OK, Google… They Surrender

At first I though that of the same thing. Why would John surrender? Then I got the message later. But I have to say that it is a very confusing ad. It does not explain much.

Hard to believe so many bloggers are giving up. I thought that if they just stayed strong things would eventually fix themselves. Sometimes google is a little much for me, but they do control a good portion of the internet, so it might be in their best interest. Like you said though, John, it is a business decision.

I read the letter and was great! I will recommend everyone to click on the banner and read it. Remember that not always you win there are many times that you loose battles but who will win the war?

hey John, you should surrender NOW, you will regret when you turn comes, by then the lube wil be gone . you been warned.. don;t scream when big papi comes on you.

Haha…don’t people realize that on johnchow.com that if it’s above the fold - it’s an ad!

I really enjoy the fact that you’re not bending over for Google. I mean, you’d lose like $2500+ per month by dropping TLA which is hardly worth the traffic from Google.

What really annoys me is that Google hasn’t officially come out and said what they want people to do (at least I can’t find any official announcement). Matt Cutts has said some stuff but it’s pretty arrogant to expect every person who sells links to read his blog.

Not only that, but Google is telling us to “do” something (add no follow) rather than “stop” doing something. That’s just too demanding in my opinion. What’s next? You’re dropped from the index unless you display a big Google banner but we’re not going to officially tell anyone that? What a joke.

That was the funniest thing I’ve read all day. Also, he makes a great point about don’t bother your long term clients, because if you remind them you exist, they might remember they are paying you by the month.

I surrendered to Google months ago. They own my productivity.

“Oh mighty Google overlords, take my ads, take my firstborn, take anything you wish. By the way, give me a minute to bend over and here’s some lube to make it easier on you.”

O dear o dear, I am still rolling about on the floor. Am going straight to the full surrender post.

Google takes care of me. I need them!

I guess Google is turning (or have turned) into another Microsoft but this time on the internet and web application field.

I think that PR matters for new blogs, because it drives traffic from search engines and lets new visitors discover it. I noticed that after my blog got its first PageRank of 4, and I started getting around 1000 visitors a day. But then for established blogs like yours with loads returning visitors (many of which will blog about you, bringing in more traffix), it dosn’t really matter.

Even though I’m not a regular over at the other side, the post at Search Engine Guide was great

It’s good that John is able to reject Google because johnchow.com never got used to huge traffic from Google. I bet if johnchow.com was never banned on Google, John would think much longer about google’s slap. Other sites always had google traffic and it is always very hard to give up something significant.

Yeah it’s crazy how they are singling out specific blogs

It’s an innovative banner. The Search Engine Guide banners have been rather impressive. “1..2 Google’s coming for you, 3..4… they’ll lower your PageRank score.” Simple, but yet effective.

I read the article…Though I’m still not sure why they are spending precious ad dollars letting people know they’ve surrender to Master Google.

Why not have it both ways? When your blog is small, bend over and take it from Google. You probably need the search engine traffic. Once you get bigger and have eleventy million readers like John, tell Google to get lost and start raking in that extra cash.

Unfortunately the vast majority of people out there rely on Google’s referral traffic. 99.9% of us can’t afford to piss Google off…

He who has the gold, makes the rules.

Good thing for you, John. You need not bend over for the present day giant. We all hope to follow

I don’t know why everyone is making a huge deal about this. It IS Google’s index. You wouldn’t be selling those text ads if it weren’t for Google. They have every right to monetize their own product, and prevent others from what is technically abusing their product to monetize it themselves.

If you don’t like it, add Google to your robots.txt file.

I will keep doing what I’m doing. There are other techniques to find traffic.

Currently google accounts for such a large proportion of my traffic that I rely on them too much…

I’m still very new to blogging and an idiot to all this insider stuff so, can someone please explain to me why linking to Googles Advertisers without a nofollow tag a bad thing for Google and a good thing for a publisher?

Google is becomming increasingly irrelevant for proper search , there was a trust factor ( do no evil ) but now with all there **rules** and own agenda , if one can’t trust that they return Johnchow.com for a john chow search , what else are they modifying and hidding ? It’s comparable to a dictionnary who remove words they don’t like and people who they don’t support.

This days ( no pub here just mentionning what I use ) I tend to turn to Mahalo for search first , if they have something on the search the result are more complete and relevant then browsing tru all the junk Google get.

I hate to ask the obvious but if you consider Google PR dead/invalid/useless why in the world are you still blogging about it?
Carl’s advice on the Google bot maybe quite drastic but it is their system. It’s a real amazing, if not amusing, turn around before the PR update where everyone was praising the system and now it’s quite the opposite.

Couple more funnies from the full surrender post:
>”Dear Google, bite me!” There you go. Done.
>”As wonderful as Google is” ? … I think I threw up in my mouth a little

I think adsense has its place on new sites, without enough traffic your options are limited but step#2 - affiliate sales and step#3 - direct sales usually aren’t that far behind.

30 days into my last project the affiliates surpased adsense despite adsense having the better site positioning. I suspect that site will be adsense free in another 30 days because like you say John, there are higher paying options when traffic picks up. Lots of them.

We should start a rebellion - like Google Rebellion Alliance

Is Google the new Microsoft?

After all the microsoft bashing when Vista launch, now is the time for Google bashing.

I have a feeling netizen needs to bash some big bad companies once in a while to feel good about themselves.

In case I am too subtle above, YES, I surrender, oh mighty Google.

John, you really should be careful what you say about google. They probably read this blog.

if you are actually making the amount of bucks which you boast about than dear you wont surrender even at gun point!

but who knows if Google may even reconsider your request or not EVEN IF YOU SURRENDER..they must be hating you

by the way I DID NOT surrender to google as I never used any paid links and I wont be as I love my Google traffic!!

I feel happy with my PR so far (because this is my first PR update),
so there’s no need for me to surrender.

Exactly what is the Google Index anyway? I always had this naive impression that it was based on actual search popularity, back links etc…but nooooooooooooo. It has been bastardized for the sake of the almighty dollar.

They have a ‘do as I say not as I do’ mentality. They can do whatever they wish with someones website in order to make them comply.

Take a look at this one for example. As an advertiser I would want to be on one the best blogging sites about blogging to make money. However Google, in a childish move, relegates JohnChow.com to the basement for being a bad boy. A bad boy in who’s eyes? In the eyes of the corporate greedy dastardly Google Police.

So if I am googling for a blog like this I will never find it. Maybe we should start a campaign to go anti-google. Forget the white flag. Put a a pirate flag and tell Google to shove it.

The Mad Ape
http://www.tatumba.com

Tried to post my image in response to the surrender flag but it did not work so here is a link
http://www.tatumba.com/blog/images/googlewar.jpg

The Mad Ape

So what will happen to SEO? Existing SEO Experts are not experts anymore?

SEG’s thought process, their willingness to share it with bloggers and the humour and angst invoved all are to be commended. It is sad however that they decided to surrender. I wish them well.

google is very-very high quality. I lose google

John, I stole the black banner. I surrender too. (but only one blog out of a dozen )

so I will never be stuck one day thinking up an idea.

I think that SEO is the real question here. After many discussions with friends on the subject of SEO, I think that you really can’t trust what Google has to say on the subject. I think John’s strategy is excellent. Get as much traffic from Digg, Google and the rest, as you can. When you get to the point that black hat techniques get you banned, complain to all your loyal readers and fellow bloggers and now he is one of the most famous bloggers in part for his defiant stand against the mighty corporations.

I learned about Johnchow.com from a bit he did on “Lab with Leo” on tech TV. I think effective marketing like that is probably just as (if not more) effective than the constant struggle to make your site conform to whatever arbitrary new rules Google comes up with.

John, I commend you on standing your ground against any entity that tries to dictate how we bloggers and entrepeneurs should maintain our businesses. I’d never wave a white flag and surrender, it’s always more fun to fly a freak flag (like Jimi Hendrix sang about).

Google becomes more and more a joke.. Surrender . They should first play straight.

Google won’t be relevant for long if she keeps acting like this.

I’d love to see a study among bloggers that actually showed whether or not Google sends “readers” or people that will stick. I know that I have traffic sources that send visitors that have triple and quadruple the page views per visit… hmmm

I think after this latest round of google bitchslapping the problogging world, that PR may be on its way out. At least as advertisers are concerned. We’ve read too many places that after google dumped PR on several sites their market actually increased. It shows that advertisers aren’t taking google PR for everything it USED to be. With other search sites out there (has anyone tried ask.com lately, that engine rocks) maybe its part of the evolution of the net.

On the other hand, this fluctuation has been happening for three weeks now, maybe its just another bump in the road.

I only ever got a slap that really effected traffic once. The pagerank got effected this time on a few of my sites, but the traffic is still climbing. I laugh because I’m basically a nobody. Seeing all the somebodies scramble gives me a little thing to lighten my day.

Its interesting to watch this discussion as a newbie, because I started promoting my blog about three weeks ago, following the techniques from John’s eBook rather an SEO book.

What is interesting for me is that John changed my concept of traffic - I used to worry about search engines sending me traffic, but you know today over 80% of my traffic are from referring sites and only 7.3% are from Google search engine. And get this - out of the 7.3% of hits I get from Google search engines, only about 2% actually spend more than 1 minute or browse to another page.

By following the techniques outlined in the ebook through social networking, commenting and linkbaiting, I’ve received a few stumbles, and my traffic is starting to build up slowly but surely. My direct hits have also increased. AND the quality of that traffic is way better. All visitors from referred sites stay between 3 to 15 minutes on my site, and the average number of pages browsed is 2.5. Granted, my traffic is building up really slowly (I have to juggle writing with promoting my site as well as a day job), I wished it was growing faster, but I’m happy with the quality of the readers I’m getting.

Google is the new Microsoft. Heck they are even more powerful now.
Surrendering to Google will cost too much money for me as well for my sites, so like the Borg…..you will be assimilated , HA HA HA (Evil Laugh)

Das Brain

^
Google needs to buyout facebook though if possible. Facebook is a much more threatening competitor than microsoft or yahoo.

Google has some arcane policies that make it hard to get traffic unless you’e one of the ‘chosen’ who shalt rank well

It’s easy to talk tough about not needing Google (for traffic) when you have 14000 RSS subscribers…until they “accidentally” drop your feed from feedburner

“Do no evil”. It is Google’s motto right? It’s funny that the tide is slowly but surely turning against Google. I actually wrote about this very thing about two years ago as it had the book scanning controversy and were preparing their foray into video search (before the YouTube acquisition). Ever since then, I’ve seen more and more negative commentary on Google.

It just seems to be the natural evolution of things that big companies eventually start upsetting a certain segment of the population. There was a time that most people loved Microsoft and Wal-Mart. For the most part, most people still do, otherwise these two entities wouldn’t make as much money as they do. But there becomes a point where a very vocal minority tends to turn the tide.

Full Disclosure, I actually used to work at MS. But I recently quit because it was the company I thought it would be when I joined (I was an anti-ms guy before I joined, and held some hope it would be a good place to work)

No more text link ads, let’s see what google have to say in the next update.

It’s a total catch-22.. Can’t afford the dedicated servers and writers without advertising. Can’t get advertising without PageRank. But can’t get good PageRank if you’re advertising. What’s a blogger to do?

It’s funny, PageRank is supposed to reflect your site’s authority status. We’re featured constantly in MAJOR sporting news publications, and have backlinks from the top sporting sites on te web, but because we’re trying to support our business by advertising, we get dropped to a PR3?

The system is fucked, and surrendering to G is the last thing anyone should be doing. If everyone stands their ground, they’d be forced to rethink their “strategy”, as everyone’s ranks would drop simultaneously. And if you’re not selling links, why do you care that your PR dropped in the first place?

You are right John, For you it would be way to costly however for most of the smaller guys… If they make 350-600 a month on sitewide sales it’s worth it to be re-included as search traffic may bring more and depending on the market they are in and what tyhpe of site it may be worth it. For you on the other hand… Sounds weird but who cares about search engines when you are a household name and have 14,000+ subscribers… You get mentione don OTHER peoples blogs so much it doesn’t matter.

Google is just asking for the US and EU courts to go after them for anti-trust in the near future if they continue their approach of using control of search results damage competitors in the online advertising world.

The online money making business is slowly turning to a dog-eat-dog arena. Google is just making sure that everybody still knows who the “big dog” is.

The Google Surrender’s Prayer

Oh most unholy Google

Supreme being of search engines

We have been humbled by your omnipotence

We cower in the shadow of your greatness

We tremble at the site of our low PR

We offer our ‘follow’ links as burnt sacrifice

A sign of our supplication and obedience

Please bless us with increased PR

And guide us with your wisdom

I wrote a post last night about my how I feel regarding Godgle…. oups Google, sorry. Let’s collaborate and forget about Google. I invite readers to my post on the subject, if you want to collaborate, I’m open to lots of things, just click my name and read my proposal.

The reason why Google was so good was their algorithm took all the SPAM out. Now, Google’s algorithm is not working as well so they are simply blaming on bloggers. They really need a new algorithm if anything. I foresee integration of Google and StumbleUpon very soon. (although it is already integrated sorta if you use the toolbar)

I am still waiting on Yahoo Publisher - are they out of beta yet?

google keep on pushing bloggers, sooner or later something will give.

real men don’t need no lube…
Seriously though, I have not given into those who we shall not speak of. I am not saying that I will not, I just don’t want to yet, I would much prefer to investigate all other options first. Imagine how TLA’s business