Google Search is dying in SA

mybroadband.co.za

16 points·SkippyZA··4 comments

Sorry - I don't think this guy is as clued up as he thinks he is. And being the former head of "Google South Africa" (a tiny little office with no real development going on as far as I know), does not give him enormous credibility either.

You are attacking the man and not his statement. Would you care to elaborate on why you think he is spewing BS?

For the record, I don't think he is very clued up either, but I do think there is some truth in his statement that google search is hurting. In fact more and more of my non-geek friends are getting into the mindset that internet==facebook. (Yes, this is anecdotal, unfortunately this is all I have --- maybe the head of Google SA has seen some actual data that confirms this?)

I'm a South African and to be honest more than anything I'm amazed this made it to the HN front page.

Google does not have a big presence in SA. That being said, I'm sure their presence in SA must extend largely to the rest of that continent, so that should lend some authority to his words.

I have little sympathy for Google. The company should be regressing website engagement data against search queries on a keyword-by-keyword basis. If they can tell me how long visitors stay at my site after finding it with various keywords they should be able to use that data to order search results.

Yet Matt Cutts repeatedly surfaces on HN to insist that publisher engagement data is sancrosanct (not even opt-in!) while it is now open season on user data up in Mountain View.

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