Not too long ago, Kinderstart, a parental advice web site, was in the media for suing Google over loosing their rankings, and as a result, loosing traffic and revenue. As part of their lawsuit, Kinderstart wants Google to reveal how it ranks web sites.
While this is (in my opinion) a frivolous and stupid lawsuit, it can teach business owners a valuable lesson about what happens when we rely too much on any one source of revenue for our business. This doesn’t just apply to the internet either. If all of your new clients come from your advertising in a particular magazine, and that magazine goes out of business or sells your advertising space to another advertiser willing to pay a higher price, where do you think that will leave you?
This doesn’t even touch on the fact that Google, and every other search engine is allowed to do what ever they want. If you managed to achieve high ranking for your web site, either by chance, or as the result of an effective SEO campaign, you should see it as gravy. They are not required or obligated to even list your web site, let alone list it on the first page. As their algorithms change, your web site may move up or down in the SERPs, but remember that their customers are the visitors using their web site to search for something, not the web site owners. If some guy started a business tomorrow called “The Good Business Bus” and drove passengers around to all of the local businesses that he felt were reputable, you would probably be pretty happy when he came by your business with his passengers. On the other hand, if his opinion of you business changed and he no longer stopped there with his busload of passengers, you probably wouldn’t try to sue him because you know you would have no legal ground to stand on. The Kinderstart/Google story is the same, unfortunately, Kinderstart hasn’t been bright enough to realize it yet.
Internet marketing and search engine optimization are necessary components of a complete marketing campaign, but you should never rely on them as your only source of new business.
