Google Does It Again As The Googfather - After John Chow, Now It’s Squidoo
Looking at Google and their actions in recent days reminds me of the movie Godfather. It’s like Google is the Godfather of the online world. Make friends with Google and you’ll be safe from anybody. Try and mess with Google - you’re in deep s*** and they’ll soon give you an offer you can’t refuse. So I would give Google a new nickname, the Googfather.
If you haven’t heard already, many have suffered the wrath of the Googfather, including the big J - John Chow himself. Try and search for John Chow in Google, and you won’t find johnchow.com at the top spot, not even on the first page of the search result. Try and search for ‘make money online‘ and johnchow.com is no longer at the top spot again. What happened to him? Ask the Googfather. The main reason was probably because he used the keyword ‘make money online’ to promote his blog through reviews excessively, and that invoked the wrath of the Googfather. Probably his whole blog has been blacklisted from appearing in the Googfather search result.
Other cases that have been reported are those about being banned from using AdSense. This is quite common, but then again, people have lost thousand of dollars as a result of those ban. Normally, they ban you without warning. The rule is simple : don’t mess with their TOS, keep good relationship with them, and you’ll be fine, hopefully. Otherwise, feel the wrath of the Googfather, yet again. Sometimes, you got banned as a result of other people’s dirty works, but that’s life. Somebody can be an a**hole but you’ve got no authority to punish him. The Googfather has the authority but unfortunately, it’s you who suffered
Recently, Squidoo tasted the wrath of the Googfather as well. Some people reported that their squidoo lenses were losing traffic as well as ranking in the Googfather search result. They thought this was due to the fact that Squidoo has become a place for spammers to put their junks and spams in the lenses, resulting the Googfather to penalize Squidoo. Again, spams and junks angers the Googfather, so Squidoo got a hit.
In short, there are certain rules when dealing with the Googfather if you want to be safe
- Never mess with them, and don’t try to be clever. The Googfather has the CapoRegime to monitor your every movement.
- Stick to their TOS and make friend with the Googfather. If you come to him as his friend, he’ll be happy to help you
- Don’t spam and don’t give any chance to be manipulated by spammers. The Googfather penalises everybody related to his enemies.
Let’s make this as totally business and nothing personal. Stay on the Googfather payroll or you’ll be sleeping with the fishes 
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
It’s just an assumption but judging from the SERP, it’s probably a good assumption. I don’t think he’s totally banned coz the last time I checked, johnchow.com is in page 5 of Google search result. So there’s still hope I guess 
Will the writing like this invoke google’s wrath too?..
“Keep your friends close, enemies closer.” he heh
I had the opportunity to interview Seth Godin on the “Squidoo Slap”
the full Squidoo interview is available here:
http://www.searchingdot.com/2007/07/17/interview-with-seth-godin-on-the-squidoo-slap/
[...] It’s true, in some cases you don’t need very high PR to make money from your blog. If you’ve already built up your list of loyal readers, no matter what your PR is, they will always come back to your blog every single day. In other words, perhaps organic traffic matters less compared to the amount of traffic you get from your subscribers. Look at John Chow. He’s still making a lot of money from private ad sales and affiliate commissions although his PR has been cut down by the Googfather [...]
[...] happen if you don’t get as many organic traffic as you wanted? What will happen if you got slapped by Google, your site is placed in the sandbox and given 0 PR? Is all hope lost? Or can you still make money [...]
[...] happens if you don’t get as many organic traffic as you wanted? What will happen if you got slapped by Google, your site is placed in the sandbox and given 0 PR? Is all hope lost? Or can you still make money [...]
[...] It’s true, in some cases you don’t need very high PR to make money from your blog. If you’ve already built up your list of loyal readers, no matter what your PR is, they will always come back to your blog every single day. In other words, perhaps organic traffic matters less compared to the amount of traffic you get from your subscribers. Look at John Chow. He’s still making a lot of money from private ad sales and affiliate commissions although his PR has been cut down by the Googfather [...]
Wow unbelievable. I had no idea John had been banned from Google.