John Chow has been penalised heavily by Google, for link-bombing. He is now far behind the first page for both “John Chow” and “Make Money Online” search terms. There’s also reports that Google will drop his PageRank from the 6 to 4, in the next PR update.
For several months now, John Chow had been aggressively pursuing a linkback campaign, where he would link to any blogger who writes a review of his blog, and links to him with the link text “Make Money Online”.
Google has been known for frowning on paid links, paid reviews and other forms of link fraud or “gaming the system”. Now, John Chow is on some 7th page of results for “John Chow” on Google. This is in addition for penalty for the result “Make Money Online”.
Apparently, folks at Googleplex were not very pleased with the linkback campaign. They have, however maintained that they do not rearrange the results manually to punish such fraud. They claim that their algorithm is smart enough to penalise such sites automatically.
However, this incident of JC makes me think twice about such claims.
Matt Cutts, the “voice of Google”, who was critical of Google’s policies like placing their own services Picassa and Blogger ahead of WordPress or Flickr in search results. Thus, one would expect Matt to speak the truth. Matt Cutts, has however repeatedly echoed what Google says about their results.
Of course, Google has the right to rearrange their results. They had been something of a revoulutionary in the corporate sector, with the motto “Don’t be evil” and the like. However, with this step, Google has gone back on all such promises. I personally agree with the dropping of JC on both searches, but this is more because of his evil methods.
Which makes me wonder – does Google aspire to be the next Technorati? Remember, Technorati attained notoriety for rearranging their “Top 100″ list of blogs, favouring some bloggers, while manually removing some others. John Chow was at the receiving end of that too! It was even criticised by the A-listers.
Now, Google, the search engine that we all love, seems to be heading the “Technorati way”.
Related reading
- Technorati Blog Claim sucks (and its dangerous)
- How To: Bring back Technorati incoming links widget in WordPress Dashboard
- Search on Google from Firefox address bar (like Google Chrome)
- Happy Birthday, Google: Google is 10 years old
This is the problem if we have only one king.
I personally think that JC has crossed the line. His blog has become out of focus because of his make money online post campaign.
P.S. I have launched my new blog. MeetArpit.com
@Nirmal: Yes, everyone is feeling the pinch of Google’s domination….which gives me an idea for a new post – thanks, and watch out!
@Arpit: I was wondering why your blog has not been updated for quite some time now. Now I know
Congratz on your new setup. Finally, your “personal liking” to Blogger is over – welcome to WordPress side of blogging.
I predicted John Chow’s demise some time ago. Good on him.
I am in favour with Google’s Link Building Policy. There are many website that manipulate the system and try to get a high ranking with wrong or missleading information on the topic user will search.
There is something you should take care when you start the link building.
Get links from related website only.
Links from Unique IPs and Domains
Use Random Link Text
Have a Good Interval on Link Building.
John Chow got almost 3500 back links on google. I was thinking, if it was blogspot site or hosted on google, they might have not taken it as a serious matter.
I also know, Google is very concerned about bad neighbourhood. So stop One minute to who you are going to link…
@BlogBloke: Thank you for dropping by – I am honoured
@BB and Linu: Both of you seem to hate JC. But the fact is, unlike many other A-listers, he gets things done quickly, and has proof. That’s just about the only thing I like about him.
But he’s very arrogant – look for his post which comments on a blog who said he was big bad blog and Problogger was the third little site – JC claims he could’ve taken down PB, which is not very plausible, considering that D.Rowse’s methods are more legit than JC’s.
@Linu: Thanks for the tips. #3, ie links from unique IPs, is new to me.
I must appreciate Sumesh,
Beside keeping the website with Fresh Content, he also often Keep the Blog with Fresh Themes…
Many times, when I visit Tech Zilo, it makes me say WOW… seeing the New Theme…
Anyway… I feel freshhhhhhhhhhhhh
Was that a compliment? If so, thanks.
But I feel you are indirectly telling me that I should stay with one theme – in fact, I am thinking of staying with this theme.
I don’t hate anybody. But I can’t respect someone like JC who games the system and encourages others to do so.
As far as Darren Rowse and other so-called a-listers go, he just saturates the internet with information that anyone can already find from Google.
I call it CMP — Copy, Massage and Paste
It’s been fun and cheers everyone!
…BB
I respect John Chow for his ability to attract and retain visitors. Apart from that, there isn’t anything.
Darren may saturate the net, but his methods are legit, and he presents the info in a readable manner. You can’t really deny the work he does
Also, he is a nice guy, atleast as far as my experiences are concerned.
Well, Sumesh, I know you are doing experiment with deferent themes. This theme looks more vissible, easy to read content…
Yes, I like playing with things. The problem is, they’re too bland, or too flashy. I can’t find any which are in between.
But I’ll probably stay with this theme – it has 3col, right sidebars, readability etc. That’s what I look for, in a theme.
JC was penalized for not only link bombing but for paid links too,.
As far is technorati is concerned , they have removed ~20 sites from their top 100 many of which are templates sites as if you have a template offering site, your blog will comparitively have a higher authority
The case with JC is “make money online”.He made everyone link to him using these keyword and now he’s out but it doesn’t looks like he’s affected
“Live by Google,Die by Google”
Why do everyone hate JC?
I too, mate, I too
JC has really been hard hitted by google…
But it will have only marginal effect on him ..becoz he is even more popular than ever before because of everyone talking about him..
Hey Sumesh, something off topic. This new theme is pretty cool. Did you make it?
The moment a corp thinks of world domination it becomes evil.
@Shyam: Thanks for dropping by. Unfortunately, I’d have to disagree with you – Google thought up world domination some time back, and even now, they’re are only one step into the evil world. They’re still doing good things like freeing up FeedBurner Pro services, adding robots.txt to Blogspot blogs etc.
Good to be at techzilo !
Evil is different from greed. Google may not be greedy but they are turning evil with online world domination plans.
By not encouraging competition (they just buy the competition off). Creating monopoly is a bad business tactics take the example of standard oil !
They created monopoly to reduce the consumer cost. but in the process of doing so they was sued for Anti Trust and the company was split. (search wiki for Standard oil)
Microsoft on the other hand is greedy and evil !
Nice analogy of Google’s domination and monopoly in oil field
Yeah, I agree with almost all you say – but I consider Google to be greedy too….After all, they’re not acquiring YouTube etc. for charity – in long term, they envision earning big bucks from them.
I think that Google, as the most popular search engine, has a responsibility to keep their results accurate. It sure sounds like they’re editing the results manually. On the plus side, they do it a lot less than Yahoo (who accepts payment for results editing I believe).