Is Google Making You Into a Social Zombie?

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It dawned on me tonight that we have been letting Google get away with something so fundamentally detrimental to our existence and in essence conditioning us, but in a bad way. So, the question for you today, have we all become social zombies at our own expense via Google’s experiment?

For those of you involved in internet marketing and ranking terms organically in the search engines, its becoming crystal clear what their end goal really is with us? To create a bunch of zombies for their own little experiment to see how we react. Its like the Walking Dead TV series, where you have the zombies walking around aimlessly and not knowing why or what they are doing. Kinda of a scary thing – would you not agree?

How did they achieve this on such a massive scale?

Easy, they hit us all where it would hurt the most. In the pocket books because lets face it, most of us are small fish in a much bigger pond. You see by constantly attacking us on the SEO level and having the rankings in constant flux, they are achieving something on a world wide scale. Ever since Facebook entered the market and got most of the social traffic, Google has repeatedly tried (and failed miserably) to develop a social aspect to their business model. The problem with that angle, is they have always been a search engine and not a social portal.

I have to give them some credit, they hare persisted over the years and are now virtually shoving it down our digital throats without a say with Google Plus. Well, you really do have a say and a choice to let some corporate bully tell you what you should be doing. Thanks Larry and Sergey – I really hope it fails like so many other of your product launches.

In fact, one of their recent algo changes now penalize sites that have too many ads above the fold. Seriously, who the F–K are you Google to tell me what I can and can’t put on my site. Piss off already because that infringes on our basics and democratic rights of a free society. You never hear this kind of chatter on Bing and Yahoo.

Apparently, you must not have got the memo on that one living in your ivory Google Plex towers. Seriously, I now have to minimize the amounts of ads and pictures because somehow that might be a poor user experience. Have you seen the recent catastrophe in the organic search results since the latest update called the Penguin? By the way, how do they pick those stupid names? I’ll decide what to put on my site and how it looks – not you Matt and the clowns running the show.

What if you are running a photography business. Wouldn’t it make the most sense to have all kinds of pictures on your site to make the right first impressions, rather than a long winded article about your site. Sure, a small introduction is fine, but if photography is your niche, I would expect to see tons of pictures.

The main point of using social media should be because I want to and not feel like I have to. Some sites and niches work well with being social. Other sites, it really is not necessary. The bottom line, engaging in social media interactions should be one of choice, just like everything else we do in a free society.

What’s happening now by being forced to use social media, is that its not a natural thing. Its now like having a love – hate relationship with it, rather than free flowing and really enjoying the interaction. Again, we are to blame for that and letting them dictate what we do online. I for one have been switching out using Google services more and more. For instance, I am now using Bing more and have made it my default home page for search. I know they track my activities, but not like the predator called Google.

Google has become to Big

When Google announced their 1 privacy policy, it rang around the world and in many cases, people were shocked at the level of tracking going on. For instance, Google has become so arrogant and hubris, that when you are logged into your Gmail account and open a new tab to do searches, they will now know even more about your online activities. Just look at the top of the browser when looked into Gmail and open a new tab. You will notice the https. You have to log out to get generic results. When I’m logged into my Yahoo or Bing accounts, I don’t see that happening. Why is that? Probably because they understand it would be unacceptable to be stalking you and me like that. I equate what Google is now doing online to a cyber stalker.

Its so fricken creepy for them to be doing what they are doing that if baffles the mind on why they are infringing on our basic democratic rights. They blasted the government for wanting to increase control over the internet and rallied people around the globe to denounce such a strategy. So, why then are they doing it to us? Answer – you just need to follow the money. It always comes back to and its always about the money for them and most businesses.

Many businesses operate this way, however, most businesses don’t have the largest search engine. I was reading about a search engine called duckduckgo and they have an interesting privacy policy. Here is a quote from the privacy policy page: “DuckDuckGo does not collect or share personal information. That is our privacy policy in a nutshell.” Plus, they have a simple to use search engine. Its like Google used to be.

How To Detox From Being a Social Zombie

The simplest and most effective strategy is to stop using Google and use the other search engines like Bing and Yahoo. In fact, I noticed Bing has become much more stable in the past year with results because they don’t keep tweaking and messing around so often like Google does at the sole expense of their customers.

Plus, I don’t have to log out of my Gmail account to look up generic results which is so frustrating to me. The only way that we can fight back against such tyranny is to hurt them where it hurts the most – in the pocket book. If more people stopped using them, over time they will gradually loose their importance and the balance of search engines will be more evenly distributed.

The other important part to detoxing from being a social zombie is to stop using Google Plus+, which is really poor in my opinion. If most people opted out of using it, then we win. Social interaction should always be a choice and not some corporation should be the driving force on what and how we interact.

You need to understand when you use a companies services, especially the free ones that nothing is really free because they always want something. I noticed this week that Google is now offering Google Drive. Good grief, another way for them to control us even more. Seriously, their privacy policy is scary on this one because they are essentially indicating that they own your information is placed on Google drive. I’m sure they will come out, if not already to revise that part. I mean how completely arrogant can one company be? If I wrote the information, its mine plan and simple.

I have checked out a few forums in the past week as well and it seems more people are now switching over to Bing and Yahoo. I used to have tremendous respect for Google, but they have clearly crossed the line with me and others. Even if you are not involved in any online business activities and just looking to do searches on various topics, check out Bing today. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Assessing The Effects of the Panda Update

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It’s been about 3 weeks since Google unleashed their massive algorithm update that affect 11.8% of all search queries. So, I am curious to see how everyone has been doing since the updates and fallout. I know many have complained about the impact on their business. But, did Google go to far with their algo update?

When I checked various terms related to internet marketing, internet marketing tools etc., I have not noticed anyone that was there before, being kicked off their spot now. I checked some other terms too, like home based business and noticed the sites that were there prior to the update, are still there today. Given how some sites like Entrepreneur were supposedly impacted, they are now actually number 1 for home based business. This is a highly competitive term. The other site that has been battling it out for the number one spot over the years, is homebasedbusiness.com.

I have also re-checked a bunch other terms, to see if any difference. I still see some individual articles from content farms like Hubpages, Buzzle still ranking nicely. Now, this doesn’t mean they weren’t affected, because they got slammed big time overall. But, its worth noting some of the terms before and after to see if any difference.

Moving along, I came across the article about AOL and their strategic plans uncovered by Business Insider. Its a great article and note all how AOL actually was planning to go about unleashing their content plans to increase revenue per page created. They were planning to do exactly what the search engines like Google didn’t want to see happen. Clearly, this stems from other content farms like Hubpages and Buzzle.

I wonder what will happen now with the update, if AOL, will actually move forward with this strategy? I am sure Google and the other search engines will be paying attention. I believe and this is only my opinion, they will not be implementing this business plan. If they scale it up and optimize for search engines to make more revenue, I can see them becoming another JC Penny example. But, hey if they want to be stupid about it, I say go for it.

There was clearly a shake up that had an deep impact, and continues to have wide reaching effects. But, that is exactly what Google wanted to have happen. They want to put the fear of G into your online business. If you are providing great content, you should be OK, but not always. If you are providing crappy content, then you better get your act together. Fear can play a huge role in what their overall impact was meant to have. If you escaped the wrath of G, be glad you did. I still come across people that are still chatting about what they next move should be.

Simple, clean up your online content. Start investing in quality writing, especially for your own sites. You will be surprised at what can happen as I outlined in my previous articles about this farmer update as some referred to it.

Can you learn anything from all the chaos?

The take away, is to up the ante on your sites as I alluded to in the above paragraph. Don’t get lazy with your content. Write stuff that interests your readers for the topic or niche for your site. Of course it takes longer, but that is the whole point. If you want people to stick around for any period of time, then by creating juicy content that solves a question or concern in your readers mind, means you are likely to have more regular readers.

Make sure you are branding yourself and becoming the expert in your particular niche. Don’t rely on the search engines for producing the majority of your traffic. Again, this is stuff I have mentioned on a number of posts, but clearly people have not got this simple message. Give the bloody search engines what they are demanding. The most relevant and useful content for their customers.

One of the best pieces of advice I read, was creating timeless content. That is content that is relevant today, next week and in the years to come. Can anybody do it? In all reality, no they can’t for a variety of reasons. I suspect the main reasons for not putting in the time and energy, people are very lazy and have a lottery mentality. That’s why you see so many websites promoting crap out there, suggesting you can become rich in 3 to 6 months.

When in doubt, always come back to the basics and ask yourself an important question. Would you read the article you just wrote on someone else site? If the answer is honestly a yes, then great. If the answer is no, then edit your content until you can honestly answer that question above.

I personally think, although I did get impacted by the update too, that it was a positive overall. I realized that if I am not ranking on page 1 after doing an evaluation and being honest, then in some circumstances, I shouldn’t be there. In other situations, I know I got impacted unfairly and that was just part of the collateral damage of the serp update. Life goes on and it will for you.