F**k Google or get f**ked by Google?

With no uptick in traffic either from Google, I’m back to adding content, backlinks, and finding real eyeballs. I’ve dumped Google entirely for onsite search, for advertising and for statistics. I’ve replaced everything (except ads) with a reliable competitor.Though I track stats in other ways, I may reconsider adding advertising (therefore, stats) at some future point. But with no traffic now going to my coffee site, it doesn’t seem worth advertising on less than 100 visitors per day now. The only reason I kept Google stats was that I could track accurately which pages had Adsense clicks.

Without that, I’d rather keep my on-page data private from Google… it seems to me that that is one of the weapons they are using against me. The good news is they are tracking an increase in page views/more time on site/etc. But that’s without Google’s traffic mostly.

In short, why let them.

But then there’s the bigger question: if you spend all the time fixing things that are wrong, getting rid of hundreds of pages of ‘thin’ content, are you not therefore ignoring your visitors who spent time to enter comments, post photos or whatever, and giving into designing your site FOR google. Not for your visitors.

When they find their pictures gone, their words erased…will they not feel betrayed? They won’t blame Google, they will blame you! Because you erased them, not Google!

And anyway, once you do all that, who’s to say that Google won’t flip-flop on those ‘thin’ pages at some point in the future anyway by being able to index, and analyze those ‘thin’ pages anyway.

So in reality, we should probably just ignore Google, once we have fixed the things that we think are wrong. But even then, perhaps we are just wasting our time, anyway. Just build your site for your friends, real visitors and real readers. Let Google Be!

A good example of Google Flipflops: nofollow. Google insisted all external links that weren’t vouched for be no-followed. At the time, I sold links to many advertisers for SEO benefits, on several of my sites, and still do on one or two. Google slapped my PR hard, deprived them of traffic, and I refused to add ‘no follow’ because my advertisers hadn’t known about nofollow at that time.

Now it turns out excessive nofollowing may actually harm your site. Of course, I just don’t see the point of nofollow on articles/websites like most of mine. But on blogs, it may actually be okay for comments. And it seems that Google’s position has mutated/morphed over time. My sites have PR again, and I didn’t change my dofollow policy at all.

Frankly, if Google’s SE isn’t smart enough to figure out what’s going on, perhaps it’s Google’s problems not ours. And that sums up the entire position of Google vis-a-vis the Panda updates. Google is trying to fix its problems, not ours. Because Google created this behemoth of MFA sites that spawned, stole content, etc., then Google indexed them, sent them traffic, made them money, and pushed legitimate traffic out of business/away.

If you truthfully believe your site helps people, informs people, that they leave satisfied and come back again later at some point for whatever reason, then that is all you need to worry about. So have faith that your site is valuable, have faith that your site is worth doing, have faith… Google will fix these problems in the longer term. They must. Or they go out of business.

So let’s forget about Panda, and go find some REAL people. What do you say?

I for one am very glad that Google is now facing scrutiny in both Europe and the US for its monopolistic, deterministic and selfish behavior. Perhaps we will see some justice come out of this, a stronger diversity in the Internet, and fairer dealings all round.