Googlephobia

Since Google is now central to the efforts of many marketers, I would
like to propose the creation of a new word. Many of you reading this
will know what I am talking about:

Googlephobia [noun]
The fear of all savvy web masters and Internet marketers that the
slightest change to a web page may cause the site to be dropped from
Google's search results.

This is not an unfounded fear. I suffer from it myself. Search engines
are becoming THE marketing tool for many companies, as is evidenced by
the decline of trade shows. Google is the search engine of choice. For
an increasing number of companies, getting dropped from Google means
big trouble.

The lesson? Marketers should be extremely wary of relying on "SEO"
(search engine optimizers) who promise you top rankings in Google. They
may get you top ranking for a month or two, but Google constantly
tweaks their algorithms to weed out spammers. You may find your web
site dropping to the very bottom of the search results, rendering your
site invisible to your potential customers. Worse, your site may be
banned forever.

The best advice is to listen to Google! That means no monkey business.
Just follow their advice here:
http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmas...uidelines.html

<louminatti@myway.com> wrote in message
news:cq32dv0pge@enews3.newsguy.com...
>
> Since Google is now central to the efforts of many marketers, I would
> like to propose the creation of a new word. Many of you reading this
> will know what I am talking about:
>
> Googlephobia [noun]
> The fear of all savvy web masters and Internet marketers that the
> slightest change to a web page may cause the site to be dropped from
> Google's search results.

I know a few people who spend all their time fussing with their page in
order to maintain their high ranking on google under certain rankings. I
have one friend in particular who runs an affiliate-type website and makes
his living that way. Its a day and night job.

>
> This is not an unfounded fear. I suffer from it myself. Search engines
> are becoming THE marketing tool for many companies, as is evidenced by
> the decline of trade shows. Google is the search engine of choice. For
> an increasing number of companies, getting dropped from Google means
> big trouble.

The problem is that getting the edge on the search engines is an edge you
won't be able to maintain. Over the next few years, I think, you're going to
be facing a ton of foreign competition. If you think things are bad for
programmers right now, boy, you just wait. This h1b and outsourcing craze is
going to turn around and bite the ass of those who started it. What a
pandorka's box!

> The lesson? Marketers should be extremely wary of relying on "SEO"
> (search engine optimizers) who promise you top rankings in Google. They
> may get you top ranking for a month or two, but Google constantly
> tweaks their algorithms to weed out spammers.

G-d knows that we've talked more than enough about spammers on this group.

I don't know that the word 'spammer' really applies. However, you do come
across pages once in a while with all kinds of hidden text and crap like
that.

Given the way things are today, being able to be found on the Internet is
critical. I've taken up advertising, myself. However, I think that coming up
first and being found on the search engines themselves is more effective,
and its certainly a lot cheaper.

> You may find your web
> site dropping to the very bottom of the search results, rendering your
> site invisible to your potential customers. Worse, your site may be
> banned forever.
>
> The best advice is to listen to Google! That means no monkey business.
> Just follow their advice here:
> http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmas...uidelines.html

That was a good article.

Here's a little tip: one thing I've found is that there are quite a few web
pages out there that index the newsgroups, and when I'm searching for
information, I often find links to newsgroup threads in which I've
participated over the years. Being that google factors popularity into their
ranking system, I have really lost out by not typing my url at the bottom of
all of my posts. If I had been doing this all along throughout the years,
which is a not-bad business practice, I bet my website would rank a lot
better than it does now. (I don't think that anybody links to my page,
anywhere.)

Another mistake I've made, I think, is in not publishing articles to my
website. Good articles do attract a lot of traffic, so they say.

Mike

http://miketurco.com

Mike Turco wrote:
> (I don't think that anybody links to my page, anywhere.)

Google will tell you, enter link: before your site url (include a space
after the colon)
link: http://miketurco.com

John
www.enterpriseblue.com

Interesting post. The Googlephobia I've seen is the fear of being INCLUDED
in Google. Believe it or not quite a lot of business people are very
uncomfortable with uncontrolled visiblity. More people than you think FEAR
being in the public eye, speaking in public, having info about their
business operations online etc. They tend to prefer and use PR agencies,
publicists and so on to put out canned "messages."

Needless to say, they don't blog either.

"Mike Turco" <miketurco@yahoo-nospam4me.com> wrote in message
news:cq5uiv0o2n@enews2.newsguy.com...
>
>
> > The lesson? Marketers should be extremely wary of relying on "SEO"
> > (search engine optimizers) who promise you top rankings in Google. They
> > may get you top ranking for a month or two, but Google constantly
> > tweaks their algorithms to weed out spammers.
>
> G-d knows that we've talked more than enough about spammers on this group.
>
> I don't know that the word 'spammer' really applies. However, you do come
> across pages once in a while with all kinds of hidden text and crap like
> that.

Actually, spammer does apply. That's what Google calls it. Spamming the
search index. The spammer in this case uses server tricks like SSI so the
Google bot sees a page loaded with keywords and the page you see is
different. If you click the "Cached" link you see what the Google bot saw.
Google even has a complaint form for it.
http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html


--
McWebber
No email replies read
If someone tells you to forward an email to all your friends
please forget that I'm your friend.

louminatti@myway.com wrote:

> The lesson? Marketers should be extremely wary of relying on "SEO"
> (search engine optimizers) who promise you top rankings in Google.
They
> may get you top ranking for a month or two, but Google constantly
> tweaks their algorithms to weed out spammers. You may find your web
> site dropping to the very bottom of the search results, rendering
your
> site invisible to your potential customers. Worse, your site may be
> banned forever.

A follow-up to my own post. <g>

Bookmark this URL:
http://www.copyscape.com

We were burned by a duplicate content penalty recently that nuked us on
Google and Overture sites (Yahoo, MSN, etc.) If these search engines
detect substantially identical content to your site, you will be
banned.

It took me quite some time to figure out what was going on. The search
providers will not tell you why you're banned; Doing so would tip the
spammers off on how to "game" the search results. Instead, they give
you a rather vague list of "things not to do".

The two culprits in our case were a surprise to me. First, there are
scummy operations that have robots that go out and scrape your site's
copy, then dump the copy into their own sites. The problem was also
caused by our distributors! They were using our site's copy on their
own sites, which resulted in about 10 substantially identical pages.
Rather than annoy our distributors, we simply re-wrote our pages.

Copyscape is an invaluable tool. It uses Google's API, so it displays
the results Google actually has in its database.

"McWebber" <mcwebber@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:cqdho401mb0@enews1.newsguy.com...
>
> "Redbox" <simplertech-news0719@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:cq7m9v01um@enews3.newsguy.com...
>>
>> Interesting post. The Googlephobia I've seen is the fear of being
>> INCLUDED
>> in Google. Believe it or not quite a lot of business people are very
>> uncomfortable with uncontrolled visiblity. More people than you think
>> FEAR
>> being in the public eye, speaking in public, having info about their
>> business operations online etc. They tend to prefer and use PR agencies,
>> publicists and so on to put out canned "messages."
>
> Google obeys robots.txt so not being included in the Google index is
> simple.
>
> --
> McWebber
>

True, if you have control over where the data is posted. Which is not always
the case. A friend of mine is involved in a law suit. A search on the other
parties lawyers name on Google found a listing on a long distance running
club website. The lawyers full name, age, home address and home phone number
were publicly posted in the list of race entrants. As one might image,
there are some who might find a way to leverage that kind of gathered
intelligence!

"Redbox" <simplertech-news0719@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:cqfh490evl@enews2.newsguy.com...
>
>
> "McWebber" <mcwebber@my-deja.com> wrote in message
> news:cqdho401mb0@enews1.newsguy.com...
> > Google obeys robots.txt so not being included in the Google index is
> > simple.
> >
> > --
> > McWebber
> >
>
> True, if you have control over where the data is posted. Which is not
always
> the case. A friend of mine is involved in a law suit. A search on the
other
> parties lawyers name on Google found a listing on a long distance running
> club website. The lawyers full name, age, home address and home phone
number
> were publicly posted in the list of race entrants. As one might image,
> there are some who might find a way to leverage that kind of gathered
> intelligence!

Generally you can find that information on any lawyer from public records
anyway. Maybe not the home phone. The club is foolish to post such personal
info in an unprotected directory. In this day and age such naivet is
inexcusable.


--
McWebber
No email replies read
If someone tells you to forward an email to all your friends
please forget that I'm your friend.