Are Googles Organic Results Becoming Out Of Reach For Small Businesses?

Whatever happened to the internet being the great leveller? Once the internet was a place no matter what the size of your business you could still make an honest living. The latest announcement that Bazaarvoice and Google are teaming up to show Bazaarvoice reviews in the Google search results seems to maybe be extending this gap.

Is it just me or is anyone else concerned about this move? Don't get me wrong, I have heard great things about Bazaarvoice and I'm sure they offer an excellent service. Furthermore I think the searchers would greatly benefit from customer reviews in the search results.

The thing that concerns me about their service is that it is out the reach of small businesses who are trying making a living online. Yes we do have local business results to help small businesses and we also have Google shopping which is also free. However there are two problems that I have with Google shopping 1) its not very popular and 2) one of the factors to get your products ranked well is reviews and most of these reviews come from  sites that charge you to be included. I would ask Bazaarvoice if they offer a package for small businesses that's affordable.

A contradiction

Although Google shopping is no way near as popular as other services, it is free. So you cannot blame Google for not helping the small business in that respect. Google is also always trying to improve this service. Google is the only search engine that has development their shopping portal themselves, both Bing and Yahoo have acquired other companies to achieve this. Bing and Yahoo shopping portals are a great deal better than Google's, but like I said, they just acquired their portals and it is not free to list your products. I heard a rumour that my colleague Brian was writing a review of the search engines shopping portals so watch out for that!

It should also be the responsibility of businesses themselves to encourage reviews on their products. Google would be  reluctant however to show reviews that were on your own website as these can be easily manipulated. That's why they show reviews from independent sites.

Maybe it's just the way of the world that businesses with the largest budget are going to dominate the internet much like they do offline. In saying all this there are many ways small businesses can still get the exposure they need in the search engines. This can be achieved with the help of a good SEO company and long that may continue.

How is your business doing online? Is it becoming more and more expensive? We would love to hear your thoughts.

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About Graham Lyons

Graham is the SEO and Social Media Marketing Manager at Cozy Digital and the editor of the Cozy Digital Blog as well as contributing content for most of our social outlets like Facebook, Twitter and G+. Graham has been working in, and writing for the SEO / SMM industry since 2001 and is still as dedicated and passionate today as he was when he opened his first Website Design, Ecommerce and SEO company in 2004. You can connect with Graham and Cozy Digital via the social media links below:

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