Since this post was written I have seen the traffic coming from Google as high as 98% and have had some success at obtaining traffic from other sources. See my Local Search Case Study.

I believe it is naive to assume that if you try really hard to be good boys and girls that Brother Google will look upon you with favor. I am reminded of people who think if they drive just perfectly they will never get a ticket – and are surprised when they are stopped for having “dim license plate lights” or even though they signaled they “didn’t signal far enough before the intersection”.

Also since I wrote this post we all have a new challenge. Incorporating social media activities and recent blog posts into the serps is creating massive churn on page one. While many will be thrilled to have their 15 seconds of fame, being unable to get consistent traffic will be the long term effect.

As usual, this behavior will be rolled out gradually so that most will never notice the CAUSE of their decreasing traffic and sales.

I also predict that Google will use the Chrome block data as the perfect excuse to lower ranking or even delist sites just as Automattic uses Akismet to silence the voices of the most active commentators. I wrote about those issues in my post about Crowdsourcing Fail.

You do know that many consider article marketing and using Unique Article Wizard ‘gaming’ Google? I love the guest posts UAW sends. I have it installed in my golf blog and this gifts blog and believe it is a worthwhile system to use.

I don’t do it myself any more because I suspect that unique to the paragraph level is not unique enough. When I need article marketing done Ron Cripps does it for me as he has a method to make the posts and articles unique to the sentence level.

Unfortunately for Ron, just after he published this post on Why You Should Still Be Writing Marketing Articles traffic from Google to his site dropped off a cliff and months later it is still clamped down.

Did you see my post about the Panda update severely affecting Google’s competitors? Many quality sites that I use and recommend regularly including ShopWiki for their Shopping Buying Guides and TheFind shopping comparison site were affected.

See that post for the difference between the number of small businesses you can find to buy from on those sites compared to the few and almost all corporate brands Google shopping gives us. THAT is the future according to Google: big brands.

Aaron Wall wrote a brilliant post around Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s now infamous Internet Cesspool quote. That link goes to my comment regarding how that will affect Internet users.

There is only one real solution: identify INDEPENDENT alternatives (i.e. non-corporate controlled) to everything Google and encourage everyone you can reach to use them instead. Google is the company store and if we don’t support alternatives there won’t BE any alternatives. I encourage those who are willing to hear to see my posts about Free is NOT Free and There is No Google Fairy.

growmap would love you to read ..Google Results Image: Paid Versus Organic Listings