Google searches how relevant are they

A recent article in OPP magazine asks the question as to whether Google is friend or foe for business trying to get their messages out to the buying public.

Immaterial of whether business itself believes the search engine serves their marketing requirement perhaps a more important question is “do Google still provide the service they did to the public when searching for relevant information”.

Quotes from Google themselves state that the recent Penguin and Panda changes penalize businesses that have spent money on trying to boost their rankings and benefits those that spent time on the quality and content of their sites. What a load of baloney.

I am sorry but logic says that it follows that in general those companies that spent money on optimization also spent money and time on keeping their sites relevant and pertinent to the search terms they were trying to access. Why spend lots of money on site optimization just to have a site nobody was interested in. You spend money to gain clients, if the site is not relevant potential clients will not transact with you so all the money spent on ranking highly is wasted.

Of course a few sites will have focused entirely on optimization at the cost of the quality of the site but these will be few and far between. According to Jayson De Mers CEO of AudienceRoom the changes will benefit in the short term the small sites that engaged in quality content, building ethical links and avoiding sketchy techniques.

So let us put the quality of search theory to the test.

For many years International Mortgage Solutions the company I own ranked highly on page 1 of Google when searching under Spanish Mortgages, this is the activity we are expert in.

Yes "hands up" I have spent over the years various amounts of money on web optimization but I also have spent many hours and money on keeping my website up to date, relevant and user friendly.Since the changes of last year we have however disappeared on Google without a trace to pages 8 or 9.

Below is an analysis of the sites that have benefited from the changes and now rank on page 1 and lets look at what kind of "quality" they are providing to serious clients who actually want to have a mortgage in Spain.

Of the first 10 sites showing we have

Euro residents – www.euroresidents.com/property/spain_mortgages.htm This is a portal for everything Spanish who have a small and out of date section on Spanish Mortgages. They guide you to Orange Finance who if you then search on net appear to no longer exist.

Which magazine- www.which.co.uk nothing wrong with the article as you would expect from Which but the information relates to some years ago and was written some years ago so bears no resemblance to the current situation on Spanish Mortgages.

Spanish mortgage services- Lifted content straight from my website but as it was some years ago before various changes to the market. This means the content is now out of date and was not in fact written by them and would have been duplicate content at some point. Best of all they did not even bother reading it properly because in one paragraph it actually says "at IMS "which is the trading brand I use.

Mortgage direct sl- Again all information is out of date by some years. They talk of margins above Euribor of 0.45% when in fact you will now not get less than 3.6% above, they also state they can do lifetime loans when the two providers of this type of product left Spain some 4 years ago, and interest only mortgages which are no longer available.

 International Private Finance - On enquiry to them only do loans above 500k and take fees upfront. Promote a rate table that states rates correct as of 3/9/2012.

Europa mortgages - Almost the best of all as they make a big statement that you will find lots of information on many sites but unlike others they ensure their information is kept up to date. The text then relates to information from around 2009.

SPF- www.spf.co.uk/buyingabroad/spain/pages/lendingcriteria.aspx Last option on page 1 again lots of misinformation like minimum loan sizes are € 150k, (not true), and interest only is available.

So out of the 10 websites on page 1 of Google 7 are providing out of date and poor quality information. How on earth can this be good for the consumer? If you take this single search term and assume the Google changes have had the same affect across all search terms then it is probably just a matter of time before Google lose their number 1 spot as the obvious search engine.