Slap Google Back!!

[Jeff Noel]

Are you tired of hearing how so many marketers using Google are getting slapped and banned? Tonight I was at a mastermind group I belong to and listened to story after story how marketers incomes have literally disappeared over night because of Google’s disregard for them. I heard the story from a man and his wife who had built their business over the last two years to an income of 12 k a month only to have their websites de indexed their PPC campaigns halted without any notice or communication of the changes in policy at Google.

As a business person and marketer myself I find this extremely disheartening and very sad that Google thinks they can play with people’s lives like that. Even though we are all in competition in one way or another with each other the one thing I have discovered is that we IM’ers seem to stick together we like to help each other and in general we are a pretty solid community. I have actually found marketers to be some of the nicest and friendliest people around in the business world. Yes there are some bad apples that are willing to do whatever it takes to make a buck, but in general I feel there are more that are truly honest and ethical as well as hold high values when it comes to their business and dealing with others. The saying “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine.” I think this metaphor really applies to our type of business then any others that I have been involved with.

Now don’t take this the wrong way I think that all search engines on the internet should have a TOS that is in place to make searching an enjoyable experience. I also think that if you break those TOS you should be punished or reprimanded. However, what I am reading on the forums and hearing from people is that their business is being destroyed without any warning all because of Google.

Here’s the thing…. There’s a new player in town Yahoo+Bing and they are marketing themselves hard to let the world know about it. There CPC is much cheaper and in my opinion the traffic seems to be higher quality. Some of my campaigns do not covert very well on Yahoo but most do. I am also able to rank a lot easier and quicker with Yahoo then with Google. Overall I do most of my testing on Yahoo before I even attempt placing it on Google.

So what’s my point? We are marketer we have trained ourselves to enter the minds of our prospects and get them to buy into our ideas. That gives us great power when you think about it. What if all marketer s banned together and said we are not going to take it anymore? We are not going to allow search engines destroy our lives and the lives of our families without due process. What if we said to Google you think you have the power well we will show you? What if we decided to tell our customers all about this great search engine Yahoo/Bing? What would happen if all marketers were able to convert just one percent of their list to Yahoo/Bing? Who really has the power who controls who? What kind of statement would that send to Google? Do you think that Google would so easily be slapping and banning marketers at their whim? Would Google start to realize and become aware that the small guy is just as important as the big guy? Just some questions to ponder.

[Pete Egeler]

I "kinda" got what you're saying, but it would be a hell of a lot easier to read if you'd use spaces!!

Pete

[JoshuaG]

I really like this post.
Its nice to remember the power of the group.

[Jason_V]

Why do you think Jon Leger is trying to start his own search engine?

In reality, you have to do things based on the way the world is, not how you want them to be.

[Jeff Noel]

Sorry about the spacing it looked like it was in place when I pasted.

To sort of some it up what I am saying is that most marketer have lists and in many cases multiple lists with thousands of people to send our emails too.

I am just adding a little note at the bottom of my e-mail for them to try the new and improved Yahoo search and how great it is.

I think Google is out of control and us marketers really need to send a message that we are not going to go away. That we have money to spend and we are going to spend it were we are treated the best.

Without people marketing there products and services what good is Google? It's just a search engine. They need us, we are their customers without customers they have nothing.

[Tayweb]

Hi Jeff,
I think you would like to read this post:
http://www.warriorforum.com/main-internet-marketing-discussion-forum/115391-open-letter-google.html
Best,
tayweb
PS: We all are in the same boat!

[Quentin]

Why so many marketers would place all their resources into Google is beyond me. Google should only be a part of your overall marketing strategy.

Google is a great company but they are a company like any other and they need to give the best results for their users just like you do for your business.

If you are going to try and bypass this using all sorts of crapy keyword stuffing etc instead of good quality content then you deserve to loose your business.

Its time to work smart and develop a marketing plan that involves numerous campaigns using all the great assets of the Internet.

Quentin

[SumikoW]

Thanks for the story, sounds good Yahoo + Bing I'll check it out!

[ChrisBa]

Originally Posted by FormerWageSlave

Here's a summary:

Google sucks. Use Bing + Yahoo.

Your said it best, screw google, stop giving them our business.

[kkchoon]

If you can rank high with bing and yahoo, you can totally forget Google, because for some reason, many factors that let you rank high in other search engine will definitely get you banned in Google!

And those factors that rank high in Google, doesn't work with Bing and Yahoo... I wish someone can show us a way to rank high for all search engines.

[Jimerson Farveez]

Nowadays, we are hearing lot of issues with our big "G",
It seems we have to pack up our things towards bing and yahoo... isn't it? :P

[InternetMarketingIQ]

The reality is the public at large is NOT complaining. Google is an evil company that plays along with you.... feeds you "free"... then turns on you in a heartbeat.

They are for everything that makes them money... but do something that might make you money and they want their share.

They are selective in enforcement of their TOS. I see sites in clear violation happily doing whatever they want with no recourse in full violation of the TOS and Google clearly knows about them. Then I see individuals do one little thing wrong and get sent off to Google Hell.

So a webmaster backlash will take time... but might not be effective. Because the mindset that has to be steered in a new direction is the mindset of the common person not the Internet Marketer.

[metafever]

"Slap Google Back" is my tag line for MonsterClicks . . . I am not fussing, I just saw the post thread title and thought cool . . . someone else who wants to give Google some love back.

[BeauJustin]

Yahoo gets 56,000,000 searches per day, so I'm not sure why anyone is stuck with Google.

Plus, in September Yahoo merges with MSN/Bing.

At that point Yahoo+MSN will be at the very least Equal to Google in terms of search power.

Look, I love Google. It's a great resource. But as someone said above, it's a bad idea to focus on using Google alone as your sole source of traffic. If you do then you've strapped yourself to a constantly evolving search algorithm, and must adhere to a TOS which is capricious at best. You may find yourself thriving on page 1 today, only to be blacklisted tomorrow.

[ados67]

So you're suggesting Google is on a power trip here... ? Yeah, I don't blame you for saying that - it sure looks like it from everything I've seen over the last couple of years.

Sincerely,

Adi.

[Jeff Noel]

Between the WF and a couple other forums I visit I must have seen at least 100+ posts in the last 24 hours about being banned, unindexed ads not showing adsense bans all on Google.

My friend and I were talking about this and we can never say that we have seen anyone getting banned at Yahoo or MSN.

[Gina71]

I agree. I am not using Google at all.
I stopped using them in June 2009 and I refuse to go back. They have sent me three letters wondering where I have gone (I used to spend a lot $$ with them) and I replied to all three: Yahoo.

I agree entirely. AVOID GOOGLE!

[MrGoogle]

In my opinion, they are all the same AHoles.
Do you remember about 8-9 years ago when Yahoo was the biggest SE?
They charged $200 something for regular sites and $600 something for adult sites to be indexed in their directory and there was no guarantee that your site will be in that directory,
There were so many people lost so much money and they didn't even give you why your site was not.
You just have to try it again after you fix the whatever you think the problem was.
That was sucks big time.

[brp002]

I got a google slap.... I really dont like google and will do business outside of them.

[onlineleben]

What if we said to Google you think you have the power well we will show you? What if we decided to tell our customers all about this great search engine Yahoo/Bing? What would happen if all marketers were able to convert just one percent of their list to Yahoo/Bing? Who really has the power who controls who?

why don't you slap google by removing your quality content from their SE?
use google webmaster tools and your robots.txt to get de-indexed and make the googlebot stop crawling your sites - If you say 'I don't like you anymore', you should make a 100% statement of it.

[BeauJustin]

Originally Posted by onlineleben

why don't you slap google by removing your quality content from their SE?
use google webmaster tools and your robots.txt to get de-indexed and make the googlebot stop crawling your sites - If you say 'I don't like you anymore', you should make a 100% statement of it.

For me, I'll still take any traffic Google sends my way, I'm just not going to spend money driving traffic from them specifically.

The actual purpose of a backlink was not so that we would have a tool to help us rank better, but rather Google puts weight on them because it might be an ACTUAL recommendation to a quality, relevant article.

We get slapped because Google constantly tweaks the algorithm to insure that only relevant content rises to the top, and more often than not, though I call myself one, internet marketers with SEO savvy often aren't quite relevant.

Here's the bottom line for SEO: If you want to drive massive amounts of traffic to your site, and rank well in the search engines, take this advice from Matt mullenweg, the founder of Wordpress:

"Write good content."

[onlineleben]

Originally Posted by BeauJustin

For me, I'll still take any traffic Google sends my way

Same with me - G is a tool our customers use heavily, so I would be nuts not to accept the traffic they send to me.
I wanted to make a point in saying when the OP doesn't like the beahviour (ethics?) of Google, than he should say no to them 100%.