October 18th 2012 and Google looses $29 billion off it share value. Commentators say it’s because they’ve lost focus on their ‘core’ business and are stretching themselves with things like the buying of Motorola.
Will this affect search and SEO and if so how? Well, let’s look at it without all the hype. So Google shares have lost value, but that’s not the same as money is it? After all if you pay $10 for a share in a company, then it goes up in value to $15 unless you sell it, you didn’t actually have that extra $5 did you?
Sure you had the potential but you could argue that any lottery ticket has the potential to be worth millions, yet if it doesn’t win, you don’t go around bewailing the loss of that potential do you? Well unless you’re like my husband who’s convinced every week that his ‘numbers will come up’ of course 🙂
The question is though will it affect search or SEO? Answer, no, not really. Google still provides the majority of searches world wide, 67% in the US and higher in Europe. With those numbers why would a drop in share price affect the search arm?
Let’s be sensible, Google is still leading the world of search and although other engines like Bing, slowly one percentage point at a time has edged it’s way back into the search landscape it still has nothing like the reach of Google.
Google makes it’s money from advertising, that’s it’s core business, to continue that it needs to stay at the top of the search engine pile. I certainly wouldn’t like to bet against them – yet.
Just because this share shock has occurred at a time when Google was growing at a phenomenal rate and, I don’t think it’ll affect SEO or search, doesn’t mean to say Google can be complacent. It needs to continue to refine it’s search results whilst levelling the playing field so that small businesses can compete with the giants.
Google reaches into every area of the internet and so by default our lives. I don’t think that dropping ‘pretend’ money off its value is going to cause it too many problems do you?
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