Posted on Saturday 22nd of September 2007 at 13:57 in The Internet

When Google bans the best content

It's not often I disagree with the decisions made by Google - I love most of their products and use plenty of them on a daily basis. However, today made me wonder quite how reliable their search engine are; here's why.

While doing some new work on the site I was pondering the possibilities of monetising the site in a slightly more effective way through various affiliate schemes. Naturally I need to read around the topic a bit first before making any decisions so off to Google I went. After a few minutes of reading search results it got me thinking - John Chow knows this stuff inside and out and offers brilliant advice on the topic - yet he's no where to be found.

johnchow

You see, John got banned from Google for a clever yet cheeky link campaign where users were able to enter a competition to win cool stuff (such as a 24" widescreen TFT) by linking to him from their site using the link text "make money online". After a shockingly short period he was the #1 result on Google for that very search term and waves of Google searchers were sent in his direction. Google saw this underhand tactic and banned him for it - which figures.

Yet now I find myself searching for advice on affiliate programmes and one of the best resources isn't there
I respect John's material because I've been reading his blog for a long time on daily basis (plus there's no arguging with his earnings). John does indeed have good advice on affiliate schemes and where to find the best deals, but Google no longer shows that content. Google no longer shows any of his content - which is a shame because there's a LOT of excellent stuff there.

So how many other sites are useful but banned too?
John isn't a bad person - indeed he made his fortunes by thinking outside of the box and trying to capitalise on the current climate of the business landscape. In this instance it meant promoting his site with a very "make money online" heavy link-back scheme which didn't pay off. Shouldn't this prompt Google to rethink their algorithm rather than ban the user who found a hole?

Therefore I wish to express distaste for the situation, not on a personal level because I like the site but more because I respect the information he provides (and it has potential to help thousands).

Let me just clarify that - I don't want John to be unbanned from Google because I like his site; that aspect is completely academic. My reasoning is purely because I genuinely believe his content is the best on the topic of making money online. Google recently accounted for like 64% of all searches made in the USA and that makes them a MAJOR source of information; and those 64% missed out on some good content.

So how many good sites like John's have been banned that we don't know about because we didn't discover them before it happened? For that reason I really think JohnChow.com should be brought back into the Google listings because he provides inspiration and advice to normal people wishing to better their online prescence.

That's all I have to say, but if you agree with me: put it in a comment.

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Comments

Showing most recent 6 of 6 comments

"So how many other sites are useful but banned too?"

My site got penalized for the most idiotic reason: "Excessive internal linking!" We all know that good webmasters make sure all of the internal pages are linked, but, oh no! If you have a lot of pages and you do that, Google will penalize your site! Also, don’t have any GRAY links like you’ve got on your site, or you’ll be penalized. (It also got my site removed from Adsense as well.)

Get off of Adsense and stop giving Google so much money. They make money hand over fist and then punish anyone else who wants to scratch out living online. Oh, except the huge monopolizers like Amazon - Google practically pushes Amazon on everyone. So it’s okay if Amazon makes money online, but nobody else. Except Google.

Google sucks. They are destroying people with their anal rules.

Google Slammed

aww, for crying out loud! JohnChow may have some good content, no denying that, but he *abused* Google’s search engine and - ultimately - he *abused* users’ _trust_ in those results!

now, I am no great fan of Google (in fact, day after day it gets higher on my Evil, Inc. list), but it is - as you have said - one of the _major_ sources of information. if someone *abuses* it, this someone *has* to be punished, otherwise Google will stop being a reliable source of information. and still being a major one, it will start being a *major* source of disinformation...

if JC wants to play in the Google sandbox, he obviously should play by the rules. like everybody else.

oh, and one more thing: I don’t believe that there was no "please stop that, for it may get you banned" mail from Google to JC. in fact, I am quite sure there must have been quite a few of those. and that would mean that the guy just didn’t know when to stop.

cheers

rysiek

I totally agree with your opinion of John’s knowledge of monetizing a ’blog, but that’s his one & only USP, because his other content is largely unreadable (literally so, what with the mess of spelling and grammar errors), derivative and truly awful.

Incidentally, the screen shot of his ’blog just about says everything — notice that small portion of words? Yes, that little two-column block down in the bottom left? That’s his content.

’Nuff said...

Wayne Smallman

He’s a total link slut. I mean, as webmasters (the 90s called... etc), we’re both link-whores but he takes it to a whole new link-brothel level -- a level that goes far beyond a joke and is just begging Google to open a can of pimp on his ass and ban him permanently.

What he’s doing is gaming Google. Getting people to link in with specific anchor text is just plain gaming.

Now I’m not saying the information he provides isn’t valuable but he doesn’t treat it like it is. He should just let his bazillion readers organically link in rather than baiting them all with stupid link-competitions and link-shares.

Getting banned like this (AGAIN!) isn’t smart and it severely tarnishes his reputation...

Oli

JohnChow is a legend, fact. I’ve got a couple of mates who read his content on a daily basis and they find him one of the reasons that they keep trying to make money online.

They fail a lot but I don’t think that should reflect badly on JC.

KLM

I fully agree, I don’t visit there too often but his advice is always very good. It’s a shame that Google got upset with him because I’m sure he inspires a lot of people.

Harpo

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When Google bans the best content

Therefore I wish to express distaste for the situation, not on a personal level because I like the site but more because I respect the information he provides (and it has potential to help thousands).