Google's AI

[EpicGlobalWeb]

Google open sourced their AI last year (most of it) and now developers can play with the API. The API can "see" websites and determine their quality by repetition, when admins tell it over and over again what a "good" website looks like. During this time the Keyword Planner was already being moved into a paid program. It isn't yet but as most of this community would agree, it is much different and not for the better.

This is all in the name of fighting spam but I can see where this will lead can you? A ton of people are going to be moving to Bing in a few years. I know that sounds laughable now but it is getting incrementally more difficult to get ranking data. I'd love If someone knows an efficient way to get search data now let me know. While all this is going on, more Google real estate is being dedicated to paid search ads. Google is too controlling now.

That being said, this could be a major opportunity. There may be less SEO firms as a result of all this. Any input on this greatly appreciated!

 

[SEOPub]

Nonsense. People are not going to move to Bing for any of the reasons you mentioned.

What you are talking about is bellyaching among internet marketers and SEO's. They make up about 0.001% of Google's users. The vast majority of Google's users have no idea what the Keyword Planner is and could care less about it. They don't care about their API. Most also do not care about the paid ads.

The only people using Bing are people who buy a new Windows machine and don't know how to change the default search engine in the browser.

 

[EpicGlobalWeb]

The problem I am looking at is that Google wants to sell more paid ad space and current users typically ignore paid search results entirely. They skip over to the organic results. Google might be able to get away with pissing off the 0.001% but I'm waiting for them to mess up the consumer market. It could happen.

Regardless, with the demise of Keyword Planner, some kind of opportunity is going to emerge here because 0.001% of ~3 billion users is still a ton of IM's who want search data. I can see where some other provider of search data will steal this opportunity quickly. It can be done by monitoring websites through scripting, perhaps by partnering with web hosters to scrap data from sites they host. Something is here I just haven't got the details yet.

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

Two things you are missing. First, current users are not skipping over paid search results. Google would not keep reporting record quarterly earnings if they were. Have you ever run an AdWords campaign? I've managed campaigns ranging from $500 per month to $40,000 per month. Trust me. People are not just skipping the ads.

Second, the "opportunity" you speak of is not going to happen. They want the search data from Google, and only Google has that data. The idea you speak of, would only capture a minor fraction of activity. It would be worse than the estimates the Keyword Planner is giving now. Even if it could be done effectively, the cost would far outweigh the potential profit. Think about it.

So say you get web hosts to partner with you. You would need to partner with about 200-300 or more web hosts to get enough data to make this even slightly viable. So now besides all the development, storage, marketing, and implementation costs, you also have to give 200-300 web hosts a slice of the pie. There is going to be nothing left to make a profit off of that.

And there is probably some sort of legal privacy issues with the web hosts selling that information about their clients' websites.

Besides, Google is still giving the exact same data in the Keyword Planner to most users, so it really is a non-issue for most of us.

 

[EpicGlobalWeb]

Two things you are missing. First, current users are not skipping over paid search results. Google would not keep reporting record quarterly earnings if they were. Have you ever run an AdWords campaign? I've managed campaigns ranging from $500 per month to $40,000 per month. Trust me. People are not just skipping the ads.

Yes. Paid searches are great. But that really isn't where all the eyes are looking. Haven't you ever seen the Golden Triangle? The eyes look at the first paid search, then the first ~3 organic results. The heat-map shows that the majority of eyes ignore paid search. A $40,000 budget is going to get great results and a well-tuned $500 budget too. But that's because the ~15% of people who do utilize paid search is still a huge number with Google's numbers.

Second, the "opportunity" you speak of is not going to happen. They want the search data from Google, and only Google has that data. The idea you speak of, would only capture a minor fraction of activity. It would be worse than the estimates the Keyword Planner is giving now. Even if it could be done effectively, the cost would far outweigh the potential profit. Think about it.

Keyword Planner is going to become a paid-only software soon. I don't know what the cost would be, but I'm thinking what if cPanel added a search-data feature. That wouldn't be a tiny fraction, that would potentially be much larger data reach than Google. Google has what, 65% market share? But every website must have a host. Privacy isn't a concern for anybody anymore when Google, Facebook, and Microsoft record your audio and video at-will for "relevant ads." Nobody cares about privacy on the internet in America and storing / recording search data isn't illegal. The conflict would be between the web host and the developers for 70% of the market, if there was any.

 

[EpicGlobalWeb]

Allow me to digress a little because I wanted to focus on the AI that they open sourced too. Also, I guess you're right in the fact that right now Keyword Planner does solve the problem, but if it becomes paid or limited in some way, there will be a lot of interest looking to refill a market gap.