Google Bot Is Confused-So Are The Google Employees

I imagine that Googlebot must be some what confused with my blog lately, since it is not welcomed here while inbound links continue to grow.

The most recent page rank reduction, that hit heavily Malaysian bloggers, tells me that Google employees in charge of the “punishing stick” must be as confused as their little bot. There is no doubt in my mid that penalties are carried out manually, and I think that for the most part on a random basis, although there are claims that Google targets blogs based on certain keywords.

It has been 12 days since Googlebot was forbidden to index my website. So it is about time for some sort of update on the subject. It maybe some what lengthy, so brace your self or come back later when you have nothing else to do.

I Was Wrong

Since I have made certain prediction I shall begin by analyzing those predictions. I am happy to say that I have been proven wrong in everything I have predicted. You should take my findings with a grain of salt since my experiment is only 12 days old.

1. I have predited decrease a 30% loss of traffic to my blog. I probably could have turn out to be a correct prediction, but after my original article where I announced the Googleban had been sphan, stumbled and link to from bloggers with a huge traffic, I have actually seen an increase of traffic by at least 40% comparing to the 12 days preceding my experiment.
2. Since my website was about to removed from Google index, I have predicted a considerable decrease in the amount of spam. The simple digest report by Spam Karma 2 indicates otherwise. To my amazement the amount of spam (both human and generated by bots) almost tripled. I guess Google can take this as a compliment.
3. I predicted that bloggers, especially those unfamiliar with my blog, would hesitate to link to me since there will be no trace of my site in Google index- thus potentially indicate of my blog not being safe to link to. To my surprise I received links from blogs that have never linked to me in the past. And of course I am thankful to all those who linked to me out of solidarity.
4. Finally I did not loose my place in the dofollow community over at BumpZee, since Andy considers me one of the funders. Thanks Andy.

Things Beyond What I Have Predicted

When I have restricted the Googlebot from this website, I did not know that the penalties where yet to come. My Web Hosting Review Blog‘s page rank is reduced to 0 from 2. It was reduced from PR3 to PR2 in the previous round. The interesting thing about that blog is that there is not a single sponsored review on that blog. Although that blog was listed in ReviewMe, Sponsored Reviews and TLA. I have similar websites that were not listed there and those have seen an increase of page rank, although they have nothing but affiliate datafeeds in them. Since few of these websites where listed in Google Sitemaps, it does not appear that Google is penalizing websites across the Sitemaps accounts. They do it manually and many I add they do a terrible job detecting which websites deserves the penalty and in the short term potentially hurting smaller bloggers and leaving the biggest offenders untouched.

It may be way to early to draw any conclusions from my experiment. For now I am just saying to simply not to trust Google. If you write good content and are working on growing your subscribers number you may very well survive without Google. More updates on the way.