Planet13 - 6:00 pm on Apr 24, 2011 (gmt 0)

imo the only brilliant reason why Panda is great is that it hopefully makes many webmaster try harder to liberate themselves from Google, becoming less dependant to them and puts them into a position to do what they think is good for their visitors and not someone somewhere in Mountain View...

Exactly!

Being dependent on google is like playing Russian Roulette. It is a VERY bad idea, no matter how well it may have worked in the past.

If you have to layoff employees, then you need to tell them the truth: You, the business owner, made a MAJOR mistake becoming dependent on a company that owes you NOTHING to continually send you free traffic, instead of developing a business model that you can actually control. It was fun while it lasted.

There is a thread in the archives / library with a title like, "relying on google traffic has been destroying businesses since 2003." The poster had gone and researched posts from after the Florida update by web site owners that went down in flames.

It was a bad idea in 2003, and guess what? It is a bad idea in 2011.

When you try to compete in the Church of Google, there is one golden rule: The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.

And before complaining about how the government needs to step in and there needs to be more competition, remember this: If it is so hard to rank well in ONE search engine, think of how much harder it will be to rank well in FOUR search engines.

Come up with something that people want that no one else can offer, and there you have a sustainable business model.