30
November
2011
|
04:03 AM
America/Los_Angeles

Big Brands As Media Companies - Google Makes It Possible, Destroys Jobs

Google has been boosting large brands in its search rankings as part of a deliberate strategy to take business away from thousands of third-party affiliates -- small businesses that make money selling larger brands.

This strategy has managed to generate billions of dollars in extra revenue for Google this year. It is a war against small businesses, a major source of jobs in the US. And it's largely a secret war with very few people following, or able to understand what is happening. Google doesn't want attention on this strategy because in today's tough economy and high unemployment, Google is destroying jobs at countless small companies -- a PR nightmare.

Aaron Wall, over at SEOBook, has written about Google's shift in strategy and how it now favors large brands over small businesses. In a recent post he pointed out that large brands are able to sell that favored Google status to other companies.

Let me explain: Google favors large brands by sending them lots of traffic rather than to small businesses who make affiliate fees. Those brands can then sell access to that traffic to other companies by essentially forming small advertising networks of their own.

These brands can not only leverage internal resources to further build off the boost Google offers them, but they can then take that attention and sell it back off to the highest bidder. ... the biggest retailers are now becoming ad networks.

Here is Aaron Wall's infographic on this topic of Google favoring large brands (anyone is welcome to use it - here is the embed code.)