[manfredo]

I'm saying both user preferences and search algorithms change. Even absent an algorithm change, it's not reasonable to expect search traffic to stay high over time. A drop in search traffic is always a potential, and one that exists regardless of any change in the search engine.

And it's also unclear whether algorithm changes - "Google's preference" as you put it - is a problem. Unchanging algorithms would likely trend towards a small set of incumbents collecting most search results. A shifting search algorithm landscape means users are more likely to see results that were previously buried. This story highlights one loser of this change, but not all the aspiring websites that would be eager to get even half of goodcheapandfast's traffic. These search results went somewhere. One site's lost traffic is another site's opportunity. Algorithm updates changing things up is not altogether an undesirable factor in a search engine.

[johnwdefeo]

Changing algorithms also favor a small set of incumbents. The stock of my former employer is up more than 2,000% in the last 5 years. That's amazing growth for any publisher and it's largely based on SEO.