Burning the Bridge with Google

[viralvideowall]

Personally I'm tired of dancing with Google. It seems like a lost cause as you could spend months/years building up a site only to be destroyed by Google with little or no warning... or logic for that matter.

I'm thinking about setting up a site that blocks Google from indexing my site and force myself to see how well I can do by burning bridges with Google.

Would such a site be interesting to anyone out there? If I have success, I'll blog articles, etc.

Just curious..

[Robert Charlton]

viralvideowall... Sorry to hear about your frustration. It's a good idea not to depend on Google for all your income, but I'm not sure what sense blocking Google would make.

Regarding sources for other traffic, here's an excellent post by Brett Tabke from 8 years ago, obvious dated, since it doesn't include social media, but it should get you thinking outside the box....

Mostly Viral Top Traffic Alternatives to Search Engines
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum10/906.htm [webmasterworld.com]

The idea of "viral" traffic, I assume, ought to resonate with you.

[LifeinAsia]

Hmmm, a site with fluctuating traffic from Google vs. a site with no traffic from Google. Some... zero... Kind of a no brainer.

Even if Google was sending me zero traffic today, I certainly wouldn't burn any bridges by blocking them. Tomorrow may be a different story.

That said, it would be an interesting experiment to see how much you could build up a site without any traffic from Google.

[creeking]

an alternative would be to block G from all but the index page

[Robert Charlton]

an alternative would be to block G from all but the index page

I don't get your logic here.

What would you expect to happen, and why would you want those results?

[piatkow]

an alternative would be to block G from all but the index page

Worst of both worlds, a significant minority of visitors never go beyond the landing page.

I keep saying this, a website is just a different sort of "store front" for your business. Your marketing requirements don't change.

I have just opened a print magazine covering my business area at the trade ads. Four ads on the page, two only give URLs, no other contact information, the others also give email addresses.

[zeus]

I have made a few sites where I block google, it works great, I get most visits from Bing, facebook, yahoo...

If you will do such a thing, to say something to google then you need at least 10.000 websites buddies, so you can all do this together, then at a time they will listen. You best bet of cause is to have wiki,NBA,bla bla big sites on your site and they will listen at once.

[creeking]

my thinking was that leaving the index page alone would allow the website to be found in a G search.

[viralvideowall]

The goal of the site/blog would be to force myself to find ways to get traffic to a web site without relying on Google. I would write articles should I find techniques that work to share with others...

I just think most web sites are way too dependent on Google, and this can be dangerous when many times a change to their algorithm destroys perfectly good web sites... and sometimes ends up rewarding the spammy sites.

Overall it would be an experiment and help anyone interested to think outside the Google box regarding traffic :)

[smallcompany]

I believe we get derailed by thinking about search engines instead of visitors.

1. Starting with an idea of creating a website to create income is wrong.
2. Starting with an idea of creating a website to promote ideas is right.

In other words, in 1., thinking about topic for a website that will carry ads, be optimized for search engines, etc. is wrong.

For 2., if I play a guitar well, and I start sharing that knowledge via my website, that's right.

From the above, instead of thinking without Google, why not think without any source of your future traffic?
Pretend you're a guy that has no clue about how web works. Yet, use your existing knowledge to create a good website (forget SEs, optimization, etc.).
This was just a thought initiated by OP's initial post.

I create websites with affiliate business as a main model and after 8 years, I even today have a hard time to think outside of the box. I'm sure I know all the theory needed for the success, but when it comes to implementation, I fall short.
You have to live stuff in order to have quality.
I.e. how can I promote some software as an affiliate if I have not used it to a great extent, and documented everything well? And I have to do that for 10s or 100s of software products in order to be unique and successful. How many websites do this out there? Not many, and I believe they can be counted on fingers of one or two hands.

If folks find a website useful, the rest will follow. Yeah, it's about right order in which SEs come later on.