Google Drives Small Retail Websites to Ebay

Isn’t it time Google recognized that if you have a retail website selling products that are prevalent on the internet, it is not reasonable to expect each product description to be unique.

In fact some manufacturers would take offence if you start to make up your own unique description of each of their products. Consequently, it is not reasonable in that case for Google to decide, based on duplicate content or low back links to send these pages off to supplemental oblivion.

Retailers can make some slight changes to the titles and descriptions as in this attempt to differentiate between the new Jacques Cousteau dvd and original manufacturers description Similar content but Google is still likely to decide that the content is not materially different and your page could slide down to a firey grave...

So is it really fair to expect a retailer to go through this rigmarole to satisfy Google, and doesnt this just lead to retailers resorting to black art techniques, such as participating in affiliate schemes where people make a living out of placing links over the internet to your pages because you are agreeing to pay a 5% commision back to them on every sale ?

All pages from retailers should be properly indexed and shown to users on the basis of Google's normal algorithm of best page wins. Therefore if a smaller retailer puts a lot of effort into their pages, they deserve to be displayed somewhere. Also it is bad for the customer if they only ever get half a dozen big named companies, you know the usual suspects, displayed with no real choice, leaving them with the certain knowledge that there is bound to be a smaller more competitive perhaps helpful, knowledgeable family run business out there but which has been condemned to Supplemental Index.

This is a serious problem that is unfair to smaller businesses and unhelpful to customers and what in the end drives businesses off to become Ebay Shops with all the additional costs involved there, but at least it is a proper fair playing field where customers will be able to search and find ALL products for sale.

I would like to see Google ditch the one size fits all approach to indexing and accept there are exceptions that need to be considered for a more inclusive approach....