Industry Review

Last month many AdWords accounts were banned for life for allegedly promoting scams (“Google Money Tree”). Although I’m sure many of these people were in fact promoting scams that preyed on the innocent, many others did not promote “Google Money Tree”. In fact, many of those were not even associated with anything related. If you have a doubt of this, check out this interesting thread on Google’s own forums. There are many other articles online about this topic.

 
Full disclosure: my own AdWords account has been banned despite having to do nothing with “Google Money Tree”. I promoted a “make money from home” offer once, for a single night, which I thought is perfectly legitimate (hey, *I* make money from home!), it passed Google’s editorial approval and there was nothing wrong or immoral with it in my opinion. Had Google told me that I shouldn’t be doing this, I would’ve immediately stopped. However, one day I get an email that informed me my account, and any other I ever create, is banned from this moment on. A phone call and three emails did not help, and in fact clarified that banning accounts is not limited to “Google Money Tree”. I’ve been promised no AdWords account, ever. Fine, it’s Google’s right. I was barely using my account anyway (I’m doing primarily SEO).

 
Two weeks ago significant Google changes were made that appear to have a major effect on affiliates running review sites. Here’s Perry Marshall’s excellent article about this.

 
Quick change of topic: Lately I’ve been receiving a lot of emails about the new product Zero Friction Marketing. I won’t go through the sales letter, though one point in particular drew my attention. “…No Google Ads, no experience, no selling…”. “A few short months ago I stumbled onto a Google-free method that created instant money streams so fast and so insanely powerful…”.

 
Is it my imagination or not using Google is actually being touted as a good thing? As one of the major selling points?

 
(Note: yes, this was an affiliate link in case you were wondering. Hey, if I’m introducing a product and it sounds good to you, I may as well get some credit 😉 Though the goal of this blog is NOT affiliate advertising and this has not changed).

 
This makes me wonder: have some people decided that Google is simply too capricious, and even though it offers superior tools and it is the market leader, maybe it’s better to focus on the softer, more easy going, competitors? Are we going to see many more products whose selling points are being “Google-Free” from now on? I’m wondering whether this is the beginning of a trend… of drifting away from Google. Only time will tell, I guess.

 
Personally I find this fascinating and am really curious where we are going. We shall see soon!

 
Please leave a comment if you have something to say, or just tweet me. I’m curious to hear your opinion.