I’ve had enough! No more Google on 14th Colony
by Randall McCarley
November 19th, 2007
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?
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November 20th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
1) In an ideal world, paid links should not affect search engine ranking, because they do not represent the public at large, but some organization. I fully agree with the sentiment of google.
2) Google is not forcing or coercing anyone to do anything. They merely state that they believe using paid links to improve search ranking is a bad practice, and suggest a better practice.
From the point of the end-user, they are doing just the right thing. If you cannot agree with that, that is most likely because you yourself want to get “unfair” search rankings. I’m voting this down on SU because you are plain wrong.
November 21st, 2007 at 12:06 am
Brave words anonymous! I don’t sell links on this site. Or even trade them. I haven’t tried to game the system. As far as Google’s crusade against paid links I have to ask a few questions:
1. Why does Google want us to do the work for them?
2. Why don’t other SE’s care?
3. Why are Yahoo’s results better when they don’t seem to care?
The answer I come back to each time is money. Google wants a cut of your cash and if they don’t get it… well, PR drops, penalizations and bans have all occurred.
What’s the cost of letting this continue? Loss of freedom.
Google is not the “good guy” company they claim to be anymore.
November 21st, 2007 at 6:23 am
Namesake:
- this isn’t an ideal world. It never has, nor it will be. Paid advertising has its place and it mainly depends on the product, not on how it is made available to the public.
- Google does tell us how to present info, because if we don’t comply, he’ll penalize our sites and ruin our income. Some sad people solely depend on Google (which isn’t a smart thing), but it really tells how things run today.
While I don’t think many people will ban Google, I think we can very well start a campaign to ditch AdSense for better income channels.
November 21st, 2007 at 7:25 am
Anonymous - Google’s move has nothing to do with search results. SERPs were unaffected. Also unaffected were the buyers of paid links. The only blogs zeroranked were sellers of paid links. This is all about competition for advertising dollars. Google has leaked that this a toolbar-only penalty, which means your actual PR is still being calculated and still drives the rankings of the sites to which you linked.
Google is a for-profit multinational corporation. They are squashing their competition in the same way Microsoft tried with their operating system.
November 21st, 2007 at 8:48 am
Randall, Yura, and Tim are all correct; Anonymous is wrong at most, naive at best. Google is using its power as the #1 search engine, the #1 ad system (AdSense), the #1 Internet-based organization, etc. to influence others to conform to the rules of Google. If you don’t play by Google’s rules, you can’t play on Google. Google wants to increase their profits and has done three major things to ensure they have a greater monopoly on the web.
1. Purchase other online companies that (a) have profitability and (b) are competitors in some fashion.
This is often beneficial to both companies because Google increases their profits, turns a competitor into a partner, and helps the smaller company get more profits because they are now under the mighty Google.
2. Develop or purchase any niche they do not yet offer, especially of direct competitors such as Yahoo, MSN, and Ask have them.
Ask.com has recently gone after Google hard in TV ads. They advertise all sorts of interactive stuff with their SERPs and say the other SE’s only give you lists of links. I’m sure Google will develop those features soon enough. This practice is not wrong, but is part of doing business, it’s part of the competitive nature of business. However, these first two practices, while ethical, legal, and normal business activity, are tainted by how Google behaves after doing these…
3. Squash competition.
Once Google develops, purchases, or otherwise receives profit from a certain niche in the Internet industry, they attempt to eliminate all others. They do this by saying that webmasters who use those competitors are using improper methods of boosting their SERPs. Truth is, they are not giving Google a cut of the profits.
All this said… there is a catch 22 with Google. If you want higher traffic, use the main source of traffic: Google. If you want to stand on your beliefs (which I encourage, because few do this today), know that there is a risk. One must decide what’s more important: one’s values or one’s profits. Too often people side with the ‘almighty dollar’ and sacrifice values. I encourage Randall for doing what he believes is right. His business may suffer, it may not. However, he’s willing to take the risk to do what he believes is right. I applaud you, Randall.
November 23rd, 2007 at 12:34 pm
Why does Google think they own the internet? I am really hoping/waiting for another search engine to overtake them sheesh. MSN seems to be getting better…..still not there though.
November 23rd, 2007 at 12:53 pm
All i have to say is, would tesco sell asda brand beans? i don’t think so.
November 23rd, 2007 at 3:46 pm
@Dingo - What?!
December 10th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
Ballsy move.
I just added your feed to my Reader.
December 10th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
Thanks Dennis. The follow-up is coming soon…
January 11th, 2008 at 6:22 am
Good for you!
I totally agree, I studied 3 years to become a good web developer and now I seem to spend more time worrying about how God…whoops, sorry…’Google’..will see it = boring!
Fight the power.
January 29th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
Wow. Your protest didn’t last very long. A couple of months at best?
I just clicked the link to your robots.txt and saw:
User-agent: *
Hope you got some backlinks out of your post though!
I understand the point you’re trying to make, but in an online world under Google’s control, what can you do?
Protests and laments mean nothing unless there’s a critical mass to support change. If every SEO on the planet blocked Google on their own (and their clients’) sites, would that even make any kind of difference? There are thousands(!) of other sites out there that want those top-10 listings.
Searchers won’t be leaving Google anytime soon, unless the results start going to crap. Google is a frickin’ verb in the popular culture, for god’s sake!
And they didn’t even have to buy that kind of publicity…
Unless you’re just putting up sites to satisfy some need to “create” and put something out in the world (for no one to see), you and every SEO on the planet is gonna be a Google whore — just like me.
January 30th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
John, you may want to look at this more recent post. I agree a critical mass is needed. To get that to happen we need to start a conversation. Until people know and understand they won’t do anything. I do know of several SEOs encouraging their clients away from Google when there is a perfectly good replacement from a competitor but finding those services are rare.
Oddly, I didn’t lose any rank with this test which surprised me. I just didn’t gain any new rank for posts published after the block.