Google is giving one of my competitors a quasi page 1 monopoly, how can I complain?
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Hi,
When you search for "business plan software" on google.co.uk, 7 of the 11 first results are results from 1 company selling 2 products, see below:
#1. Government site (related to "business plan" but not to "business plan software")
#2. Product 1 from Palo Alto Software (livePlan)
#3. bplan.co.uk: content site of Palo Alto Software (relevant to "business plan" but only relevant to "business plan software" because it is featuring and linking to their Product 1 and Product 2 sites)
#4. Same site as #3 but different url
#5. Palo Alto Software Product 2 (Business Plan Pro) page on Palo Alto Software .co.uk corporate site
#6. Same result as #5 but different url (the features page)
#7. Palo Alto Software Product 2 (Business Plan Pro) local site
#8, #9 and #10 are ok
#11. Same as #3 but the .com version instead of the .co.ukThis seems wrong to me as it creates an illusion of choice for the customer (especially because they use different sites) whereas in reality the results are showcasing only 2 products.
Only 1 of Palo Alto Software's competitors is present on page 1 of the search results (the rest of them are on page 2 and page 3).
Did some of you experience a similar issue in a different sector? What would be the best way to point it out to Google?
Thanks in advance
Guillaume
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We are seeing this every day for lots of searches in the UK. I did some reading up on "domain clustering" and found that Google recently reverted its algo regarding how many results it displays for a particular search term. It used to be no more than four, then it changed to 7, which is an older practice. Compare this with competition from Amazon, Ebay, the .com and .nz results for transactional searches, and the bias towards brands and most small businesses in the UK dont stand a chance of competing in organic search anymore. I for one know of several small businesses that are down 70% because of this, dropping from position 1-3 to position 8-12. Hence the PPC conspiracy theory. "Google did it on purpose to push us all into using PPC".
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I am not sure how much Matt Cutts will take the feedback into consideration, but he is asking for feedback on sites that you think should rank well but don't.You can find the form here:https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Czwk15Yc_-zcnnlvqTuspEnz2Sn3Aw2JxhkWvoVxVS4/viewform
It might be worth filling it in. Other than that, if your competitor has a number of sites ranking it sounds like a perfect opportunity to check the sites backlinks, and see if you can get similar backlinks from some of the higher authority sites.
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Unfortunately Google is not always fair there was a trail from Matt Cutss where you could email him as to why you should be on top of the SERP. The only thing you could try is looking into their back links to see if there is something very spammy you could report them on.
The best bet is keeping working on making your site better and wait for the algorithm change that will make your site better. Take a good look at their site and see why it it out ranking yours and try to make you site better from the research.
In short: You could report them in webmaster tools but don't expect too much, I'd focus your efforts on trying to rank your site rather than reduce your competitors rankings.
Hope this helps.
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