Before experimenting with Googlebot, I was occupying 12th position for the term. It is true that my article on how I am planing to beat the “other Vlad” have generated few important links, however I do not believe they were sufficient enough to jump my website to #5 position, especially competing against Wikipedia.

So what happened? I think my entire experiment has caused some what of a confusion on Google’s data centers. But it is only my guess.

I do not know how long this phenomena will last, but it appears that my experiment, although it is over, continues to affect my blog. Not only I have improved position for my name search, I have dramatically improved on some other very competitive keywords in my niche, and I am observing increase in Google’s traffic. The question is how long will this last?

Happy Thanksgiving!Similar Posts:

None Found

If you are a real estate agent and are familiar with Zillow’s “zestimates” you may understand that a possible “Google Real Estate” is a perfect recipe for disaster. Anyway, here is the clip from Home Rental Blog:

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One of the great benefits coming from as weird URL as you see for this blog, that I will have extremely hard time to ever sell it. With that there is also one particular advantage- I can experiment more with my website than other bloggers. Even if my experiments are a little drastic or insane.

Having been defamed by Google, along with many other bloggers, gave me an opportunity to reevaluate my relationship with big G. I have decided to see how will this blog survive on its own- without Google. So I have instructed Googlebot to stay way from this blog. But I also have requested to remove my entire website from Google’s index via Google Webmaster Tools (formerly know as Google Sitemaps).

Why so drastic?

Well, as I said it is an experiment. And I would advise not to follow my example if you run a blog that is responsible for good chunk of your earnings. Otherwise you are likely to loose about 30% of existing traffic and potentially that can translate into a loss of considerable amount of your income.

I would not call it an attempt to boycott Google. However, since Google has considered some of the pages to be shown on the first page of its search results, removing my website from these results is a way of returning the kindness after being defamed by their most recent Page Rank update.

Is it all about paid links and nofollow?

Yes and no. Yes I am guilty. My guilt amounts to about $2,000 earned from sponsored reviews and text link ads during the course of last year. Even I if I can’t substantiate a claim that I did not intentionally sell Page Rank, I still believe that a “no-nofollow” link to an advertiser from my blog did not have the same effect on SERPs as a “no-nofollow” link to an advertiser let say on TechChrunch or a “no-nofollow” link to his employer by Matt Cutts.

I still believe that paid reviews and paid links can contribute to better and more relevant results. To claim that links are irrelevant just because they are found in a sponsored review is absurd.

Could there have been a more moderate way out?

In order to make peace with Google, many webmasters were forced into waving white flags in surrender. I believe that similar option was available to me also. However seeing how uneven and unjust penalties were distributed, I have decided to give Google a hand. Even though I received money in exchange for links, my conscious is clean. When my website will be removed from Google’s index, any claim that I am selling Page Rank is absurd.

On the other had this will give me a better understanding whether or not a website can be successful or even survive without being indexed in Google. I will be posting some statistics in the future on it so stay tuned.

Although the readership of this blog is low, the fact that people subscribe to my blog tells me that once in a while I manage to write something relevant and interesting and no search engine will tell me otherwise.

Here is just few predictions about the effects this will have on my blog:

1. I will lose about 30% of traffic- not a big deal if I manage to increase the subscribers to this blog.
2. I predict a considerable decrease of spam (both human and automated) on my blog. It will be interesting to see to what degree was Google at fault when it came to spam.
3. I imagine bloggers may hesitate to link to me since there will be no sign of my website in Google- this will result in a smaller number of links in the future to my blog. Will this turn my blog into a “bad neighborhood”? Frankly in this light the entire idea of “bad neighborhood” is absurd- without Google it does not exist.
4. I may loose my place in the “Dofollow Movement” even though I am keeping DoFollow plugin on my blog.

I know that many of you disagree with my approach, I do however want to hear your take on it. How do you think my blog will do?Similar Posts:

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As most of you, I was wondering about a pattern of what took place. It is only one’s guess why and how penalties were implemented.

So to lighted up the situation I decided to find some fun practices which will keep your Page Rank untouched. Hopefully you can ad your own fun way to please the big G:

1. Link to pornographic websites as much as you can.
2. Kiss up to Google and never tell them they are stupid.
3. If you sell links or write paid reviews make sure to report and snitch on your fellow webmasters who do the same.
4. Yours next…….

Please share some fun ways to keep your websites PR high and untouched. I hope we can come up with a list of at least 10 best practices to do so. Help me out! Similar Posts:

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I am not putting the widget on my website, but there are signs that WidgetBucks may address the areas of TOS that I had the biggest issues with.

Just to underline again, the biggest problem that I have with WidgetBucks is the hidden html link, which can not be removed from the widget according to TOS. Quick fix would be to allow publishers removing/nofollowing the link if they wish, and make the link clearly visible in the widget.

I have no problem at all with the fact that they have changed terms and referral structure just hours after the products launch. Working with Commission Junction merchants I receive at least one notice each day that some merchant decided to change the terms, so I can live with that.Similar Posts:

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The drop in page rank from PR4 to PR2 is significant I would say. So am I a bad neighborhood? I wish Google would put out a list of websites that are qualified as “bad websites to link to”. There are about 500 blogs out there that link to me, some have a site-wide blogroll links pointing my way. If you are one of those please consider to remove your link to my website. I am very serious about it- no offense will be taken.Similar Posts:

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There are two major reasons why I dislike the program:

1. Although it is easy to configure and place it on your website, but once its on your website or blog it may take really long time for the widget to load, while preventing your website from loading completely.
2. I have a problem with the fact I forbidden to remove html links by Mpire.

Don’t waste your time! You can make better money with AuctionAds and even Amazon.Similar Posts:

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As other bloggers I would love to improve on some technical/geeky aspects of my blog, however I will write about some things I would like to improve on that are not necessarily related to my programing skills. Besides there is always Blog Stokes, where you can find tons of info and tips on how to modify your WordPress.

So here is my dirt. I will list the things I would like to improve on as they come to mind not as a prioritized list.

1. Cutting Down On “Drafts”- this one is becoming quiet a problem for me. At the moment 14 draft posts that I started to write some time in the past but never got around to finish them. Main reason I end up not finishing my posts is that as an affiliate marketer there are always more urgent things to do than blogging- one of them is to “baby sit” my PPC campaigns and trying to keep on top of ever changing guidelines in AdWords.
2. In need to “step up” a notch. This one is based on the fact that I have received some good and juicy links from blogs that are much younger than mine but supersede my blog in quality. For me getting a incoming link brings with it not only satisfaction from being “noticed” but also the responsibility to the blogger giving me a link as well as to the visitors he is sending along the way.
3. Staying focused. As you can see from the title of my blog, I am writing suppose to be writing about my experience in affiliate marketing. However I often write about things unrelated to affiliate marketing.

I know that improving on these three things, I can bring my blog and blogging in general to another level, and I am glad Dane tagged me for this meme. How about you, do you think your blogging can be improved?

I am tagging for this meme following bloggers. I subscribe to these blogs but and I think they produce much better content than I do. However as blog owners they have probably thought about improving their blogs so I am interested to find out what exactly would they improve on:

• Josh Spauding- author of Make Money Blog
• David Olsen of Affiliate Profit Ceneter
• Maki of Dosh Dosh- I doubt Maki would be interested in this memem however considering great popularity of Dosh Dosh his readers might enjoy the “dirt”.
• Chris from Search Anyway Blog- some how I have a feeling Chris is going to video respond to this one.
• Maurice- the author of Cayman Host Blog

If you have already participated in such a meme feel free to send a trackback to this post.

Update: Chris from Search Anyway Blog has just responded with a video to this meme, but since he cannot ping my blog I decided to give him a link from this post. Take a look what he said.Similar Posts:

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I am not sure if this move is done to prevent spiders from recognizing the “url” to TLA or was there another reason. The bottom line is that javascript while in some cases may be beneficial to use, they are really pain to work with.

I have been using Tex Link Ads both as an advertiser as well as publisher for some time now. I do not make much money with them. In fact whatever I make as publisher and affiliate I immediately spend as an advertiser. Both my earnings and my spendings steadily increased over the period of last few moths. I am however reluctant to serve javascripted affiliate links.

The main problem that I see with javasripts is that it is limiting your on how you can track of outgoing clicks. If you have a solution to that please enlighten me.

Also the new affiliate links can not be embedded into your WordPress posts. And if you utilize OpenAds to serve TLA ads you are out of luck if you did not saved somewhere a good old html code for your affiliate links.

On that note I also have plunged into OpenAds rush after reading several great reviews. I am not sure what I think about OpenAds yet but here are some great reviews for you to check out:

Advertising Management Solutions: Open Ads Review
Video Review of Openads by Mark
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You may also be interested in Openads Blog, especially if you are planing to run Openads on your websites.

My first impression about OpenAds is that I am literally not sure if such as system can be an “overkill” for my blog. However if you are building your “blogging empire” or have several websites where you want to run your advertising via Openads, it allows you to centralize your efforts and tracking. What I find outstanding from the affiliate marketing point of view is the ability to GEO target with Openads. If you like to read in the future about my experience with OpenAds subscribe to my blog.Similar Posts:

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I think Pay Per Post needs to realize that alerting their bloggers (and advertisers) about news in their accounts is essential. I have recently received my first ever request via PPP Direct. Do you know how and when I learned that some one have purchased a review from me? Well it was just by logging into my account, only three days after the request was placed via a button on my blog. It would be of much help to implement a solution that alerts bloggers immediately, especially about Pay Per Post Direct requests.

While there is a snippet of pending reviews (both regular and PPP Direct) when you login into your account:

Things are quiet different when it comes to sign ups via “review my post” buttons. In fact you have to navigate to the place within your account where you get the code for the button in order to see your referral statistics:

Again I have to admit that after improving their landing page, even my blog has referred four bloggers. Yet none of the bloggers have taken the “opportunity” that referred them to Pay Per Post.

I think the problem can also be solved by allowing me to communicate with the bloggers that i have referred to Pay Per Post. In my case only one blogger is my regular reader/commentator, so I can easily contact him to see if he needs help, but I think that should not be my concern.

I have to admit that I have grown into a Pay Per Post fan. You can give them a try as well. If you use the button on the top of this post to sign up, we both can make $7.50. All you have to do is to write a review of this post (minimum 50 words). Do you think you can write 50 words in 10 minutes?Similar Posts:

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