The Google Slap… Good or Bad?

What happened in October through to November 2009 is unprecedented in terms of internet marketing’s short history. If its not then I don’t really care because personally, I have never seen anything like it.

What happened? Well Google decided to go out and ban thousands upon thousands of adwords accounts, leaving many marketers scratching their heads for a few minutes, followed by the declaration of war again the search engine giant. Reactions ranged from: “well, it was bound to happen”, through to “Why me? I did nothing wrong? Can’t I sell rebill offers people can’t get out of? You F*@#&#”.. and so on.

I am a firm believer in that for every step back, there will be an equal or greater step forward. The problem is that many people chose to just get angry and essentially ‘waited’ for something to happen that would improve their situation. ie… Google changes their mind.. guess what? They are still waiting.

Others saw this as a wake up call or an opportunity. When I saw all the accounts getting banned I realised that I simply can’t reply on Google because in any moment, they could be gone.. and along with it, my traffic. Google’s blanket ban should have opened up the eyes of all the Internet marketers out there and encouraged them to spread their risk and not reply on one body to put food on the table.

The funny thing is that those that were banned are probably better off right now. The ban essentially forced them to look elsewhere and expand their portfolio. Many of those left relying on Google are still worse off and because they were not ‘forced’ to look around, many haven’t. Unfortunately they may only learn their lesson only when Google slams its finger down once again.

Back to that saying about a step back leads to an equal or greater step forward. I wouldn’t take it too literally. That step back doesn’t have to happen to you, but learning from what happens to others can allow you to skip that step and take the steps forward anyway. Why wait?