Due to recent changes in legislation laws surrounding online gambling advertising, Google had decided as of tomorrow to allow gambling PPC adverts to be shown in the UK. They have been speaking direct to clients to ensure all the correct licensing information has been processed in time and there will be a frantic scrap for both clients and their respective agencies to get their accounts setup and put live in time for tomorrow, of which there is no guarantee.

Interesting times indeed, huge move which will shake up the market no end. All sorts of speculation as to why, the obvious one being it’s about the money dummy

What next? Alcohol, PR0N? Lean times call for harsh actions, especially when you have a profit annoucement in the offing.

This button (fig. 1b) will move the result to the top of the page and add this orange marker (fig. 1a) next to it so you can easily recognize it. The result(s) you promote will appear at the top whenever you search for the same keyword(s) in the future.

Maybe it’s old, I haven’t seen it previously. Looks like one of those personalization of SERP features  that allows you to manipulate your own returned search results.

At the moment it seems like you need a Google account to use the thing, which may be a sign that they’d like to use such signals to affect SERP outcome. Not to mention user demographics, behaviours and all that other track your movement stuff.

What I’d like to know is whether or not they will be taking such factors into account long term. If a lot of people continually push a result to the top, does this mean that it’s a great result, or does it just mean that some group of SEO’s have found a way to cut in and mimic a few natural behaviours? How many Google accounts do you have?

This is a good thing, a small thing, but a good thing nonetheless. Anything that allows you to challenge without putting you on the back foot from the off, can’t be bad, can it?

Whilst Google are probably of the view that it’s an easy thing to do and even almost a no brainer for them to implement, you do nonetheless find yourself wondering why they employed the whole nasty evil language approach from the outset.

Still, at least now if you find yourself with a white bar or an inability to rank, you can just toodle along to the webmaster tool page and make a bit of a tool of yourself and ask to be let back in, without admitting guilt! Yay! Um…they’ll probably ignore you or leave you where you were at, but at least you get to ask without fessing up!

Seriously – it’ll be a good thing if people get feedback, like ‘no dude you have a paid post on blogpost number 234 of your 1500 that you’ve made’ …don’t you agree? Shouldn’t it be a two way process?

I suspect that there’s a strand of thought that runs through the plex of ‘aaaargh, it’s one of those evil bastard spammers asking for some feedback on their evil wicked spammy ways’, and that this might just contribute to a view of ‘let em stew’. But hey, I’ve been wrong once if not a thousand times. I’m sure I’ll be wrong again.

Be it via a comment, a hit of a subscription button, an add to favourites action , a credit card transaction or a link through to what you wrote or advertised, the bottom line is that without any of these sorts of actions, the likelihood is that you are either writing for yourself or selling something that is overpriced and overvalued or just not worth discussing.

Don’t rely on search engines

Free search engine traffic is great. A most welcome bonus that if used correctly, can help build a following, but that’s where it stops. If you are obsessing about building your rankings then your target sight is off kilter, you are looking at the wrong part of the equation.

Posts like the ones from across the blogosphere today and in the previous weeks regarding PR and paid links should be a wake up call for anyone who is serious about earning a living from a website online. If you remind yourself that your free traffic is very likely to be a transitory thing, if you tell yourself everyday that your free search engine generated traffic is likely to disappear tommorrow, then you’ll be doing yourself a huge favour.

Search Engines are not automated non policed systems, they do employ people to look at certain things and do take actions against people as and when they see fit.

You can complain until the cows come home but at the end of it all, rightly or wrongly they can do whatever the hell they like, when they like and how they like. There is no court of appeal, you can’t storm parliament, go on strike or sit out in the road, neither can you chain yourself to a fence either, if they kill your site and you care about or genuinely need or rely upon the traffic they send to you, then as harsh as it might sound – without a plan or loyal following you might as well just shut up shop, or get used to talking to yourself!

Yeah yeah, so what’s the plan then smarty arse?

Well…but of course there are positives, you don’t have to sit around burying your head in the sand hoping that you are never hit, you can at least try and adopt a meritocratic world view and build real traffic, *your* traffic, people who visit you because others have discussed you in some way because you are doing something or selling something or just saying something that adds value to the world and the playground in which you are kicking your ball around in. Be it via word of mouth or some href piece of html.

Take a look at these blogs here, all of whom have seen a reduction in their visible toolbar PR

Auto Blog
Engadget
Problogger
Copyblogger
SEG
SEJ
Andy
Maki

Then look at their webstats and their site metrics, look at their published subscriber numbers. Look at their Alexa, compete and technorati numbers. Look at the people who are commenting on their stuff, look at how well they are linked to and on what sort of terms. Then ask yourself why that is, I tell you what, I’ll save you the bother with the answer, as the answer is simple – All of the above are quality resources with something to say, it really is that simple.

Maki’s right

Google is an factor that is outside of your control. Sure, you can follow their rules or adjust your behavior to fit in but that still doesn’t put Google within your palm. What do good entrepreneurs do with uncontrollable factors? They create what-if contingency plans to accommodate for possible loss

Sigh – I’ll leave you with this little Portishead track, cos it kinda has a few on target lyrics, ‘you don’t get something for nothing, gotta try a little harder’

The whole paid links are evil for Google idea has been around for some time now. This isn’t a rehash of those. I want to pass comment on how lately that there’s been a lot of Google ill feeling going on, with an increasing number of prominent people speaking out against them. I say ill feeling as hate is too strong a word. Practically all of it is related to the whole paid links and nofollow thing.

What’s particularly interesting for me is how this whole thing seems to have grown legs and started to spread tentacles. It’s almost as if Google needs a new target and that, that target is the blogosphere. Not content with having made it’s SERP’s a tenuous we might kill you at any time place to inhabit, they now seem intent on saying to anyone in their index or who want’s traffic from them, ‘Do as you are told or we will kick your arse’. I won’t rehash any positions that have been expressed previously as these and variations on the theme can be read elsewhere.

History does repeat itself

I think its’s noteworthy to recall that there once was a time when I’d read at WMW and see accounts whereby people had been banned or penalised.

WMW had its constituents of Pro Google – Google is great, Google is great, Google is great brigade all chanting from on high like Sadaam Hussein in some pre Jihadic rant and they too had their opposing voice of anti Googles’, speaking of Google in terms of it being the great Satan and what not. All of which was handled in magnificent form by that omnipresent soother of words GoogleGuy. A curious beast who seldom put a foot wrong, often coming up with double entendre statements that neither denied or confirmed any number of theories. It was ok, a game, a fun one even that I played and enjoyed reding between the lines looking for inconsistencies and clues for what he was trying to debunk versus promote.

A little look at the state of play today and one might be forgiven for thinking that Mr GoogleGuy has been cloned and put out there in the field parroting similiar double speak crap designed to shroud and confuse. Ha! There’s a funny thought, can you imagine a FUD meeting and the discussions arising?

Let’s face facts – Words that could destabilise a multi-billion dollar cash cow are not just going to be left to the whims of one or two individuals playing some fun filled game of lead webmasters up the garden path. There is a strategic approach and right now it’s being executed with stone cold precision.

Has the blogosphere got any balls?

The thing is though, what, if anything can or will the blogosphere do about it? Will everyone just roll over? Will those A-listers getting heaps of nice monetisable Google traffic just keep quiet and say nothing? Or will they take the lead and address the issue for what it is – Which so happens to be a serious and concerted attack on a group of individuals and their right to monetise their works – Heck maybe that great opportunist Calacanis will see a crusadery angle and buy in, or is he too just waiting the Google $ for his Mahalo project?

Why is everyone so scared? Is it really about biting a hand that might feed you, or staving off an attack from something that might kill you? People like Michael Gray and Aaron Wall and John Andrews seem happy enough to tell it like it is, they aren’t too bothered, they don’t stand for the nonsense, why then should any of us?

Harsh – Far fetched a description even?

It’s debatable for sure, you’ve got to choose where to sit in one way or another and if you straddle the fence for too long you’ll be likely to get piles. My “not worth the screen pixels it inhabits maybe” opinion, is that in this instance on this topic, that Google has gone too far and is engaging in behaviour which is reasonable to label as arrogant bullying.

The Google of old would not have come out with guns blazing, nor would it have had the balls to tell people so forcefully, “yes we kicked your arse and we’ll kick it again too if you do that again”.

I was always taught to stand up to bullies. I was taught that if you succumb to their attacks, if you don’t get up there and hit them back smack right hard in the mouth, then they’ll keep on coming back at you, time after time. It might well hurt to do so too, but overtime they’ll get tired of fighting with you and either reconsider their position or move on to different pastures and pick on some easier target.

Maybe some at Google have read too much B F Skinner and decided that a positive reinforcement of the negatives inside the box that is the blogosphere might be one particular way to slay this threat to their income stream.

What is that I hear you say – Paid links are not a threat to their income stream, there really is enough to go around already – they really could have just quietly circumvented the effects without so much brouhaha? Perhaps so, or perhaps they decided that wackamole just isn’t a scalable solution.

Wackamole costs money

Maybe its the whole game of having to filter out the paid effect. Perhaps someone somewhere decided that spending a few million dollars each year on snitches and paid reviewers could be better spent on some big concerted “do it again or do what he did and we’ll kill you” approach. Yet, even if this were the case, they surely can’t be so naive as to think everyone would just say “Oh right, ok then Google, you’re the boss we’ll stop that right now and do what you tell us” Google has to realise that it has no right to a monopoly on making money.

It’s as if there is this obsession within them that seeks at all costs to clamp down hard on anyone who is visibly gaming them. Yet when you look at that whole ‘gaming’ word and look into what could be construed as gaming then you’ll appreciate that the ground becomes very shakey if not like quicksand itself. Where is the line drawn? When do the very creation of properly structured content that uses H tags and relevant keywords, that attracts links from other sites suddenly cross the line? Bah phooey.

Don’t do evil

The recent attack on sites that discuss blog monetisation are one very obvious example. A number of excellent blogs have had their visible PageRank reduced. Interestingly all of these blogs talk about how you can earn money from blogging or how you can best monetise your blog or website. Practically all of them simply observe and comment upon what works and what doesn’t. All of the ones to which I allude have written comprehensive well considered pieces that offer a perspective on how people might like to prosper with their blogs. The message from all is clear – hard work, quality, consistency – anyone who’d suggest that within the grand scheme of the idea of making money online, that these didn’t add considerable value would need to go and get their reality checker fixed. Yet for Google, if their Pagerank meter is adjudged to have any merit or meaning at all, it’s clear that to them at least all of the sites penalised in this way are of low merit or value.

Oh well, I’ve vented my spleen now, and said my bit. I’m kinda tired of railing against the machine, for a machine is what Google has become, a machine that has way too much power and influence that I as an individual can do very little about.

Damn, its 330pm, time to cook that Sunday lunch.

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