The changes made by Google to their algorithm has caused a lot of grief to marketers and anyone that has involvement in search engine optimization. Today, it claimed another victim in the form of 26 employees at Indianapolis based ChaCha. That Google is the blame is the claim being made by ChaCha CEO Scott Jones.
http://www.indystar.com/story/money/2014/05/19/chacha-layoffs-carmel-indiana-search-engine/9294949/
I don't begin to know if Google was the reason for the demise of ChaCha, a mobile Q & A website. According to the Indianapolis Star article, Jones said the job cuts were a result of a drastic drop in advertising revenue after Google reduced ad rates for ChaCha-directed ads about 10 days ago.
What I do know, and have said before is that I would not want to base my business completely on Google and their algorithm. Google is in the business of making money for.....GOOGLE!
Google changed their practices which reduced the payback to ChaCha. In their recent past, algorithm changes rendered SEO practices useless. I know of a couple specific instances where entire product lines were rendered useless as a result. Sadly in at least one of those cases, the company continued on with a product that didn't work.
ChaCha will soldier on, though significantly leaner than before today. Let this be a warning to companies that have built their entire revenue stream on Google's Ad Word and / or algorithm for SEO. Google is making the changes to enhance the user experience, but also (and even more so) to enhance the revenue and bottom line for their own company.
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