Google Is Not Your Friend!

I know that is quite a statement – Google is not your friend. In fact while they forge the perception that they are this hip and cool bunch of guys and gals that got started in their garage, the fact is, they run their business with the same imperialistic techniques as the evil empire Microsoft. Google can be very convincing in how they operate, not as an empire out to rule the world, but as a lovable group out to make the world and the Internet a better place for all.

Google’s business tactics are down right scary, as is the amount of private data they are gathering about us and our websites. I am highly concerned that they are applying the data they are gathering through the toolbar, analytics, iGoogle, Gmail and the Webmaster Center and using it against site owners. Their so-called “war on paid links” is a perfect example of how Google is weeding out the competition. Anybody who owns a site and is selling links on it, is a competitor of Google, which is why they are devoting so much energy to stopping paid links. It has nothing to do with the watering down of the index or spoofing the index. Rather, it’s all about money – their money and our money.

If they are so concerned with the nature of things on the web, why don’t they stop allowing sites that have no viable content to place Google Ads on them? There is nothing worse than wasting time searching for something and getting caught in a loop of paid advertising sites that just link to other paid sites through Google Ads. You all know what I am talking about. More and more of these phony websites are getting into the index. What’s worse is that they are allowed to compete for ad space with legitimate companies and drive the cost per click up without delivering any actual content. We’ve all wasted a lot of time searching for products and weeding through the tangle of ad only sites.

So what are we to do about it? Google accounts for 65% of my referrer traffic. Even though I have no ads on this site and my revenue comes from providing services and not from my website, how would I be able to feed my kids if I lost my traffic from Google? Like Big Brother in Orwell’s 1984, Google is an all-seeing, all powerful overseer of the Internet and it’s either their way or the highway. My biggest problem with Google is the single-mindedness over paid links.

I agree that links to online gambling or casinos on a site about cat food is bad, but who are they to penalize both the advertiser and the publisher when a legitimate on-topic paid link deal is done? What’s worse is the manner in which they police paid links, by having other webmasters nark out their competitors in Google Webmaster Center. What stops a low placed website owner from snitching on a higher placed competitor just to hurt their placement?

Google’s so-called “war on paid links” is just another way for black-hat SEO to win over the hard working guys that optimize their sites, write solid content and use aggressive link strategies. It’s harder than ever to pick up links. In fact, reciprocal linking has also lost weight in the Google algorithm. So what are we supposed to do to earn links? Unless you post articles about Britney Spears, it’s unlikely that a website about network topology is going to generate lots of “buzz”.

I am a firm believer in paid links from relevant sites as well as on-topic paid posts by bloggers. Google should not take on the role as the Internet police. People like me that use paid linking should not be punished for making a content exchange that involves money. As long as the content is relevant, Google should back off. It’s time that we see Google for what they are – the enemy. The only way we can strike back is to stop paying them. If everyone took down their ads, stopped clicking on ads, and didn’t buy ads for just one day, Google would get a very strong message to back off! Just one day of lost revenue would certainly wake them up to the fact that their “paid link war” is bogus and we aren’t going to take it!