I love reading posts on sites like GFY where people poo poo Google and discount how important getting your site Google ready is. Some of the people posting there even go as far as saying “Fuck Google” or “Google isn’t worth it”.
I really do get a chuckle out of those posts when I read them.
Why might you ask? For one very good reason and that is because I know how to read stats and I know how to do math. The kind of math that matters when it comes to my website traffic and my pocketbook.
I know that Google controls more than 60% of the web search market, while the second biggest is Bing who has control of about 30% of the market.
And you want to know what else Google controls? Almost 100% of the mobile search market. More and more today people are using mobile devices including ipads and the more affordable android tablets and even their smart phones to search for things and Google has a total and complete domination of that market with something like 97%.
The amount of people using mobile devices to search has gone up almost 30% in the last 6 months alone. So that means that Google completely controls a market with insane growth. How is that not important to your site?
So if I want to try and get the attention of those mobile users via search engines, I’m going to have to do so using Google.
If you are ignoring numbers like that then you are not a savvy business person. Person after person on GFY predicts that Google’s domination is over. Yet Google’s 4th quarter earnings for 2012 went up 36%. In today’s economy to say your earnings went up $14.4 billion is something insanely impressive.
Right now the economy is a nightmare for just about everyone, except Google. They have shown insane growth from day one, making record breaking profits every single year they have been in business. This picture says it all. It actually represents Google’s revenue growth for the past few years.
- In comparison, Microsoft posted a $492 million 4th quarter loss.
- Amazon’s Q4 earnings aren’t out yet but in Q3 they had a loss of $274 million.
- Best Buy reports that their earnings are down 97% from the year before.
- Retail giant Wal-Mart boasted how their earnings for Q4 2012 beat estimates, but in the end they were still down 15%.
- HP Q4 2012 revenue was down 70% and they are operating at a net loss of about $6.9 billion
- Verizon Wireless earnings were down nearly $2 billion in the 4th quarter of 2012.
So next time you see someone telling you that Google isn’t worth your time, just keep this post in mind.
But more than that, if you learn anything from this post it should be that just because someone tells you something at a site like GFY, doesn’t necessarily make it true. Sometimes people talk out their ass. Sometimes they like to spread misinformation on purpose so you can’t compete with them and sometimes people are just jack asses and derive pleasure from telling you things that aren’t true.