Is google getting too powerful?

I don't drink coffee, it's not only disgusting IMO but it's bad for you as well.

With the attitude I mainly referred to people's general reliance on Google but also to your comment on bowing down to the surfer. That's not a very proactive way of going about it. Sounds like you're following the sheep in stead of looking out for the other sheep out there.

 

No, all is fine. And my payment gets approved promptly every month as well.

 

Because it is the surfer I'm trying to attract, why not do what they want and attract them? That's not bowing down to them. It's admitting that it is easier to attract flies with honey..

 

I have to admit that sometimes I have focused too much attention on trying to rank well on Google.

Just recently I tried selling products on Ebay as well as advertising fairly heavily on each listing to the website. I have found that the traffic from Ebay takes up about 90% of all the traffic now... Time to find a new source of major traffic

 

I agree that it's a valuable source (G natural listings) and should be taken care of with a great deal of effort; just don't rely on it. There's at least a dozen here who solely (90%+) relied on Google SERPs for traffic and income, got hammered for one reason or the other and only then did they realize there's more out there.

It's exactly about all the eggs in the one basket. Drop it and all will break. The honey might be the easiest way but do realize there's more! It only takes one algo tweak and you could be out. Just be aware of that and you will understand the consequences. Them banning you are dropping your ranks is not their 'fault', ultimately you are responsible for a steady stream of traffic.

 

I like fryman's attitude: screw google

Actually, I feel that way about the internet period. I've been designing frameless showers for a quite a while and only using the web to market them for less than a year. It's more of a hobby than anything else. But I get a great kick out of watching my competitors rankings drop while mine go up

*** Neters extends his hand to TOPS30.

We're on the same page

 

Good to hear. *** Shakes hand

It's almost like we all have a stage where we initially fall in love with Google and can't stop thinking about it's SERPs and traffic. But then Google breaks up the love affair for no clear reason and us webmasters are left heart broken. Only then we start looking at 'the other girls', go out again an snog a few (Yahoo and MSN + Directories + PR releases and other more conventional Media). Only then we realize that Google wasn't a perfect lover at all

Most of us have been there and unfortunately done that so every sole saved from the Google obsession is another victory.

Conclusion: Don't marry Larry & Sergey until you tried Bill and the others

 

I just wrote about this in my blog I hate the power that google seems to have over a lot of webmasters, but I'm not saying they have too much power. SEO is just not a fun game to play. I liked the times of link exchanging more. I get multiple automated mails a day from sites that claim to be related to mine, just trying to get backlinks. It sucks. I always mail them back, saying their site looks like crap. Not because I'm angry, but because they do. They are written for machines, not for humans.

 

I Think most of the html validators seem to be missing so much. They show errors that are incorrect to the language, etc...

Last week I did find a couple of end tags that needed to be removed, but I have to wade through the errors to see which are legit.

We are also NOT banned in google.