@numericcitizen Excellent write ups and revealing as well. Google has a disproportionate impact on my sports media business — our reporters put out high quality, informative content (that even our readers pay for) and yet tons of junk websites show up way before we do in Google’s results no matter what we do.
One of the ways we’ve lessened reliance on Google is to make it as irrelevant as possible; ie we have a big community and forum that pulls in via word of mouth. It helps but I’d like to see Google’s influence on the Internet reduced.