Smarten Up, Google

Very quick post – Google’s search results have been going into the crapper lately. It’s been bothering people who have ranked high in the SERPs for certain keywords, obviously. But there’s a more important group of people who are being affected. Regular old everyday users who depend on the big G to find the stuff they want online.

A lot of people (and I mean a LOT) have Google set as their home page. So imagine this: Joe Blow fires up his computer and wants to check out his Facebook. Joe is not savvy and really doesn’t comprehend that there are billions of pages and sites on the internet. In fact, he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care that he could just as well set any page as his home page. He’s a creature of habit and what he’s done all along has worked just fine, so why would he change that now?

So he fires up his computer, the browser pops up and he types “facebook” into the Google search field and clicks the search button.

Normally, he then clicks on the first search result and Facebook’s site pops up where he’s already logged in via cookies.

Imagine how stressed Joe would be if that first search result was not for Facebook.

You know those people and I used Facebook as an example but it could be any search term that they relied on Google showing them.

Well, similar things are happening for millions of Google users right now. They’re typing stuff into that search box and not getting the results they’re expecting. They’re seeing real-time search stuff, or the result of some algorythm spitting out what it thinks they really want to see, otherwise known as personalized search.

My point is, there are people out there who do not know anything else but that Google page. To them, it’s the internet. It’s something they’re comfortable with and now all that is changing and making them uncomfortable, because Google is trying to fix something that, to their users, was never broken to begin with.

Those people make up a huge segment of Google users, and they’re being alienated and stressed out because they don’t understand what’s happening.

It’s as if they spent months or years walking into their home every day after work and tossing their car keys on the shelf by the front door. Then, suddenly, their keys are no longer where they put them.

People are creatures of habit. Stop screwing around with their heads.