I too felt that way the first time I was slapped around, and banned for something so minor I did not even intend to cheat the system...it was because I made a landing page 10 years ago that I didn't even use but somehow their system decides to ban me for it!

Quite frankly though I hope they don't fail because that is still where everyone goes to find my websites....

I wish you luck in your pursuit however ------I
just looked at your signature and maybe part of the answer to your delimma can be found there---How To Piss People Off---hahahahaha
(It's a joke.)

Just my opinion but google seems to get stronger with every update and they are trying to give people what they really want.

How many searches have I done where the top 10 searches are yelp or dex or superpages and the info is worthless.

I just did a search for auto parts. #4 is yellopages. Has a listing for a brake place, a car painting place, 2 car sales places, a muffler place and the top listing is an RV place.

They just learned how to piss me off.

Yeah, I have been pretty ticked at Google too over several different issues. How can I pay them thousands of dollars and then they ban an account and won't even give me an opportunity to chat with them or ask what happened!!

Well...I really think they are going to do what they want to do. It's like the rich kid that owns the only baseball...he gets to make the rules.

Google is making the rules, and since they are diversifying so well (android, chrome, etc) I think they are going to be tough to take down.

Google is like walmart. I doubt it will fail because you have a lot of mind less drones that will continue using it no matter what. People used to stop patronizing businesses like google when it became known that their product and or service were not of quality. However, today things are different. Just because it is google and it has integrated itself into almost every section of the web, people will use it. No matter how unreliable or no good their service is, people will find in excuse to use it. Now, like walmart google is the number one internet presence. The only search engines they don't own is bing and yahoo. And neither are as diverse and powerful as google but for me that is great because I don't like google.

I don't use gmail, chrome, docs, checkout, etc. I try to use the search engine as little as possible. I wish another search engine would come along because I am tired of Google and Yahoo and Bing just don't give you the same results.

Buddy, I have full sympathies with your frustration with Google. One things which is very natural is that whatever goes up , comes down some day. Google is not going to be #1 forever but it would have great if they create enough infrastructure to handle clients and their queries.
One incident, I remember that in early days of my career I wrote a well researched tutorial on Sexual health and published it on few platforms. I used my adsense id to earn some bucks.Google just blocked my adsense account without any warning . It was good for me but I learnt SEO then I can earn more thousands of dollars from online advertisement now a day.

How about eBay? Not only have I spent thousands buying stuff on their site, I used to be a power seller with close to 6000 auctions under my belt.

That is, until they got all corporate high and mighty and stuck it every which way to sellers. When they started putting links to competing products in auctions I paid a fee to list I said fark the whole thing. But that was after writing and calling and writing even more with not a single reply. So, I think I know how you feel.

For all the Google haters, the life cycle of a business goes something like this.

Birth, growth, maturity, stagnation, and death.

IBM had plenty that hated them in the 1940's and they're still here.

I really don't know where Google spends all its resources on.

It could've been more customer friendly, at least to their paying AdWords customers.

It's hard to say whether they will fail or not. Depends on 2 things out of our prophetic knowledge:

1. what choices will google make in the future?
2. will any company be smart enough to develop into an alternative, thus eating away from google's market share?

I must say though that I would appreciate some healthy competition for google.

Their lack of caring for the individual customer is unheard of in the rest of the business world and it's a miracle that a company can it pull it of on a scale this large.

Ralf

Ken, thanks for pointing out the hypocrisy of Google.

GoogleMail Vulnerability The worldwide used Gmail has been long been in its stage of the Beta version, and the Google team yet seems to ignore the loophole associated with the Gmail. The ignored part of the Gmail that allows hackers to send emails in the name of Google Team can be a serious threat to user’s privacy. One can easily attach a Trojan file in the mail and create havoc at receiver’s end.
Also, the Gmail vulnerability disables the Google Developers team to set up a quality process that helps its users to avoid spam mails in their Inbox.

Hello:

The problem is there are people lined up around the corner to give Google their advertising money. Truth is... they don't need or want you as a customer.

The other options are not as good or just as bad with their customer service. The Microsoft/Yahoo partnership seems to be a good alternative, but your ads get disapproved often for crazy reasons... they are now banning all keywords that are not actually on your landing page. Isn't that crazy!? Too bad since the amount of clicks and the quality is right up there with Google these days. Cheaper too.

Other sources of traffic like mobile and Facebook Ads are very very low quality traffic. They wouldn't buy or opt in to a form if their life depended on it. Mobile is flat out click fraud with no system to catch it.

Yes, I feel Google will face an eventual backlash for collecting so much of our data.

I make sure that I am not logged into my Gmail when doing searches, or if possible go to Wikipedia directly to look up information. Small things...

When I start hearing people say "Bing it" or Yahoo it" instead
of "Google it" I'll know Google is in trouble.

Until then... not so much.

Tsnyder

Interesting, I sort of get a little irritated at google from time to time, and perhaps it may be as you say someday they may not be as popular as they are today and someday advertisers may stop paying them as much money as they used to pay, it could happen that way, there are tons of stories online about companies that used to be big time and then they just faded away, that may happen to google but probably not anytime in the near future which is why you sort of have to play their game.

Great post,

T, I'm already hearing more people comment how they like Bing a lot better, and it's been reported that they have 30% of the market share. Like the previous poster said, that's not bad for the short amount of time they've been out and considering how it takes awhile for people to change their habits. Even my kids have commented how they like Bing better (they call it "Because It's Not Google"). Bing is installed on their school laptops so it is there by default by they use Google at home and after knowing the differences, they prefer Bing. If the kids are growing up with it, this could only increase Bing's popularity and continue to take some away from Google. Like I said earlier, if it means one giant trampling the other giant, I guess I'll still take it. The lesser of the two evils at this point.

I doubt Goog will ever flat out fail but like everything else, they'll eventually lose a lot of authority. Look at Microsoft. Everything they've ever done was for Microsoft and not their customers. They almost take pride in releasing software full of bugs. And then they "fix it on the fly" with their stupid Service Packs, and many times it still sucks.

System restore came about, I belive, as a result of that total train wreck Windows ME. They knew it was a memory leaking POS yet they unleashed it on the world anyway.

Their software is designed by Geeks and even after more than 25 years it's still never easy to use for average people. You want to shut off your computer, hey, go to the Start button. Ain't that brilliant? It's all about arrogance. Why? Because we can damnit!

Right now Open Office has a far better suite of FREE Office tools than MS Office and I'm sure that's hurting ole Softy. Same thing with Firefox vs. IE. Little by little competitors are chipping away at the Giant. Can we have a moment of silence for poor Bill, please. The same will eventually happen with Google.

Read some of these great recent posts and tell me if Google is really doing the right thing: SEO Blog

On the positive side, Google is taking steps to alleviate some of their customer service issues by offering live phone support for Adwords customers now! This is a very recent development that just took place on April 5th of this year.

And where is that? All I could find is phone support for "first-time campaign set-up help".

Google has never had customer service, so I'm not sure anything has "changed". It does not seem to fit into their model of computer automation.

Nothing has changed. I just called that adwords number. The CSR that answered the phone was "extremely" short with me. When I asked her why she was being short she said she wasn't. I told her that as a csr, she should be going out of her way to assist "her customer" with their needs. She actually said to me, "I'm not a CSR." I said, "Mam, you picked up the phone to help me, I have been trying to contact Google about a very important issue for months, could you please... She said, "You called Adwords so I'm not going to be able to help you." She then hung up on me.

Google is not going to fail anymore than eBay is going to fail. eBay has some really poor policies.

The reality is little mom and pop operations mean nothing to them. This is the way of big business. It has always been this way and will always be this way until the economy collapses completely under the weight of it's own debt.

There are some companies you MUST do business with whether you like it or not. Google is one of them.

Many, many, many people came to this same conclusion YEARS ago.

Despite the rumors and the "proof," it's always good to remember that Google does not actually employ human beings. When you realize that, everything is better. It's like the day you realize getting mad at your car doesn't actually hurt its feelings as you hoped it might.

I'm pretty sure Google isn't going to fail.

Google needs a serious competitor!

Bing is slowly rising in the ranks and capturing more market share. But who's to say they will not act just like Google once they get higher up in the pile?

March 2011 Search Market Share Report

Personally, I generally ignore Google. If I see a great link I feel will help my company, I'll buy it. And I don't stress over whether the link is follow, nofollow or left behind

One really strange behavior is their "banned for life" policy when it comes to Adsense and other programs. Innocent or guilty, if they think you done it - you're out for life. Crazy! Even bank robbers get out after serving a set number of years.

Hopefully, Bing and Yahoo will get closer and closer. As they do, Google will have no choice but to begin dealing fully in reality.

Do like I do and start using Bing and Yahoo more. You'll be surprised.

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I don't think Google is going to fail anytime soon. They're not hurting their primary money-makers - the people who actually use the search to find useful information. By providing this, they are meeting the people's needs.

I use to pay Google several thousand per month in adwords for my campaigns. They crushed all my campaigns. What is the reason they gave me. They do not like affiliate programs. Yeah, like for example amazon.

This is plain crazy. I have been using Google for years. They use to hike up my per click money using a score. Well, now they crushed all my campaigns. The writing is on the wall for all of us.

Please remember that I use to advertise on Yahoo until they got nasty with me. This forced me into Google's waiting arms. History repeats itself - again.

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you are talking from your frustration. yes google seems to be dull some time but it has a own unique business strategy. they have made their base so hard that it will be very tough to beat them in th market. but if google do not cheat with the people and value the people's demand , then they will not gonna fail.

thanks

Please lets wish Google the best.We need them so much

You seem upset because Google isn't making you their top priority. Chances are, you own a relatively small business and Google won't spend one second of their time to cater specifically to you - they've got much more to worry about.

And it's not only you - I earn hundreds a day through Adsense, so I'm technically a Google contractor, and I've only JUST started getting any actual feedback and contacts from real Google employees.

You have to realize that if Google actually gave every little ****ty website or publisher an answer to every complaint they made, they would have no time to do what their real job is - run a search engine.

I agree that fewer people will want to spend thousands of dollars on seo when google keeps changing its algorithm. Particularly when there are websites like facebook, ebay and twitter that can be a lucrative source of traffic I think that fewer people would be willing to fall on their knees at the altar of google. In particular, google traffic unlike ebay traffic for example is browser traffic vs buyer traffic. Buyer traffic is so much easier to monetize than browser traffic.

Google will certainly slow down, but will not fail. Look at it this way, Google sees everything as data and simply converts data into dollars. Dollars are the only thing that matter to any large company. That is how all large businesses work. Each and every part of the business is dollar oriented. Therefore, every part of these companies despise anything that may not return more than it puts out. From employees to small customers like us. Should we fall away in large enough numbers Google will respond. Until then, you are lower than the dog crap on the bottom of their shoes and will remain that way. Coincidentally, I do the same! The day they screwed me was the day I began to find alternatives that in the end resulted in a better return for me. Now Google is the crap on the bottom of my shoe. Sooner or later they will respond.

Its funny , with so many people want to advertise with them, its really a overload and man power just not enough..they definitely need to work on there contact system..so many people are unable to get in contact with them and are losing money.

Great Post, Great Replies! Really enjoyed reading them all...and being a victim myself getting banned back in March 2010 all I can say (after it took a week for my girlfriend to talk me off the ledge) is that it is one of the best things that has happened to me.

It's forced me to think outside of the box and find alternatives sources of traffic that have become far more profitable for me, and allows me to sleep at night too knowing I don't have to worry about Google being the only game in town.

There's plenty of offers and networks to promote, and so many traffic sources that convert just as good as my adwords campaigns did...

I agree that karma will get The Goog in the ass, it may be hard to believe that it could happen, and I remember not to long ago that I felt same about Yahoo when Google came onto the block I felt Yahoo could never be taken down, and well here we are today...

Keep your chin up and don't lose sleep over this, if you're smart enough to make money with adwords you can do it in other ways...just don't quit that's the worst thing you can do...you gotta get back on and keep riding into the sunset.

Yours For Prosperity,

Anthony Aires

According to Wikipedia, as of late 2010; Google had a 91% share of the SE market (use) followed by Yahoo at 4% and Bing at 3%. When that kind of power is handed to you, it follows suit that you will be the one to make changes in the interest of all, and to organize and plan the near future. It's not a "Google" thing at all - they just happen to be in the lead.
They can do as they see fit, keeping the best interest of the consumer in mind which is really the bottom line. If a few people get brushed to the side, oh well. I would chalk it up to bitter experience if in that circumstance, and do the best to move ahead, regardless. I empathize with you totally.

Eventhough we say that we have problems with their services and assistance. But we can't deny the fact that our targeted customers prefer Google to buy stuff and services. Google is but one of the best sources that could generate huge sales for anyone.

Still here In india, market has been good..

Coz here there are not many internet marketers..

My websites still rank on number 3 and 2 for my keywords and my business has grown all thanks to Google..

It seems to me Google's end 'clients' are the people who search for stuff online. That's who they are trying to give a 'quality user experience'. So as advertisers we just need to give Google what it wants... and that is to give their users a quality user experience. Personally I don't have a problem with Google now, but it did take me hundreds of tests to figure out exactly what they want... especially with the Quality Score issues.

Except that some of you pro-Google people forget that this thread didn't start by addressing those that have tried to game them. If you'll re-read the original post, it is addressing those businesses that have done everything right. A company like Google that completely ignores it's legitimate customers is wrong I don't care how you try to spin it.

If people spent half the time trying to figure out how to work WITH Google as they do in hoping that they will fail (ain't happening anytime soon) the'd have a more successful IM experience. Can't think of any company that gives you worse support? How about this -

Name me a company that succeeded by not learning to work with their business partners? Worse the ones that supply you with customers. You use Google for one reason and only one reason - they have the multimillion users that include your buyers.

they are not required to give them to you on a platter. Until you get enough of your own customers without them theres is no use moaning and groaning about it. Your best "revenge" (if they have made you angry ) is to work with them until you no longer need them.

anything else is futile.

Thing is though most of the times if you were working with them they wouldn't have made you so angry.

Yah you are right...but anyway everyone depends on google

Google connects advertisers with customers. Their strength lies in having the customers happy. They can afford to be a pain to advertisers because while they move the volume they move, they will keep having people willing to pay them.

they might go down if they ever scare the browsers away for some reason. Whether it is because of competition, or a matter of misuse of personal information. It is scary to see how much info google collects from us on a daily basis, even if you have nothing to hide.

Well I guess the easy way to help Goggle to fail would be to STOP buying PPC from them.

I stopped long ago.

Do I loose sales. I'm sure I do, but I don't go to bed every night feeling like I've been ripped off.

Yes, I'm also demure google can't fail any way

I don't think google will fail. They have grown too big and hey, they practicly own the internet.

As a marketer and SEO, i have my share of experiences with Google...as so many.

Starting with bans on Adwords/Adsense etc..never any proper reasons given...to the constant fight about site ranking, site penalizations, page rank penalizations and much more...

But the biggest gripe i have with them (despite personal being angered about IMO unjustified bans)....is that i think that the current ranking algorithm is just wrong with too much "favoritism" what THEY deem "authority sites"...and often totally ignoring actually site content.

If a "reader's digest" one-pager pathetic article is ranking #1 in Google for weight loss you start to wonder about the validity of their results...

Google have their fingers in too many pies to fail. And I'm not just talking about the different web applications and services they have. They own and are involved with many companies, and have invested in many.

Google's search engine is still on top and probably will be for a very long time to come. We all need to be able to search. However, I do think that Facebook is a huge threat to them. I no longer find funny or interesting stuff through Google; it all just automatically comes to me through my Facebook feed.

Google is rediculous.

I was attempting to sell an ebook I wrote for online poker and I was told by I adwords I would need to apply, be approved, and pay for a gambling license with each individual territory that my ad would be shown to.

For selling a BOOK. Get the **** out google.

Yea i agree. I mean if you are taking adsense seriously and try to make a living out of it the least they could do is respond to your e-mails . I have never received even one e-mail back from them.

I dont think they are going to fail soon as they are just to big but I just think that they are handling their business partners (adsense publishers) like ****, we are making THEM money. The problem is that there is no decent competition.

If I may.....business is about making money...obvious I know. But think about what this means in reality. It means that businesses exist to make money.....easily, quickly and the best ones do it legally. In the world of IM then Google is king. So learn to provide real quality content and content that also what people are searching for....if you do this then Google will smile on you. Quite right. Is Google so wrong in its business model? What's wrong with providing the best quality to the customer - seems like a pretty good business model to me!

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Don't forget, Google is a company of engineers. Hence, it is more like a huge machine than a standard company. Ultra efficient but not very, ah, personable.

I don't see Google dying out but I do see them moving away from a purely software driven search results and using social media mentions / reviews in the SERPS. Don't know if the customer service will improve though

Look at Groupon, they are flourishing because of small business attraction. And that's what's making them so profitable. Google's missing out big time.

Whenever we catch on to Google and find a way to game their system they change the rules. That is as it should be. But the quality of their searches keeps getting worse, that is less accurate for me the searcher. Their search results of two years ago were much better than the search results of today.

I think Google is too well-known to fail. They can spend money just picking themselves up again.

Have you ever noticed that when the phrase, "too big to fail" is used with a company, it usually means nothing but trouble for the rest of us?

Don't be evil is the Google slogan. As we know, psychologically the brain hearing this over and over only hears Be Evil.

I agree that Google is a little more strict in its requirements the bigger it gets, but I think this is symptomatic of companies that just get big

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I had advertised my own website that sold affiliate memberships to a movie website. Mind you these were not xxx movies or even adult just general movies. I sold a few memberships and then kind of lost intereest. Then I kept seeing this guy that was constantly advertising this same movie website on adwords 24/7. I thought this guy must be raking it in. So yeah I admit I clicked on his website and saw he wasn't actually advertising just that one movie website but had reviews of several. So being a newbie my logic dicated I should sign up for membership on the same affiliate websites and make tons of money like him.

Big mistake. Apparently the sites I had signed up for were streaming websites that are against regulations on google. I had no idea about this at all until google simply refused to run my first ad and told me why. I admit I should have checked this out but thought if the other guy is having his ads running night and day it must be okay with google.

So anyway the first ad was refused and I thought just shuck it (something like that ) And didn't even go into my google adwords account for over 6 months after having deleted my attempted ad. Well out of the blue I received an email from google that my adwords account had been banned. With no activity whatsoever and an ad that hadn't even run and that I had deleted by me.

I went to the google forum and asked why and managed to get hold of some staff from google who were actually very polite but told me all sorts of hogwash about my website that had the links to the affiliate sites being infected by virus and low landing quality etc. I ran it through my antivirus and there was no virus and since the ad had never run in the first place and I wasn't even advertising it anywhere at this point except letting the domain name lapse I got the run around. They did give me some advice after apparently not listening to the fact that I did not even actively run this website anymore and told me that in order to get reinstated I needed to contact the website I had been advertising and tell them to improve their landing page quality. As if!

So after apparently being banned from advertising on google for life I still use it to do my searches and still work on ranking higher because they are the ones where the money is right now. If something better comes along I'll switch to that. It doesn't matter to me how I get traffic from google whether through adwords or organic as long as I get traffic from them. The ironic thing is that I keep getting sent these $100 adwords coupons from google Canada wanting me to sign up for an adwords account.

Cee, it seems that you're a classic case of someone that has been treated unfairly by a company yet you refuse to do anything about it. You're no different than people that constantly complain about Walmart (for a variety of reasons) yet they continue to shop there.
Until you have the courage and/or desire to change something, you should not complain about it. As the old saying goes, "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem."

Google will never fail.

Reading a majority of your posts I see one common theme which is your all pissed at Google for messing with your income streams.....at what stage was Google a shopping mall browser?

They are a web based search engine whose concern is not you but the people who use them day in and day out to look for information on the internet and it's US that make Google change the rules and update their algorithms to weed out the crap and leave people with viable content. You think they want to spend millions of dollars on combating link farms, wheel, pyramids, forum spam etc created by someone who is providing poor content or in some cases, not even that just a 301 to a vendors page trying to porn off products with out providing any real substance in content.

Google's main business base is being a search engine and providing users the easiest and best way to access the information they want. They understand that it's the masses which control the market, provide a valuable service and you corner the market and people will come in droves to use your service above anyone else's. Sound familiar? It should do, we all model our business on the same principle.

Google slapped a couple of my websites with their last update, eh, I changed it around and now they're back to where they were before the update. I look at it as growth and change, a normal evolution of any business.

"Dont be evil"

I think thats going to eventually come back to haunt them.

I surely hope not .. Google is getting bigger everyday and with future updates I believe that better things will come for it.

The Golden Rule applies: He who has the gold rules. While customer service is non-existent, they are a company in flux. They've screwed up some things, but they know search. Farmer, Panda and the other updates are not an accident. Google looks at what is working and tries to adjust. Some adjustments work, some don't. Until they perform a series of catastrophic updates that can't be undone, they will survive. They may not thrive.

They make it too hard to get your website onto the search results, that's the only thing I don't like about them.

This is a pretty common theme in business. Eventually, the toll of being a behemoth gets too large. The innovation and ability to adapt gives way to bureaucracy.