Despite Microsoft’s increased efforts to dethrone Google, the company still controls a majority of the search market. Hundreds of millions of people use Google to search the Web on a daily basis. One entrepreneur has argued that Google’s search engine isn’t as efficient as it should be, however. Aaron Harris, co-founder of the website Tutorspree, noted that “Google won search by providing the best organic results users had ever seen.” But since then, the company has begun to replace organic results with “revenue generating Google products.” In fact, Harris calculates that real search results only account for 13% of screen real estate above the fold when searching Google with a 13-inch laptop. He noted that Google’s Adwords account for 29% of the page, while a Google Map takes up 7% and the navigation bar occupies 14% of the page.
Things are even worse if you access the search engine from a mobile device. Depending on your location, you may see no organic results whatsoever until you begin scrolling.
“Open your iPhone. Search for ‘Italian Food.’ What do you see? If you’re in NYC, you see 0 organic results,” he noted. “You see an ad unit taking half the page, and then a Google owned Zagat listing. Start scrolling, you’ll see a map, then Google local listings. After four full-page scrolls, you’ll have the organic listings in front of you.”
Harris goes on to explain that Google is changing the search engine that “made it great,” adding that it now caters to “the garden of Google products.” He goes on to say that “if you compete with Google in any way, you’re in its crosshairs,” warning that a company’s “chance of ranking high enough to garner traffic are virtually nil and getting smaller.”
