It’s All About Pushing The Limit
written by John Chow
When I made the decision to monetize John Chow dot Com nine months ago, I know that I would use the blog to push the limits of what was possible. The blog was to be used as a case study so others can learn from its success and failures.
Pushing the limits of blog monetization almost means pushing Google to the edge. There are many who will say that playing with Google is like playing with fire - sooner or later, you’re going to get burn. It seems that once again, I am in a Google penalty box. Not only am I no longer on page one for the search term, make money online, but I am no longer page one for my own name.
The number one theory for the penalty is I overdid the linkback promotion. Whatever the reason, it doesn’t really matter. The make money online search term was sending me about 150 visitors per day. As for the John Chow search term, the first ten pages of results all link to JohnChow.com, so the searcher will find me indirectly. That actually benefits bloggers who did a review of my blog.
Live By The Google, Die By The Google
This a good time to remind everyone that if you live by the Google, you’ll die by the Google. I do not depend on Google for my traffic and neither should you. Thousands of people have this blog bookmarked and nearly 6,000 read it by RSS. Way too many webmaster put too much time and effort into Google to try and gain a number one ranking. Google doesn’t stand still (they can’t afford to). They are always tweaking their search system so the chance of holding a number one spot forever is next to zero.
You should work on getting Google traffic for your blog, but you shouldn’t do it the exclusion of everything else. If all your traffic is coming from Google, then you need to work on getting other traffic sources. You are in a very scary situation. It’s like having all your blog income generated by AdSense. If that’s all I did, this blog would make only $1,000 a month instead of $10,000. Don’t put all your traffic eggs in one basket.
I am 100% positive that Google will eventually restore my number one ranking for my name. Right now, they look pretty stupid. Do a search for John Chow and you’ll get page after page of sites talking about JohnChow.com, but JohnChow.com isn’t the number one result.
Let’s see, I’ve been banned from Digg, banned from Technorati and now bitch slapped by Google. I’m doing pretty good! 
Find out what I am doing right now by following me on Twitter! If you like this post then please consider subscribing to my full feed RSS. You can also subscribe by Email and have new posts sent directly to your inbox.
Make Money Online with John Chow's Ad Network - Join TTZ Media Now!
(22 votes, average: 3.55 out of 5)
Loading ...
Here's A Few More Related Posts
i am first.
Not really first if you dont have a link back to your site, so kinda pointless.
Hey John, look out for Alexa and feedburner next, that would be a biatch…
BUt seriously your not banned from technorati, just disliked I guess.
I was banned for a while. It was during that time when I pinged the hell out of out them.
You cant blame technorati …. their ass got burned with your evil ping’s!!! HAHAHA!
will you still publish the already submitted johnchow.com review batches?
Live by Google florish by the people!
Cumulative visitors to any blog would naturally stick by your blog if the menu is nourishing enough.
There is no reason for any ingenious blogger to die by Google because, the multitude that had come by Google and stuck with you don’t need Google again to keep sticking with you.
You can’t minimize the impact of a serch engine that brings 80% of all your organic SE traffic.
Like John already said, the Google tweaking is only but temporary for a brief season.
You can’t do anything against the truth but for the truth!
What would be the worst site you could be banned from?
i thought so. thanks for letting us lot know.
when will google do the next pagerank update?
anyone?
john, i just did a search on the term “john chow”, funnily enough, johnchow.net is ranked well above johnchow.com, and it’s simply wrong, but then again, you were gaming with google on and you get a slap on the wrist….
I’ve never heard of anyone getting banned from Alexa. I imagine you’d really have to go way overboard to have them even notice you.
JohnChow: The evil man who got banned from every search engine.
How’s that title John
?
I was wondering when you’d post something about this
Did you call Google up to find out what happened, or did you just do some looking around and guess that the linkback promotion is what did it? I’m very curious to know.
James
I doubt google can do anything …. its all an automated algorithm which i suppose very few people can edit. Larry and Page are also
Google may be automated but they sure can drop a ranking in a hurry if they feel like it. There was a recent court case (which Google won) about their page ranks and displaying a URL ina search.
that’s what they say, but there’s plenty evidence that there are manual tweaks.
The best of robobts cannot out-perfom the capacity of the human brain, that is why there is always a need by Google for manual tweaking now and then.
What’s often perceived as manual tweaks are much more likely to be specialized filters. They look like manual tweaks since they many either only affect one segment, or only one site or two across many segments.
They can’t manually tweak, it simply does not scale.
Well then they better fix the algorithm, if this become more widespread people will stop using google.
By the way, Larry and Page are the same person.
Larry Page & Sergey Brin
This is just a minor blip. Besides even if it wasn’t, so long as most of the queries return good results, the masses won’t care that John’s not ranking for his name. This type of thing has happened before and will happen again. In the intervening period, they’re pulling in over a billion a quarter
test. did my comments show up.
sorry guys, I was testing out something. I just notice that if I put my name as * m o n e y * word in it, it’s didn’t show up. I guess this is john comments spam filter working behind the scene.
I have also tried other names and have come to the same conclusion.
I told you it would eventually come back to bite you in the ass.
john has always said don’t always rely on google, nobody really warned him he always knew this was a possible outcome.
I’m pretty sure he meant the reciprocal linking review scheme, not relying on Google.
What a coincident. I just noticed that yesterday.
Don’t worry, you still have your loyal readers and you’ll still get traffic through all of us who recommend your site to others. You’ll probably get back the number one spot for your name soon too, since it is your domain too.
Google will get screwed if they dont put the right site (JC Dot Com) in the first place for John Chow.
Dont worry, they are bound by their own rules
Um, no they wont. When a site is trying to game them why would they be bound to return it as a result? Site’s get banned and penalized all the time. The best way for John to get back in their good graces would be to kill off all the review posts and submit a reinclusion request.
I agree. I would stop the paid links as well, but that would depend on whether the money he makes from them is worth the rankings( assuming he gets them back).
Just from the math you posted about earlier (the value of those make money online clicks) I would think it would be worth it to stop the paid links. Also, he wouldn’t have to stop completely, just keep it on the DL when doing it.
I found JC through someone other site, not Google. Your traffic is definitely coming from all sorts of places, John.
So, does that mean you are going to stop those batches?
No, but it means another rule change is coming.
HAHAHA!! YOU ARE SOO
JOHN …. KEEP GOING!!
Good grief… you’ve got a whole mess of brown on your nose mate.
So what would that be?
yes, please let us know asap.
What happens to the entries that have been submitted thus far?
John,
At this point it doesn’t really matter if you change your rules. Like you did (per my advise) when you started to mix your incoming link anchor text.
Your link back campaign became so popular that it got to Google ears, or someone (Michael Nivola?) reported you. The bottom line is that you are in their radar. They don’t like their rankings to be manipulated.
Being an old SEO dog, I’ve had many of my affiliate sites banned or dropped for key terms. That is why I did not participate in your link back promotion.
For those that are copying John’s strategy now is a good time to fold your flags.
yup..it is sad to not have your own name appearing on google…
I think it will come back
“Let’s see, I’ve been banned from Digg, banned from Technorati and now bitch slapped by Google. I’m doing pretty good! :twisted:”
And you still make $10,000 a month… amazing!
Agloco is yet not added!!
Agloco will be a one-time cash-out (unless John wants to hold on to stock). You earn shares of the company rather than money this time around.
I don´t think its you in particular. I have a few sites that are number 1 on Google one day and then number 30 or 40 the next! Cann´t figure them out!
Same thing to me, it drives me nuts when my sites don’t show up in first page.
I noticed that Text Lind Ads dropped in the serps too. I was looking for them yesterday and if it weren’t for their paid listing they would not have been on page one.
It would be nice to know what your traffic numbers are after the drop from google.
Google is important but since we don’t have control over them we need to work on alternate traffic sources.
Ya … some evil source like
Pinging the hell out of feedburner,
Pinging the hell out of technorati,
Pinging the hell out of blogsearch,
Pinging the hell out of yahoosearch,
Total money > 20k
Hahaha
I agree, your page not being ranked #1 for that is lame. I’m sure they’ll correct it soon!
It is lame but thats how Google seem to play the game to please….well whoever they need to please (eg. try to ask some Chinese residents about THEIR results of Google searches
)
HAHA and your blog still makes more money than many other blogs that are in google, don’t have a technorati penalty and aren’t banned from digg…. not that those three sites alone will give any site success anyways…
John has certainly planted his seeds all this time and now should just worry about reaping all the good stuff.
That sucks, but those people at Google sure do catch on quickly.
This could be an interesting case study about “Defensible traffic”.
For example: I often search your name but only as navigation. I am coming here regardless of your Google listing. I will simply change my method of navigation.
It would be cool if you were to show how traffic sources shift and the impact it has on overall traffic or not.