It’s Google’s right to rank websites how they see fit. When Google was “doing no evil” and only “organizing the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” I was a big fan. One of their biggest, most vocal supporters. I sent them a great deal of business and helped build their reputation.

Google has become morally bankrupt. Or at least, fallen victim to it’s own ego.

Google has taken to stripping even more sites of their PR scores? Why? Nobody knows though there is a lot of speculation these sites are involved with “pay per post”.

Pay per post comes from sites like reviewme.com where people looking for publicity are lined up with bloggers in their industry. The blogger writes a post giving their impressions of the product or service. Obviously a link to the reviewed product happens in the post.

According to Google engineer Matt Cutts this is not ok:

- Yet another “pay-for-blogging” (PFB) business launched, this time by Text Link Brokers. It should be clear from Google’s stance on paid text links, but if you are blogging and being paid by services like Pay Per Post, ReviewMe, or SponsoredReviews, links in those paid-for posts should be made in a way that doesn’t affect search engines. The rel=”nofollow” attribute is one way, but there are numerous other ways to do paid links that won’t affect search engines, e.g. doing an internal redirect through a url that is forbidden from crawling by robots.txt.

Google has crossed the line from organizing information to telling us how to present it.

According to Google, the only ad platform that is “not evil” is this one… and maybe this one. Though I can’t imagine why.

It is ok to have information on your website. It is not ok to make money from that information unless you run it through Google first (and they get their cut).

I can’t believe more people aren’t upset about this! Who do you want to control information? Who do you want to decide how the internet should work? Who do you want to decide how you may or may not earn an income? Do you want to be an indentured servant of Google?

Chances are you already are and just don’t know it yet.

Starting today Google is banned from 14th Colony.

Who knows, maybe I’ll calm down in a day or two and decide I’ve been hasty. Or maybe I’ll decide I should have done this a long time ago.

Right now, I just hope just 3 other people think real hard about this and make a similar move. I know my small protest won’t effect change. But if a few people join me, maybe a few people will join them too.

Will you be one of the 3?

Posted in 14th Colony News & Announcements

13 Comments »

Five days is a long time in the blogoshpere. I’m sure some of you are seeing this in your feed reader trying to remember what this site is about and why you subscribed.

This site is about online business. It leans on a few topics like website promotion through SEO. And with that comes the inevitable “see, Google is evil” posts. And the “make (more) money with Adsense” posts so I think it balances out.

So what’s with the title? Is 5 days really too long between posts? For this site it is. Continue Do you think it has been too long since I posted? I do. Here’s why. »

Posted in 14th Colony News & Announcements

1 Comment »

This story broke in August but it’s heating up again because MSN is still up to something.

MSN has been referral spamming websites. This means they “ping” a site with a bot acting like a human and leaving a link in the referral logs back to MSN’s website.

Spammers do this hoping you will check your logs and follow the links back to their site where you will make a purchase, click an ad, etc. MSN claims this is a “quality check” but what kind of QC wreaks havoc on your primary competitor’s ad program?

Microsoft’s bots are triggering some javascript including the one used for Google Adsense. You may recall that the click through rate determines the quality (value per click) of ads placed on your sites. With MSN’s referral spamming they are racking up impressions but not clicks damaging your CTR and ultimately, income. Continue Microsoft still referral spamming, jacking Adsense »

Posted in SEOs, Business Owners, PPC, Industry News, SEO

1 Comment »

Ron Paul has taken over social websites like Reddit. Conquered the poles of Fox News. And spammed thousands of other websites and email addresses.

The “Ron Paul Effect” has created mainstream media attention. And people are wondering if winning online will mean votes at the primary election.

Most politicians treat online promotion as part of their offline PR. Online calls to action are not like their offline counterparts. This means online political activities don’t turn into action – votes - by viewers.

Ron Paul’s campaign is for internet users. Paul’s tactics are producing results, online and off.

Through online efforts, his campaign has raised millions of dollars. The buzz has poured into the offline world and claimed attention from international news programs and political pundits.

Will Ron Paul take his online victory to the offline world? Continue Can the internet win the presidential election? »

Posted in Sales and Marketing, Promotion, Industry News

4 Comments »

It’s been a couple weeks since the website redesign was launched and I’ve put together some preliminary data on what effect the new look has had on traffic.

First, unique visits are down… barely. There’s was a 2% drop between September and October. Part of this is the tiny bit viewers lost in transition. And part is because there hasn’t been much new, exciting content to bring people in through the RSS feed (though subscriptions increased 12%) or social networks.

Second, return visits and page views are way up. Return visitors increased by 40% over the previous month and page views increased 72%.

I attribute this to the new look and better organization. Less clutter and more white space makes reading easier for the viewer. Related post lists at the end of each article and the enhanced footer have pulled viewers to content they missed in the past.

I’ve also been using the “more” feature from WordPress on lengthy posts so viewers hitting an article from the home page have to click through to get the whole story. I’m using this sparingly as I don’t want it to take away from the overall experience, but that has definitely increased the number of page views.

Adsense earnings are down. Part of this is because some ads were “hidden” when viewers used the “more” feature and jumped past the ads. Also, I took Adsense offline for about a week while I tried Bidvertiser. That was an expensive test.

Over the next month you’ll see minor changes in structure as the logs tell me what needs adjusting. And improved writing as I’ve been brushing up. My goal is an improved experience for you. If you have any suggestions, drop them in the comments below.

PS. The advertising program is getting off to a slow start. Prices are low - check it out!

Posted in 14th Colony News & Announcements

2 Comments »