I also would like to see the search volumes switch to something less monopolistic, but I fear that a groundswell of change is going to be strictly a dream for at least the next 6 months or so. To support the cause, I’ve personally started re-using Yahoo more. Moving to Live/MSN is too much to ask though!

But you are right, strangely my RSS has been improving and visitors numbers though small has not dropped much. My regular readers are still around and well the rest you have put it all in perspective.

Thanks.
dt.

It is clear that the pageRank system is a relative one — with the drop of a couple major sites, a lot of minor sites must have gone up. But the majors have bigger mouths and make it seem this is all bad. If a handful of major sites are taken away their dominance in search results on certain topics, that is a good thing for the consumer. We should all hope that the online information landscape will never turn into the nightmare the offline media landscape has been for decades.

Anyways, I wouldn’t take it personal. You seem to think someone at Google looked at your site personally and said “Hmmm.. I’ll take this one down x points.”.

According to your profile you see yourself as someone who is “often seen as an advocate for open and honest speech” but now that you see holes appearing in your revenue you start a bezerk bashing. If you are so concerned with integrity, be objective about it.

I wake up every morning and try to figure out new ways of kissing Googles ass.

I feel your pain though.

Regards
Rick

Yahoo! has perfectly good relevancy. I’d be keen to try Ask as well. Better still, the SERPs aren’t totally polluted by results from large media sites like YouTube, Wikipedia, and the rest.

We also need to see which monitization platforms are a viable alternative to AdSense. Start a movement to counteract this Google monopoly and promote alternatives.

As an industry, SEOs and probloggers have given far to much weight to ranking in Google. I suggest that those influencers who read this blog should give serious thought to promoting alternatives.

Use this initiative to take action before the dust settles and we’re all worrying about our Google rankings again.

A few people did try that with OpenRank (http://www.openrank.org/) but it didn’t take off. To be honest though, do we really need a visible ranking bar? Success for a site should be determined by readers, subscriptions or turnover – sensible metrics for any online business.

The smaller guys who work hard day in and day out yet got stung. I got hit in a site that doesn’t sell links. the only advertising is YPN, yet it took a hard hit.

Google just attacked all the people trying to put food on the table.
Is this how you reward the people who built you?

One of the things that you touched on that I thought was key was that this IS content that Google is not compensating you for, but they are profiting from it. Seems to me that Google should have to share the revenue for paid advertising with all the unpaid links that show up on the results page. After all, if we weren’t here, they wouldn’t be!

Here is food for thought:

You said “They should be striking up dialogue with us about how to address their concerns while protecting ours. It’s our content, Google.”

What a lot of people (or large parts of the public) is missing is the fact that Google is looking to be THE primary information broker in EVERY MAJOR content areas – regardless of who owns the content or which content source is the best available.

Examples: Books, real estate listings, yellow page listings, mapping information, classified advertising, scholarly information, web based applications, video – even 411. And the list goes on and on.

They want to dominate. Not to liberate us or for some holy “do no evil” mission statement. They want to show us adsense (but don’t you dare make a site only designed to show adsense!)

The more areas they extend into the more likely it is that they will push other search results down the page. And the share of the audience that they provide will diminish as well.

Webmasters, Bloggers, and Internet Marketers everywhere are going to have to learn to build their own traffic sources.

I think you hit the nail exactly on the head.

It’s funny because when Google first got going I remember all the webmasters and developer promoting it. It was new, it was cool, it was FREE. Now that the money machine is cranking it seems that Google has turned on the very people that made it popular. It’s not too hard too imagine a paradigm shift, where Google used to be “cool”, now the words “monopoly”, “corporate”, “heartless money machine” come to mind.

Page Rank is worthless. Why doesn’t someone step up and make an unbiased ranking system? Not one controlled by a search engine.