Should we opt out of Google SERPs?
by Sapphire (November 19, 2007)
I’m mulling over what might happen if I banned the Googlebot from indexing some of my sites (via robots.txt), including one that might marginally be considered an “authority site”. Why?
I was reading Mark’s recent post on not letting yourself become dependent on Google (or any other single traffic source). This is the lesson we should all be learning right now. Forget the paid link crap, or the fact that Google keeps making pagerank public, advertising its value in deciding who to link to and punishing people for using it to decide who to link to. The bottom line is: Google can do anything they want to their portion of your traffic. But only their portion.
Now, why would I take the insane step of banning Google from my sites? Because it would reduce spams and trollers (maybe not? see comments). Seems to me spam activity fluctuates with pagerank. As for trollers, well… on one of my sites, there’s a clear pattern: various inbounds and Yahoo send me good visitors who make useful comments and add me to their feedreaders. Google sends me trolls who spout crap I have to go in and delete, add to the blacklist, and or ban.
Google has made their search engine crap, so it sends crap visitors to some sites. Not all, I realize - it handles some niches better than others. There are some sites where it just wouldn’t make sense for me to dump Google (yet). But there are some where I’m seriously thinking the positives would outweigh the negatives.
The ever-proposed, never-enacted Google boycott: what if a lot of webmasters started banning Google from some of their sites? How reliable would pagerank be considered if popular sites opted out of it, stating they weren’t pleased with the quality of traffic they get from Google?
The only concern I have this this idea is Feedburner. Google would probably try to punish people by killing their feeds. Of course, you can always go back to your original feed address, as long as you don’t lose visitors in the transition.
This is a far-out idea, I know, but my goal in writing it and posting it is to shake up my brain. We have a very dysfunctional relationship with Google, my fellow webmasters, even those of you smart enough to mostly ignore them. I need to change how I think about Google, how I see them, how I see the internet and my sites in relation to them.
Posted in SEO
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November 19th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
vlad has already done this a couple weeks ago
I would say don’t do it. enjoy the traffic but don’t depend on it.
he also found spam went up
http://www.volodymyrzablotskyy.com/google-bot-is-confused-so-are-the-google-employees/
i for sure won’t be depending on it with anything I ever do again though.
November 19th, 2007 at 2:53 pm
I’m surprised about the spam and can’t imagine why that was the case. Interesting.
I don’t think it’s worth doing unless a bunch of us did it all together for the purpose of boycotting Google’s crap. A really huge bunch including some important big businesses with online presences. But still - even tossing thoughts like this around are good for my brain.
From reading you post, I realized none of my sites depend on Google. Yes, they provide up to a third of my overall traffic in some cases, but no more (except on a very new blog or two which aren’t making real money yet anyway). A third of your traffic hurts in the short-term, but it leaves you with a base from which to grow new inbounds.
November 19th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
I can’t explain why the spam went up. But as Mark pointed out in his article, Google was very swift to identify websites as “unsafe”. I think they may be fighting the “spammy” bots as well.
I think that social networks website are more prone to spam bots. The reason I am saying is that last few days the traffic from these websites tripled, so did the spam.
If you are getting decent amount of traffic from Google just enjoy it. However, if I can survive with only 200+ subscribers any one can survive.
November 19th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
I don’t see why removing yourself from the google serps would suddenly cause spambots to come in larger numbers, though. Maybe I don’t understand the technology, but this almost makes it sound as if the Googlebot protects sites from spam, so if you turn it away you’re suddenly unprotected?
I’ve had a couple of sites zeroed, but so far can’t see any drop in Google traffic. Still, I guess if the traffic drops, we’ll see what happens.
November 20th, 2007 at 9:15 am
[...] with Googlebot is indeed interesting. However my advise to anyone contemplating to restrict Googleot from your site via robots.txt is simple: DON’T DO IT! Besides the fact that in a short term you will loose some search [...]