Google Pull Back On Real-Time Listings, But Easy Traffic Opportunities Remain

Google don’t make mistakes. General Custer made a mistake, Gerald Ratner made a mistake, and Tiger Woods has made loads of mistakes, but for Google, it is rare.

Google’s ‘decision’ (assuming somebody actually made a decision) to rush-launch its new real-time listings was a mistake, but it has provided rich bounty for marketers looking for easy, free traffic. Google suddenly said to us all… forget all the hard work involved with link-building, and page optimisation. Just spam Twitter all day with popular keyphrases and you will dominate our most valuable keyterm pages.

We have been keeping a very close eye on these listings, and although it is impossible for us to obtain accurate statistics, it is very clear that the number of real-time ‘windows’ appearing in the organic listings has been slashed heavily. This is bad news for the hordes of marketers who could suddenly appear on page one of Google for amazingly popular and commercial search terms, but if you look around, the opportunities are still out there for some super-heavyweight search terms.

For example, do you sell Blackberry phones? If so, why not spend this evening monopolising the search term by twittering how great your Blackberry store is? A mere 550,000 searched for the term ‘blackberry’ last month in the UK alone.

Page 1 for the search term ‘Blackberry’:

You see, this is where the slick Google machine turned into a blob of ice cream. Unusual, I know, but every online marketer I spoke to knew the implications within 3.2 milliseconds of seeing it in action so why didn’t Google’s army of boffins? Were they too busy counting their share options? Is ‘The Big G’ panicking about the rise of Twitter and other micro-blogging platforms? You can bet your derriere that they are, but this really isn’t the way to counter it for some kind of half-arsed ‘first-mover’ advantage.

Google, you got it mind-numbingly wrong, but my clients would like to thank you for all the lovely free traffic!