fishfinger - 5:52 pm on Nov 14, 2006 (gmt 0)

... the point is how far can some of these small business people go to promote their websites. The whole point of this was to point out that they don't have these resources...

... all big bucks and big time players, and realistically, no way to honestly move up the ladder for the rest of us, except to spend all our spare time searching and recruiting for backlinks instead of running our small businesses...

I assume that anyone affected by this who cares does so because they expect to MAKE MONEY ON THE INTERNET? Where does it say that you *should* be able to compete with a company with a six figure ad budget and an in-house SEO? Where does it say that you *should* expect search engines to work they way they have done for ever?

Any business plan that expects success without marketing know-how (whether personal or paid for) and a marketing budget is NOT a viable business plan. Anyone affected should be grateful that they've had it so easy to now.

Offline, if you don't

(a) have a shop on the high street
(b) advertise in (at least) the local and niche media
(c) network and source leads/customers

do you HONESTLY believe you deserve to compete with those that do?

Just because the internet has been different it doesn't give anyone the right to expect that it will stay that way. The writing has been on the wall for a long time now yet people still act suprised every time Google pull a little bit more of the carpet out from under their feet.