I don’t know about you, but I’m really not feeling it for blogging right now. It’s not just writing, although I’m not bursting with inspiration, but I’m not getting much out of my reading either, there seems to be a lot of bad feeling and general negativity around.

A lot of it seems to be emanating from Mountain View at the moment, as Google attempts to shape the internet and our behaviour to suit itself, or more accurately, to suit its revenue generating model. As you may well have seen, they have been throwing their weight around recently, hiding David Aireys blog from the search results, knocking down Andy Beards visible page rank, along with providing means for people to snitch on each other over paid links. Apparently this is all to do with removing paid links from their SERPs, either via adding a NoFollow or just not having them on sites at all. Why? So they can’t pass on page rank to the linked sites, therefore improving the relevancy of the search results….

Relevant Or Money Making?

Really? So if someone buys a raft of paid links for ‘Inkjet Supplies’ for example, and those links point to their website which sells… well, inkjet supplies, then how does that make the search results less relevant? Oh wait, of course. The money for those links isn’t going to Google! Because of course you can have as many irrelevant links as you like at the top of the search results, just as long as you pay Google to have them there. You know, the ‘Sponsored Links’ that quite often bear no resemblance to what you searched for, but are no doubt frequently clicked by the millions of people who don’t realise exactly what they are.

But even if you completely support Google with regard to paid links, and think that they are a stain upon the purity of the internet [sarcasm] the examples of David & Andy should still give you pause for thought, because you could be next, and with Google there is no warning, no reasoning and no easy route back in. How many of us have run a competition along the lines of Davids? I.e. give entry based on a link? Do that in future, and you could find yourself gone. Ever written a comprehensive review of another website that contains some relevant links to it like Andy does? No, not allowed either - and be honest here, can you tell the difference between a comprehensive Andy Beard review that is paid, and one that isn’t? Only when he tells us, so why is one good (unpaid) and one bad (paid) and how does Google propose to tell the difference? Perhaps we should all stop linking each other?

Here’s another question, on the subject of relevance: You know John Chow has a website, and you want to read it (for whatever reason…). If you search Google for it, but can’t find it, how relevant are those results? You know David Airey is a blogger of the highest integrity, who has been producing quality content within his niche for 12 months now, but (as during last week) when you search for his name, you can’t find his site. How relevant are those search results? Looking at the toolbar, you see Andy Beards page rank is less than that of half a dozen dodgy directories you could name. How relevant is Google’s opinion now?

If Google continue down this path of banning and bullying, what’s the point of using their search engine, if all you’re going to get back is a load of sponsored links at the top, and the stuff you need isn’t being presented? I guess the only answer would be to use a search engine  which does give you what you need, and if there isn’t one yet, there might soon be. A new search engine, displacing the established market leader through providing relevant results? That story sounds familiar….

But paid links are wrong, distorting the search results in favour of organisations with the budget to buy them!

Sorry, that’s just a fact of marketing - those companies with the biggest budgets get the most publicity. Linux is apparently a great OS, but when did you last open a PC magazine to see a two page glossy ad for it in the style of MS Vista? The internet is still a great place for word of mouth advertising as, if Google doesn’t frighten everyone in stopping linking things, people will happily give free publicity to things they love. But if the aforementioned Inkjet Supplies company has the budget to advertise, it’s probably because they have been successful in the past and are good at what they do. Also, just because a company comes top of the search results doesn’t mean to say you have to use them: it’s still up to you to check them out, and decide if they’re right for you.

The End

I fully understand why David felt he had to pull his paid links, and email all of the competition entrants asking them to remove the links to his blog, as it relates to his business and livelihood, but it’s a shame that the multi-billion dollar corporation felt the need to bully him into it. It would be interesting though, if in the main, people refused to be bullied by Google - what would they do then? Expel three quarters of the internet from their index? I guess it won’t happen though, as people have an almost hysterical need to be in Google, which reinforces their notion that they control the visible web.

I have to say, I’m losing interest. If Google, who made their billions on the back of the likes of you and me promoting and evangelising them, really feel the need to stamp all over independent bloggers and webmasters who are just earning a few dollars here and there, whilst the real scammers and spammers continue unchecked then I’m giving up.

Is your content being scraped by a splog which is also stealing from 200 other bloggers and is plastered in adsense?  File a DMCA with Google, sign your life way and jump through a load of legal hoops, and they’ll think about suspending their account.

Seen a blogger earning $5 a month through a text link? Jump on the handily provided snitch link, and that site will be gone from the index in seconds!

Ah, forget it.