internal workings or conversations inside Google, I can tell you something that I know they are afraid of and it isn’t rocket science and it isn’t Bing either. Can you guess what this might be? I can tell you they are afraid of the same thing everyone else in business is afraid o – not being used or not being relevant.
Google’s dream is to have everyone use them to find people, places, and things. If you don’t know, “Google it” and you can find about anything and everything. And they have to absolutely love the fact that there are billions of pieces of new information entering the internet every year – that makes things harder to find and thus you need Google to cut through all this noise and find what you are looking for. This is how the search engine game is played and is well known to all of us – it is the standard. But there is another option for your business…
What if you could be found by your prospects and they never had to “Google you” to find you? What if you were found ahead of your competition regularly and you weren’t even on “Page One” of the results the search engines retrieved? What if you didn’t have to pay for all that SEO and you were still “top-of-mind” to your customers and prospects? Does any of this sound attractive?
This happens to a select group of businesses every day – it’s called “word-of-mouth” and is the most powerful way to get found without worrying about whether Google likes you or not. That’s because when someone tells someone else about you (either in person or online) they don’t say, “Oh, Bob at ZYX company is awesome and if you want it done right, just go to Google and search for Bob at ZYX Company.” No, what they do say is, Oh, Bob at ZYX company is awesome and if you want it done right, call Bob. You can find him at www.ZYXCompany.com and when you visit them online you can read their interesting stories as well.”
This makes Word-of-Mouth the most dangerous enemy to Google because in this situation, Google isn’t even in the equation when this occurs. If your audience doesn’t have to go to Google and search for you because they have the “exact URL”, they will bypass the search engines altogether. Because of the recommendation by your friend or colleague, this goes around the need for a search engine and directly to learning more about you and your product.
This scares Google to death – being cut out of loop of someone finding what they need without doing a “search for it.” Think about it…how many of your customers, partners, friends etc. are helping your current prospects bypass Google? If there isn’t a strategic process in your company to help your audience bypass Google, you are missing a huge opportunity and spending far more cash than needed on SEO when you might not even need to. Think about a new benchmark for your company; how to get more traffic direct to you and having your prospects spending less time on the internet searching for you…this is the FUTURE model for how social media can really drive more revenue while reducing costs – might be worth considering…
