Google (and Others) Have NO IDEA What They’re Doing
I think there’s this idea out there that these massive multi-national conglomerates, particularly in the tech space – attract the best and the brightest – and that – despite their size, they’re masters at everything and anything.
As someone that interacts with many of these companies on a virtually daily basis – nothing could be further from the truth.
One quick example – before I get to the meat of this post – I was setting up a new account the other day and doing my normal stack of AdWords, Google Tag Manager, Analytics 4, Webmaster Tools (Search Console)… etc. etc. I’ve literally done this 100 times in the last 3 months with new clients.
In this ONE particular case though – I was surprised to find two errors I had never encountered before along with a bug. The bug is pretty major – as it basically makes it impossible to setup conversion tracking for websites utilizing adwords when you’ve linked both your adwords to your Google Analytics 4. After some major digging (as Google’s support is almost ALWAYS worse than useless) – I was able to disconnect the link, fix the problem, and relink. The bug has been known about for more than a year. The actual services and “customer support” teams involved proved no help what-so-ever.
Another scenario – a client has had Google Local Services ads setup for quite some time. I recently took over management of the account – as it’s not lead to much performance. Part of the question is – well is the market just slow? Or is there something going on.
In doing a deep dive – it turns out Google never connected the clients’ Google My Business profile to their advertising account. Not to mention that Google Local Service Ads – although fantastic have a VERY strange interface (looks like it was built 15 years ago and is SUPER slow and has major issues with handling multiple accounts or account managers).
In another scenario I spoke to a Google rep a few weeks ago for another issue – and keep in mind here I’m DIRECTLY personally responsible for getting tens of thousands of businesses on Google’s advertising services over the years and what is probably a $billion in total advertising. Even personally, for my businesses I’ve easily spent a half million or more over the years (right now ONE client is going to spend over $1million on AdWords this year alone). With all of this… I have no special support for all but the most extreme issues (I do have the head of AdWords large accounts contact information – which I’ll come back to in a second). So I go the normal route and get a support rep that is COMPLETELY unintelligible and not helpful. Hours and hours wasted – just to be frustrated by this multi-cultural nightmare we find ourselves in.
Something similar happened with a few major services for websites and hosting – namely wix and squarespace. I’m a big fan of squarespace actually (I recommend it for any business owners or individuals looking to build their own websites), but there are just certain elements of the way it’s structured that make no sense – and bugs and problems with the tools that have literally persisted for years and years and years.
Ironically, I write this as I’m sitting in a Panera. Even though this is a relatively small town – with high local trust, and wealth – they’ve decided to first install machines to order (which work half the time and their interfaces are slow and clunky the other half). At the same time they have ONE register open for people that either want a better/faster experience, or just want that good ole fashion human touch. In a recent bid to stop having patrons steal drinks – they’ve decided to remove the cups at the self-checkout area. They also don’t have any pagers…
So you have to do the order – then go back in line and WAIT to get a cup.
And then they don’t call your name, so you have to stand and wait – or constantly check at the counter for your food.
It’s pretty clear that top to bottom things are falling apart overall. Modern commerce is an existential nightmare. The only companies I see weathering this right now are small and medium sized local businesses with a particular ideological bent. I see these major national services and large national and city infrastructure collapsing in less than 10 years. All of this isn’t sustainable.
And ironically, virtually everyone (other than multi-nationals) is making less and less money.
Last month Google laid off 12,000+ employees supposedly… utter insanity given the nature of actually working with and for this company: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/google-lays-off-thousands-more-210822278.html