I think that might be a little drastic

I am considering some other alternatives

Well.... I'm not going to block the 'bot! I've considered no following all external links except my friends.

@Andy,

It is drastic, I agree. All of sudden "dofollow" movement will not matter. But it is amazing in how many areas we rely on G. I probably will not do this with my other websites, but here with this blog I will have chance to test "no relying on Google" type of model for a website.

@Lucia

I was considering that as well but now I guess it will not matter that much. Google can't claim that I am "selling Page Rank"

My only concern would be not to block other bots, but neither Yahoo nor MSN send me any traffic so I really don't care that much.

Hi Vlad,

Glad to hear you enjoyed your trip to the South :-)

I must admit I'll follow this with interest. I don't want to cut myself out of the Google SERPS, but, I have made my choices regarding a move away from most of their services, and so far without too much pain ;-)

There ARE some good services available that they haven't yet bought!

I'm highly disappointed. i thought for sure you were going to do a php redirect for all google visitors and send them to 45n5.com

oh well.

lol.... Mark I get only 25% of traffic from the search engines to this blog, it will probably constitute 0.00001% of traffic your blog gets...

I actually agree with Andy, this would be a very drastic approach. But I have been experimenting with this blog on so many levels that getting my site de-indexed in Google will not be such a terrible loss. At least no one ca substantiate a claim that I am selling Page Rank.

this really sucks