The Cold, Cruel Web

Many businesses make money solely by attracting visitors who are referred to sites where they make a small or large transaction. It can be a beautiful thing, but it can evaporate if search engines like Google drop them from their ranks. Web Pro News gave this advice today:

“As a general rule, you shouldn’t rely on Google and organic listings as your bread and butter. As you don’t have control of how sites are picked up, then you also have no control of how much traffic is generated. If your site has been a top keyword listing for a significant amount of time, that’s great, but it can change in a heart beat. Too many variables equals dangerous ground, and if Google is the only source of traffic, then all can be lost.

News too in NewMediaNews about how the mighty can easily fall:

FRIENDSTER RAPIDLY LOSING FRIENDS The once-definitive online social network hasn’t been too popular in recent months. With rival MySpace.com stealing all the hipster cred, the hits just keep on coming (in all the wrong ways) for Friendster. First, CEO Scott Sassa announced his resignation last week, and then their new figures revealed a 65% drop in visitors and total time spent on the site over the last year, with only 700,000 and 14 minutes, respectively, in April.

While Friendster maintains a healthy clientele overseas, its US market has declined significantly because of the site’s one-dimensional status as a dating/bulletin service. Meanwhile, MySpace has become the outlet for established and up-and-coming bands to promote music, and its graphically superior features include page customization, personal URLs and blogs, as well as larger bandwidth to post more photos along with video streams. With spaces like this, who needs friends(ters)?”