It warmed my heart, just a little bit, to see the recent traffic spike at search engine DuckDuckGo. Apparently people are worried about the NSA seeing their Google search queries, or are moving off Google in protest. Whatever the reason, the spike just won't last. Even as a guy who wants an alternative search engine to capture some of Google's market, I can't help but admit that DDG falls short of usability. Those people who want to nobly move away from Google will be back before long. Google has made quality search results the rule.

Well, quality search results if you share the mindset of the masses. In truth Google's search results are like America's largest beer brands. Miller-Coors wants to reach as many people as possible, and so they produce beer that is inoffensive, rather than good, to the greatest number of people. Similarly, Google's results can't offend people, or else they'll seek an alternative. The problem is that the way Google approaches this just decimates small businesses. 

A decade ago -- even five years ago -- Google results represented something of a meritocracy. If you created sites that fit Google's parameters, you could rank for high-volume keywords. For those not connected to the SEO industry I apologize for the jargon, but essentially search results act as qualified leads. Rank for high-volume search terms, and you get clicks from people who have entered queries that signal intent. Tons of small businesses in the early 00s capitalized on this and were able to make money, because they understood how to create sites that rank in Google. 

Then Google started taking heat from bigger brands, who felt they deserved to rank for those high-volume keywords. They are established in the average American's mind, they argued, so why aren't they atop the average American's search results? To this day Google swears its search algorithm doesn't explicitly favor big brands, and chances are they're not lying. Instead, they've started to look at the signals that big brand websites send, and simply favor those signals in their algorithm. And so Google retains a facade of integrity while still pandering to big business.

In the last three or four years many small businesses have gone under thanks to these changes. You could certainly argue that any business built on the back of another assumes that kind of risk, and you'll hear no counterargument from me. The problem is that search is supposed to be about merit. High quality small businesses simply need those high-volume rankings in order to thrive in the modern commerce environment. Yet even with SEO campaigns from the best in the business, they cannot achieve the rankings of these big businesses. That makes it very difficult to remain relevant.

Even as a guy who is aware of this issue, I find myself falling victim to it. A few months ago my wife and I were searching out baby gates for our daughter-to-be. So of course I started searching Google, yet found that the baby gates results pointed me towards big brands. The worst part of it all is that I didn't even bother to look further. Home Depot offered so many different styles and varieties that I didn't feel the need to search further. Any small business results that sat at the bottom of the first page, or worse, on the second page, were ignored. 

That anecdote might make it seem as though big businesses should rank higher. After all, I found exactly what I wanted and more, right? Yet that misses the point. I proved that by indeed scrolling down to the later results and finding smaller businesses offering baby gates. Many of them offered models that I hadn't seen at the HD site. Many others offered package deals on baby gates and other necessary items. The point being that these small businesses do have quality offerings that are as good as, or better than, big brand offerings. Yet because Home Depot is larger, it gets amplified in these search queries, crushing small business leads.

How does Amazon fit into this? Obviously they offer such an array of products, at such a discounted price, that they can compete on price with any business smaller than it. They're also essentially the Google of commerce, with a third of shopping queries started on the Amazon website. (And it took me forever to find that article, because Amazon products rank at the top of nearly any Google query containing the word Amazon.) Sure, some people use Amazon as research and do patronize small businesses. Others choose the small merchant options from Amazon itself. But it's almost certain that the great majority simply buy from Amazon, taking advantage of sales tax and shipping advantages. 

I could go on and on about this issue, but this is enough for one blog post. As a guy who has tried to help small businesses get their piece of the pie, it's extremely discouraging to see Google pander to big brands. It wasn't always this way. While some pretty damn spammy sites did used to rank in Google, plenty more legitimate small businesses made money by creating great products and then marketing themselves towards the Google results. Once Google took that away, it's just another victory for the already victorious big brands.