My Google Dependence

Last month an incident happened that made me realize how dependent I am to Google. It all started when I did my daily check of my largest ClickBank account. It appeared that I had made only 2 sales the prior day, something that rarely (if ever) happens.

I freaked out a bit because this ClickBank account is my main money-maker and it is really pays the bills.

The first thing that came to my mind was that maybe this website had been banned from Google. A quick Google search showed me that I was still in the index, however my Google ads were not showing.

I opened my Adwords account and realized that my ads hadn’t been showing for about 12 hours. The day before, I had read how an Internet marketer had his Adwords account banned with no explanation and no way to appeal. I started being all paranoid and thought my account had been banned for some unknown reason.

Looking into the account, I then noticed that Adwords was asking me to enter my credit card information again. Strange! I entered the info several times but it kept telling me it couldn’t be saved at this time.

That’s when all this started to look a little fishy. I tried to chat with an Adwords rep, but again, it wouldn’t let me. I then tried the Adwords help center and after a bit if digging, I found a few other people who had been in the same situation. Reading about their experience, it seemed my account was under review.

I pretty much stressed out all day and all night. The next day, while we were driving from Michigan to Illinois, I took my iPhone and tried to chat with an Adwords rep again. This time it worked and just before my 3G connection dropped, the rep told me not to worry that it was just some random account review.

It made me feel better but it still pissed the hell out of me that Google, who gets decent amounts of money from my Adwords campaigns every day, took the liberty to put my account on hold and review it without even notifying me.

The following day, I had yet another chat session with an Adwords rep and she told me the same thing: don’t worry, it’s a routine review, etc… She also told me that the Review Team had been asked to expedite my case and that she would email me before the end of the day to tell me what was going on.

Early evening, I finally received an email that confirmed that my account had been under review and that everything was back to normal.

I was really glad but I was still very upset that they never deemed necessary to notify me my account was on hold. That was almost 3 days with no Adwords and although it didn’t cost me anything, I didn’t make as many sales as I should have during these days.

It really opened my eyes on how dependent I am to Google now. In 5 seconds, they could kill all my online activity. They could drop all my blogs and websites from their index, they could shut down my email service, they could prevent me from making any money since 100% of my income is from my online ventures.

This dependence is really not healthy at all but there isn’t a whole lot I can do. I need Google to make money. Yes, I can use Bing and Yahoo, but realistically, they are not that great from an internet marketing standpoint.

Do you think you are dependent to Google? How?