Rick Schwartz has been writing about how Google turned off serving ads on his minisite, a few days ago, without notice or a right to appeal.
Rick asks in his 2 posts, what does that type of treatment say, for how Google feels about domainers.
Well Rick, Google has been operating like this for years.
Many years.
Remember when Google Implemented “Smart Pricing” many years ago?
At that time we had a direct contract with Google.
One day we noticed our revenue got slashed dramatically, overnight.
We called our Google Rep to find out what happened, no response.
We e-mailed our Google Rep to find out what happened, no response.
We left support tickets, no answer.
It wasn’t until a WEEK passed that we received a any notice from Google.
Google told us that they had implemented “smart pricing”, not only without prior notice, but without notice for a week until after it was in effect.
To this day, Google has never supplied a domainer its “smart pricing” ranking.
Compare this to Yahoo which gave the world months of notice of its “Panama” project and its newest quality score adjustment that was launched on September 9th.
Google doesn’t tell you what your “smart pricing” score is, whether its gone up or down since last week, last month or last year, how it is computed or any other information on this extremely important issue which dramatically affects what domainers earn from Google.
When I asked a question to Matt Cutts at the TRAFFIC show, I got the standard answer you always get whenever you ask Google about this: Its proprietary information and we aren’t going to tell you.
Nice.
Compare this to Yahoo which shows you your accounts quality score on a scale from 1-10 every day of the year, (even when you use a parking company) clearly showing any changes.
How about domains Google “bans” from their system overnight, again with no notice or explanation.
Google doing what ever the hell they want is nothing new.
Google basically pays you want they want.
No transparency, no notice, no explanation.
This is how Google does business and they have been doing this to domainers for many, many years.
However, Google continues to grow in market share, their profits continue to rise, and the stock is at a 52 week high.
So I sure wouldn’t expect any positive fundamental change from Google and they way they treat or think about domainers.
Google will continue to do whatever they want.
I think we lost this battle a long time ago.
oh c’mon mike… don’t be evil. hehehe.
They are powerfull. The problem is, they also realize it. As long as there is no good second person (yahoo is far far behind), they will remain like this.
Intersting post…I do believe the day will come when google is forced into transparency for the organic search, they are simply too big, with too much market share…resembling that of the microsoft brower of years past…the ability to pick and choose which sites rank where and eliminate sites without notice will at somepoint become a legal issue, especially as they delve more into direct advertising as they are looking to do with their proposed mortgage rate pilot program…
This isn’t just “domainers treatment”. Remember “Florida update”?
http://www.webworkshop.net/florida-update.html
This could get worse … I’m surprised they still haven’t charged EVERYBODY to be
on the front page of keyword results … they are in an enviable position … all the
financial keyword data we feed Google will one day come to bite the hands that
fed them.
Anthony
sounds like yahoo treats domainers much better than goog, yet how many domainers use google as their main search eng?
Can’t have it both ways folks…
I’m going to be doing most my searches at Yahoo or maybe even Bing for now on…about 300-800 searches a day…every little bit might help 😉
When I worked at a big ad agency, and we managed lots of AdWords campaigns for clients, the folks at Google were great to deal with and very keen to get our business. I was very impressed by their customer service, and Google really seemed to appreciate our business.
When I switched jobs and moved to Tucows, which already had a direct feed relationship with Google for parking, I immediately noticed a huge difference. Now that I was in the “domain channel” and dealing with the “domain channel” folks, I was shocked at how crappy the product was, how poor the customer service was, how little the account rep knew about parking in general and our business in particular, and this despite the fact we were doing millions of dollars a year in parking with them!
Needless to say, I fired Google (I love saying that) and we took our business elsewhere. And, yes, we are making a lot more money working with a different parking partner.
To this day, I can’t believe how badly Google treats the “domain channel” and some of their biggest customers.
Do no evil? Yeah, right.
Tim
We have more traffic parked with Yahoo partners than Google partners and that was been the case for quite a while.
The biggest surprise here is that you still read Rick’s blog…
The even bigger problem as I see it is that Yahoo is now playing games also. I have a TQ10 for a long time with some really great domains, but after Sept. 9th my income dropped very significantly. I have talked to many others that have seen the same thing. Interestingly, though some people’s income is holding. It’s almost as if they are being selective on whos account they target for paying less.
If others and I still have a TQ10……why is our income dropping dramatically? I read that to mean your traffic is great, but we want to pay less for it.
I’m already moving my traffic away from both Yahoo and Google, even if the payouts are less, but surprisingly I have found on some 2nd tier feeds the payouts are not that bad, and in some cases even better. In the long run though, I need to control my destiny and that is by dealing directly with the advertisers.
Someone here said they won’t be searching on Google anymore…….I started doing that over a year ago. Screw them and thier high brow antics.
Mike…..what’s up with the text smilie in the lower left hand corner? 🙂
What’s the difference between Microsoft’s attitude and treatment of their customers in the OS world . . . and Google’s in search?
That’s right.
Nothing.
“What’s the difference between Microsoft’s attitude and treatment of their customers in the OS world . . . and Google’s in search?”
Microsoft never pretended they were Mahatma Gandhi in flowing robes of piety.
@dcmike77
Someone is jealous lol.
Why don’t you push more trademark names on forums and sell more names to newbies. Also your sinking with the ship mike at la times and afraid of successful domainers and geo owners.
@Ed Muller – LOL, this was great:
“Microsoft never pretended they were Mahatma Gandhi in flowing robes of piety.”
i have an idea to shock google… it will work if most domainers want to go for it… comment here…
What is it Stephen?
It was me who mentioned I wouldn’t be using G for search any more, both here and elsewhere. I’ve started using Bing a lot more in the past week and it’s set as my preferred. In fact I was surprised to hear since this started going down that a good majority of my clients are also just as disillusioned.
There’s an obvious a feeling of animosity building up here in the DN channel, and quite rightly so, Google have far too much power in this game, and they show this by making decisions that effect peoples income and businesses “without notice”. It reminds me of Apple back in early 2k when they pulled the plug on dealerships in the UK channel without hardly any notice sending 10’s of established dealers into the ground within a few months, because they wanted to sell their own products – I was one of those dealers, and I had to diversify literally over night.
The other issue here is the domino effect because I’m also seeing a big rev drop in the Yahoo feed, so where is this all headed?
@Sephen Douglas
I’m curious what did you have in mind.
Where is Microsoft?
Stephen,
All ears.
Ed
Stephen??
I’m listening….
And folks, Google not only plays games with adwords at will, they also apparently delist sites from their search engine at will.
Now imHo, banning you from their business model is one thing, but isn’t a search engine supposed to tell you what’s actually on the web?