DirigoDev - 6:29 pm on Sep 22, 2011 (gmt 0)

@Montresor
The Kool-Aid was and still is good. From the testomony, Yelp seemed to indicate that they could not survive without the Kool-Aid.

Look, I’m not saying that I’m going to wholesale move away from Google. They’ve hurt me bad and IMO I did not deserve it. As long as there is revenue to be had from Google I’m on-board. Using the robots.txt to block Google is crazy speak. I don’t think that I’m being hypocritical.

I have switched the default engine inside my company from Google to Bing. I figure that will cost them ~$6K a year (60 people @ ~$100/month in PPC clicks – might be a tad high – just an estimate). Okay, not huge -- but my part. It feels good. I’m contributing to the downward trend in some little way. I’m actively encouraging clients to switch to Bing or Blekko. I’m personally using Bing more for my personal search and research. I’m an influencer and that gives me power. And I know fully well that MS is not innocent. On the marketing side we’ll continue to spend up to our CPO max metric on Google PPC.

If webmasters wake up and figure out that there are choices and that they have influence, Google can be sent a message. I think that we're already sending the message. Just look at their market share. I’m not against Google. I’m against being treated unfairly. And most of all, I’m not for having my industry taken over by a search engine. A search engine is for providing search results. Results are 3rd party sites. I object to Google and their Ph.D.’s thinking that they can answer questions better and faster than private websites. Perhaps they can? IMO this is not their turf.

@mattcutts, convince me that you're beloved Google has not gone to the dark side. Win my confidence back. My allegiance is earned and right now you are not doing a good job.