I Shouldn't Share This: On Google Slap

Having been in the "user experience" business for more than 10 years, it's nice to see it coming into fashion.

Its about time they remove all those garbage review sites I'm seeing.

As the internet evolves only the strong will survive. Its only the beginning of whats to come.

If you follow trends, then worrying about that review site is only a small fraction of what's really going to hurt IM and information marketing. And google can't stop it- its only making it worse.

Lets thank Google for taking the trash out.

Thanks Big G!

Will CPC go down for other people (people not getting slapped). That's my concern. Or it won't effect people at all with no review sites?

lmao! you are ruthless harlan

I do find it pretty funny to see people put so much effort into beating Google instead of just working with them.

That was just an example how a fake review can be detected by machine.

But the policy is not new. But that's clear for a long time: they have it in their TOS.

This action is about as predicatble as Google not wanting huge masses of Traffic Equalizer sites clogging up their listings.

As Harlan says, Google's question always is, do your sites add value? If they don't or they are riding the line, they will eventually be eliminated. The best content will rise to the top.

Does that mean you can't make money riding the line? hardly.... but, if you're smart, you'll use some of your profits to create REAL content or value. It's the best money you will ever spend.

What you really have to weigh is if you'd rather keep your ideas to yourself, which I always do, or sell them to the masses. Some people apparently need their five minutes of fame and a victory lap. I want my name spelled right on the check.

If you decide to market them, you had better be a good marketer because you can't unring a bell.

Google just studies the data, interprets trends, and will do whatever to please who they need to please and make the money they want

Some decent books have been written on the subject of Google, like "Numerati" "Planet Google" and "Click", just to name a few...

Interesting reads...

The money is in the list that includes a physical address!

As a person who deal with real Joe Blow and Jane Doe buyers (ones who shop online but aren't real Internet savvy like IM people) I can tell you the effectiveness of email is getting less and less.
The average person is so fed up with SPAM they are quick to delete or report anything they don't like (even if its not SPAM)

You can't unsubscribe from the real SPAM so they take out their frustration on "us".
I've seen a lot of that this month.

I'm going back to mailing my coupons and special. I had far better response rate when I did it before.

As for slapping the review sites...
If they are crap sites, Google will sort it out. I'm all for it. I build stores and larger information sites. I have to compete with those sites.

Its Google's playground, they make the rules and most importantly they set the standards that the other big guys like MSN, Yahoo and others watch and emulate.

I'm not worring about it affecting my sites.

Not saying you personally, Harlan. Cuz I know you deliver some solid content and genuinely care about helping people...

but what's the difference in affiliate review sites and the 90% (my own out of thin air estimate) of email lists that exist solely to extract money from their subscribers.

Johnson,

Let me start with article marketing because I see a lot of people confusing article marketing with Bum Marketing.

Bum Marketing focuses on finding highly searched phrases which do not have too much competition (i.e. results in Google when doing a search for the phrase in quotes).

The Bum Marketer then quickly creates content around those search phrases and posts that content on more established (more Google friendly) sites like an article directory.

The Bum Marketer knows, if he/she did their research correctly, how well the target article directory will rank in terms of the top 10 SERPs for the target search phrase.

Say the Bum Marketer found the phrase "buy black ipod cheap" had less than 10k competing sites when searched in Google (in quotes) and the top 10 sites in the SERPs (search engine results pages) had a pagerank (PR) of 3 or less. If they know that their target article directory has a history of outperforming PR 3 sites then they'll feel pretty good about their article being in the top 5 of the search results for that phrase.

An article marketer, on the other hand, doesn't really concentrate on the whole "highly searched/low competition" aspect. They create quality articles that people WANT to read and find homes for those articles on sites (and it doesn't have to be an article directory) that have a hungry crowd of people waiting/wanting to read it. This is what I was referring to.

Article marketing has nothing to do with starting a search at Google.

Social Bookmarking is very powerful tool that can operate quite nicely without any help from Google as well. It allows you to create bookmarks and share them with anyone and everyone. The more popular BM sites have enormous traffic. I'm talking big traffic jams.

Think of the power when a marketer in a particular niche can share his/her bookmarks with prospects, customers, other SB users, etc. And who knows, maybe that marketer even throws a few of their sites into the shared bookmarks.

It's very powerful... and it's very non-Google dependent.

Note: Just to get the record straight, please don't get me wrong, Google certainly adds to the excitement of any marketing campaign, when they like you. But they shouldn't be relied on. I'm not bashing Bum marketing, either. I'm just making a small comparison. I know there are other aspects.

Just remember, nowhere in the great bible of Internet Marketing does it say that all sales begins with a Google search.