This is a real question. And, this might be for those who have been doing this for years, this internet marketing that is. Let me present the question in as detailed a form as I can: Is pandering to Google hurting your website? For instance: if you curb your content, on a blog or a static website, to fit into Google's policies, could that be actually driving away your audience, i.e. traffic? Recently I received a warning letter from Google. After reading the warning, I went to the particular post they highlighted. I read it over and over. I had friends and family read it over and over. My friends, family and myself could only conclude that there was some illiterate person, that couldn't read, who worked at Google that got offended. However, there must have been someone over that person that could read and removed the warning immediately. Of course Google is a corporation, but it is made up of people. Let me give you another example. On my DUI site, I go into your Miranda warning [some people call it Miranda rights erroneously: the right is in the constitution; Miranda was just a court case, but anyway] In my section on Miranda I explain in detail why you should not talk to the police. I also explain a very candid speech given by a police officer who reveals that the police are under no obligation to tell the truth to you and can use anything you say against you because of it. [these are facts not conjecture] Let's say someone at Google gets offended that I am telling people to not talk to the police. Let's say they send me a warning. By its very nature then, if I were to bow to Google, the very essence of my site has completely changed, and people coming to my site looking for legal defense information would be mislead. [this is just a hypothetical mind you] What's the Alternative? The alternative is that you can use Google's policies as the basis for a good business model. i.e. you can be aware of what a search engine would like to see, in order to rank you. But, if that search engine is dictating your content, then you have given your site to them. There are a myriad of ways to receive traffic to your website, without Google. join a webring, of related sites concentrate on other search engines solicit marketing from t.v. programs or like minded magazines solicit advertisers directly and see what they want hand out business cards put up posters, cool ones You are only limited by your own knowledge of business to begin with. The huge companies on wallstreet have whole departments of geeks who do nothing but learn about what's going on in business and in the laws. Knowledge is power is the old saying. Knowledge is money, is what they really meant. So the question is, could catering to Google hurt your site?
I just spent 4 days going through Google's website guidelines and AdWords guidelines to catch up on all the changes. How do they expect a person to comply when very little is properly defined. What a mess to go through. I was doing this because a few friends got different types of warning letters. Some people don't even get a warning. They were emailing Google to try and get more than the generic warning so they could fix their sites. Then they would forward the Google response to me. What they were sent was almost the same thing over and over again. With snippets from the original warning email and a few links to general information. The responses and the guidelines are so vague we all had different interpretations after reading the exact same stuff. Heck Google won't spell anything out in detail in their guidelines or via email. I think they keep things vague so they can burn just about anyone if they choose. I also noticed quite a few links while going through the Google stuff where they ask you to report other people's sites for violations. I'm not reporting anyone for anything. Let them do there own dirty work. They constantly say it's about the user experience. It has more to do with controlling the user experience. To give the user Google's ideal experience not the users ideal experience. I had problems before these other people did but I decided as far as my blog goes screw Google. They took my Google PR away. I had a good PR on my homepage and slightly lower PR on my posts. All gone. Strange thing is my traffic didn't drop and it has slowly increased. My pages still show up (mostly 1st page of Google search results) for the keywords I used. The only thing I could tell was different was no PR. I also noticed I was now getting PR from Yahoo and more traffic from Bing and AOL. I know what Google doesn't like on my site and at first was going to change it. I need to do a theme change so I was going to dive in and fix the Google issues. But after looking at the whole picture I don't think I'm going to prostrate myself before Gog. I've decided not to put all my eggs in one basket. A decision we all will have to make on our own. You can add video sites, Facebook Fanpage, Facebook ads and press releases to your website promotion list. I say stay true to the people that need your info. You're a much better judge of what your content offers and the benefit people that need it will get than Google.
In response to their warning, which actually said my adsense was temporarily blocked, which I never saw, I removed adsense from that particular blog. I figure if the page they quoted was so offensive, which was a post that was so dry it would put half the world to sleep, then they cannot handle my blog at all. After careful consideration, I removed all adsense from that particular blog. I receive compliments on my writing style and people love to argue their case in my comment box, which I applaud. In fact, my more visceral posts are always proceeded with a [warning this post may offend and upset you, please stop reading it right now, have a nice day] I figure, my demographic are adults, and if they cannot handle mature [and that does not mean porno] topics then they can go read the disney blog. I don't insult anyone, but I also don't sugar coat the topics. They threatened that if I continue all my adsense would be blocked, i.e. even on my legal lawyer website, which is as about as dry as foldiers crystals. The complete lack of the adsense being blocked, leads me to believe that someone illierate got upset at a topic, then someone literate came behind them and reviewed it and actually read the content and saw there was nothing offensive about it. The evil part of it, is you have to research how to respond to these, non-reply emails.
Yeah I did for that blog. Care to share with everyone which ones are better? People always come back to say that adsense pays more than most everything else.