I don’t where to start. I am so tired, upset, and frustrated with Google. We were hit hard by the recession in 2008. Then, when things finally started to pick up in 2010, Google’s Farmer/Panda update comes out in Feb 2011 and decreases our incoming traffic by 30% and, along with it, any potential sales revenue. And then another Google update back in Oct 2011 which decreased even more traffic.

Google’s whole “thing” was to offer free services (Analytics, Keyword Tool, etc) so that the SMB player can compete with the larger companies and level the playing field. And now they’re going to start charging for submitting datafeeds?! I just want to cry. And since “monkey see, monkey do”, Bing and the other search engines will be following suit, I am sure. It’ all about the money, Google. Don’t tell me it’s anything but.

Google says that they want to charge to encourage Sellers to maintain the accuracy of their website. Well, the regular Google search engine is free. It’s free to be indexed. And yet we still maintain our website. So what the heck are they talking about?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

We are working so, so, so hard to get back to normal. Updating datafeeds, writing blog entries, updating FB statuses, pinning on Pinterest, tweeting on Twitter, stumbling on StumbleUpon, SEO’ing our product pages, creating backlinks, … all so that we can satisfy Google’s algorithm and get the much needed traffic and potential sales. And since we’re no longer making pre-2008 sales, it’s hard to come up with another penny in order for us to be indexed in Google Shopping.

Why don’t they have a basic package that is free? At minimum, what we currently submit now is free. But if we want to add product reviews to our listing, then that would incur an extra charge. Why don’t they do something like that?

So tired.