The featured snippets are bad for bloggers and profitable for Google. We will discuss on why Featured Snippets in Search Are Bad For Bloggers and why Google need to avoid such practices of reducing traffic to websites.
Let us look at this search result.
I was searching for High paying Google Adsense keywords and the search page provided this result. This snippet shows information from the first result in Google.
Google Featured Snippets. What was the point then?
Most people only clicks the result in featured snippet and do not go past the top three results. This is because they think Google is showing the best result for them. In this case, even if this featured snippet is not there, users will click the first result and check the web page. Majority of Google snippets shows information from the first 5 results.
Look at another one.
Review and Analysis of Google Featured Snippets
I searched for high paying adsense keywords and got this snippet. This result covers entire screen and creates a bad visual experience of users. Instead of providing the best source, this time Google is showing FAQ type questions and answers picked up from random sites.
If a user clicks on any of these results under “People also ask”, two more results will be added at the end. For each click on the last result, two more results are added.
Universal WikiPedia – Featured Snippets Google
Google is trying to be the universal wikipedia. It is not a search engine anymore. Google shows information published people all around the world, showing them to others without letting them actually visit the source website.
A search engine supposed to search for best sources and show them to user. The user decide which website to visit. Here Google is a result engine. Google shows the results first and then sources. Why should user visit the source if the result is already shows by Google.
This is going to hurt bloggers who writes authentic information after researching for hours. Google easily pick it up, shows the information and user get satisfied. The blogger who write the information is not getting any kind of traffic or revenue.
Shift in Focus – Google vs Social Media
Currently Google is the only search giant in Internet. In these years, social media channels is going to get more stronger and people will spend more time on Facebook and Twitter than searching in Google.
Few years back, everyone used to write for getting ranked first in Google. This practice is changing now. Many bloggers and website owners are focusing more on Facebook and Twitter to get traffic and customers than merely writing for Google. They understood that Google is a search engine for visitors where social media is a search engine for customers.
Some people recognized this shift and decided to act on it. That’s how we got Orkut that got shut down and later Google Plus which was a rather disappointing product from Google. It will be. Because Google always focused on generating more search volumes and profit than creating loyal customers. Google put ads before people. Instead focusing on helping publishers who are the source of Google’s ad revenue, it announces faulty algorithm changes and cut down search results.That is why many employees such as James Whittaker, Ellen Huerta left Google for lack of creativity and uniqueness.
Future of Google Search Engine
I can easily predict the future of Google judging by its current course.
Google will keep adding more ads, more Google plus posts, more snippets and try to become more commercial.
Visitors will start using ad blockers, search in Facebook and Twitter and search inside websites directly.
Publishers and webmasters will create forums, Facebook pages and groups, Twitter pages and other social media channels to bring traffic and promote affiliate products than ads.
The ad revenue of Google will decrease and they will try to sell personal data of users to companies, get cases filed, get hacked by hackers and ultimately follow footsteps of Yahoo.
It is time to think back and get a grip on what is going wrong and realize before it is too late to correct. It is time to focus more on publishers and give them adequate care which they deserve.
