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Internet Marketing Coach
Google Brings Traffic - Why Boycott it?
October 31st, 2007 | 15 commentsWith the recent Google PageRank update and all the controversy surrounding it, many people are talking about boycotting Google and some are even saying not to worry about what Google does. OK no one should be relying solely on Google or any other source of traffic, that’s just dumb. But to “boycott” Google just because you don’t like the PR they assigned to your site/blog is just ludicrous!
Mark over at 45n5 made a pretty accurate post stating, among other things, that the same people who say PageRank is useless are the ones making a million posts about it. Obviously they think something of it or they wouldn’t be ranting all over the place.
I’ll be the first to admit the recent PageRank update was just crazy and that toolbar PR is next to worthless unless you’re selling links/advertising, but the fact is they drive traffic, period!
Google search is currently my #1 traffic source on average and I’d imagine it’s the #1 traffic source for many others as well. Even if it’s not, if you’re not penalized, you’re more than likely receiving a good deal of traffic from Google.
I’m not one to kiss google’s ass, but as long as they’re sending me traffic I’m going to play by their rules. If they want to assign a skimpy PR3 to my blog, but continue to send several hundred unique visitors my way everyday, so be it! If they start taking away that traffic for no reason then I’ll be a little upset!
While were on the subject, Vlad has a comical post going titled “Tips to Keep your PR Unblemished” where he’s asking for you tips.
So should we boycott Google? Stop worrying about PR? My answers are hell no and kinda. Stop worrying about your toolbar PR, but DO worry about your actual PR, which is what determines where your pages come up in the SERPS and directly influences the amount of search traffic you get from Google.
Some bloggers have a big decision to make - Sell links/advertising without the rel=”nofollow” attribute and risk a google penalty, don’t sell links/advertising at all, or sell links/advertising but include the rel=”nofollow” attribute and get far less advertisers. For the time being I’m going to choose not to sell advertising. So far, from what I’ve heard, Google hasn’t handed out any actual PR penalties, just toolbar PR. If it continues this way I just may start selling adverts on the blog, but I don’t want any risk so I’m waiting it out.
Popularity: 13% [?]
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31st October, 2007 at 3:25 am
This is one of those situations where it’s actually nice to be a relatively new blogger (kind of like when the stock market crashed after 9/11 and I was happy for once that all my money was still tied up in credit cards
It’s nice to be able to be able to watch these PR debates as a pure spectator … although, I am paying attention and trying to learn what not to do as my blog grows.
31st October, 2007 at 3:32 am
lol that’s one way to put it. Just keep posting good info frequently and the traffic will come.
Thanks for stopping by and for the laugh
31st October, 2007 at 10:17 am
I think boycotting Google is like cutting off your nose to spite your face. Google is one of the smallest traffic sources for me, accounting for only 2% of my traffic. I think it may be up this month, I’ll see when I do my monthly stats tomorrow. Anyway, I’m actively trying to INCREASE my Google traffic.
And as for boycotting, it’s a great search engine, it helps my business, why on earth would I want to deny myself that great tool?
And besides I went from PR0 to PR4 :p
31st October, 2007 at 1:03 pm
I wrote about “no adwords, no adsense”- it was not a way to encourage and boycott Google but rather if collectively bloggers can send any sort of message.
Even after this PR reshuffle I still get the most traffic from Google’s SERPS.
I agree that the best way to go about our business today is to forget about PR an dbuild your websites/buinesses as there was no search engines.
By the way Josh, thanks for defending me, it is quiet entertaining to see people remarking on my grammar nevertheless.
31st October, 2007 at 1:30 pm
@ Caroline, 2% is certainly low and I know you run a quality blog. You must be getting loads of referral traffic or you have a penalty with Google for some reason.
@Vlad, You’re right about forgetting about search engines in the sense that we should be writing for people anyway.
No problem at all. That “DayJobDuker” kid has been going around to many blogs leaving childish comments like that. Besides, my wife being German I’m a bit sensitive about people making fun of those who speak English as a second language.
31st October, 2007 at 1:39 pm
@Josh, it’s all referral traffic, a ton of it from Social media, especially StumbleUpon.
31st October, 2007 at 3:35 pm
[...] of their tools are very useful and I would find it hard to give them up. And as Josh points out Google Brings Traffic - Why Boycott it? But full marks for Maurice who stopped using Google tools even before the recent PageRank [...]
31st October, 2007 at 5:26 pm
On BigBucksBlogger, I get lots of Stumble Traffic; on The Knitting Fiend, it’s all Google traffic.
I also make money on Adsense on the knitting blog. I’m not going to strip those off just because my toolbar rank dropped. The temperature is dropping: my search traffic is up.
31st October, 2007 at 8:40 pm
Whilst I agree that it would be a little foolish to do anything to deliberately cut off Google as a source of traffic, particularly over something like visible PR, I have recently been looking at alternatives to a lot of their services. Google make it easy to use those free services and they are usually very good, excellent even, but I personally got to feeling that unless internet users start to employ some of the alternatives, there will come a time when they may well not be any. Competition is important in my view, and competition ensures choices for web users.
(Google brings me more SE traffic than any other, but recently MSN Live and Yahoo have been making more of a contribution). In short, I don’t hate Google, but I do want to see continued challenges to an increasingly monopolized presence.
31st October, 2007 at 11:03 pm
Boycott Google? That’s a novel (and ridiculous) concept. Pay less attention to them? I think that’s reasonable. The problem is…I’d rather have a search engine with strong principles and a determination NOT to be manipulated than I would a search engine that plays ball with idiots who create no value, but are determined to dominate the search engines nonetheless…because anything that CAN be manipulated WILL be.
I only wish Google could run a tighter ship. There are still far too many crap sites that rank well. I’d be happier if they’d employ people to hand-check sites for the top 50 returns for each primary keyword/keyphrase. They can certainly afford it.
I don’t give a rip about PR. It makes no difference to me. I’m not even sure it makes much difference to them. I’d rather it was a private rating in-house there. And I have enough respect for Google’s rules and its role in establishing some principled guidelines that, while I will continue to sell links from time to time, I will make (and have made) nofollow a part of that arrangement moving forward…but I’m not going back to rewrite previous advertising deals. It’s unfair to ask us to be retroactive when this is a relatively new request. It will take time to make those kinds of adjustments.
1st November, 2007 at 2:47 am
@ Caroline, it looks like you’re a social network guru
I read your posts on Twitter and have seen many of your posts do well with SU as well. Great work, especially in such a short period of time. I’ve never been big on social networks, but lately I’ve been noticing why they have been talked about so much in the past year.
@ Lucia, I’d imagine those adverts convert much better on the knitting blog as well. This type of blog isn’t the best for adsense. You’ll more than likely see them stripped from my blog soon. I still have a few things to test first though. Most of the people who talk about boycotting Google etc. still run adsense. It’s pretty comical lol
@ Maurice, very good point. If we don’t watch out we may see Google as a monopoly not only in search, but in many other aspects of technology. I don’t see anything wrong with your views on the matter at all. Those who claim they are going to “boycott” google totally, just because they didn’t get a visible PR that they liked though, are just a little naive in my eyes.
@ Chuck, that’s one point that many don’t understand, or don’t care to understand. Although some of their decisions aren’t in the best interest of marketers, in most cases they are done to better improve their own search engine. The more they can be gamed the less effective they will be for both Joe Schmoe Searcher and you and I as marketers.
Their actually pagerank actually is a private rating in-house. This may sound like a conspiracy theory, but I truly believe that the whole purpose behind the toolbar PR bar was/is to get marketers to install their toolbar so they can collect data from them.
1st November, 2007 at 1:36 pm
[...] Google Brings Traffic - Why Boycott it? [...]
1st November, 2007 at 2:19 pm
I love Google, but I always have problem with Google. No pagerank is assigned to my site yet. Don’t know whats the problem…
2nd November, 2007 at 1:53 am
I was worried previously, but now it’s simply a case of diversification for me. In general (although there are some other factors), if you need Google to help with a certain source whether it be traffic or earnings, then follow them rules. If you don’t need Google in other areas, then do whatever you can with other methods.
Good post Josh - I have left others to continue talking about this whole thing and reading them for info, but we can certainly use the time for other areas in which we are better at heheh!
2nd June, 2008 at 7:34 pm
„I’ll be the first to admit the recent PageRank update was just crazy and that toolbar PR is next to worthless unless you’re selling links/advertising, but the fact is they drive traffic, period!”
Where do I have to sign?
Kind regards
Rata