With more and more very large web sites expanding their reach both in content and in advertising spend, it’s become increasingly difficult for “the little guy” to be seen or to be found – let alone have a top first page ranking on Google’s search results. In the beginning, the little guy could compete on a relatively level playing field – we didn’t have companies literally spending millions a month on search engine marketing, and those same companies also creating hundreds if not thousands of new pages of content every day with teams of SEO experts conjuring up ways to dominate keywords.
But now we do. That’s the world we’re in now when trying to get your business visible online.
So what does the small business owner, who does not have those sorts of resources do? Google can change the small business economy with one action: add a “Small Businesses Only” button. That’s it.
I’m a champion of buying local. It’s better for the community, better for the economy, and better for the environment. But the Internet has allowed us to not get our information locally. We can get it from anywhere. At first, that’s great, but since information and content are that which determine wether or not you’re found online it can be bad for small business. The days of building a web site and having people come is over. The days of being able to compete online in certain industry sectors is over (particularly in real estate, for example). And sadly, the act of small business signing up with the monsters out there only ends up making the monsters even bigger, and thusly even more difficult to compete with.
Over the last couple years (due to mobile phones and our ever-increasing need to be latched to smart phones and their location services) Google has placed slightly heavier importance on locality of a business. This is very helpful for an industry like restaurants, where the service physically cannot break out of its location, but for any business services, that can now all be done remotely, we still have companies in Massachusetts overwhelming small businesses in California for searches that might be happening right next door to that small business. Sad, really.
Everything is becoming top heavy. Everything.
So, I ask Google: add a small business only button. I would bet that that action alone would make a profound difference in industries that have been overtaken by the giant search, listings, comparison, booking, shopping, etc. type web sites. And this is not unfair to big business. It’s giving the consumer an option, an easier and faster filter than sorting through it in the search results. If they want the big companies, they can use regular search. Simply give the user the option to say, “I don’t want to see all the giant companies. I want to see the mom and pop shops who need my patronage more.” Small Business Only button on Google search…
One button could very well make a difference.
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