As an article marketer, I say things that I believe will help other people accomplish their goals. As a widely published article writer, I am often criticized for the words I write. ;-)

In July of 2008, I wrote an article about meta-search engines called, "Look Beyond Google: Meta-Search Engines Can Help Online Marketers". In this article, the basic concept I was trying to share was that Internet Marketers should look beyond the presence of Google, to find more ways to drive traffic to their websites.

The Google Religion

This article apparently struck a chord of truth with a lot of people, as its reprint results are much larger than even I expected.

The article was also reprinted on the Link Referral website by someone who seems to have appreciated the article.

The first response to the post at the Link Referral website read as follows: "Thanks for the useless post. Google is everything. If you cannot be found on Google, pray for MSN and Yahoo. Anything else will give you 1 hit in 100 years. Link exchanging and buying ads would be so much more effective than buying into that article."

Now, don't get me wrong. I am not the least bit annoyed that someone criticized my article. The fact that someone criticized the article is only a testimony to the fact that my words touched the nerve of someone who worships the Google religion. I don't want to offend anyone's religion... That would be wrong...

Of course, this is not the first time I have offended those who preach the tenets of the Google religion. I also wrote about this subject in an article about Creating Page Rank, which can be read at: http://www.keywordtext.com/pudding/28.html. This article also drew criticism by those who mocked my assertion that people can truly generate substantial traffic from sources other than Google and that Google PageRank is not as important as many claim.

Answering My Critics

I will admit that if a website is not listed in Google, the task of trying to make money online is made more difficult.

But if a website is not ranked in Google, and it does not possess links to it from anywhere else either, then you might as well be working at McDonald's for extra money, as opposed to trying to make money online.

Honestly, Google is only "everything" when you have "nothing but Google" on the table.

The Proof Is In The Pudding

This is not just an opinion I hold. I can back up what I am saying with real data, from a real website that does not rely upon Google for its salvation... The statistics shown here are from my primary website: thephantomwriters.com

Even though I do not rely on Google for traffic, Google delivers a great deal of traffic to my website. I actually do quite well in the Google game. I get lots of Google Love for my website, as described here:

http://article-blog.thephantomwriters.com/google-love/2008/08/09

Nothing But The Facts

The following data reflects the traffic for The Phantom Writers for both 2007 and 2008 (through Aug 15th):

Total Unique Visitors
* 2007: 244,000+
* 2008: 169,000+

Total Page Views
* 2007: 1.2+ million
* 2008: 1.0+ million+

Unique Clicks from All Search Engines (59 in 2007; 58 in 2008)
* 2007: 119,309
* 2008: 129,749

Unique Clicks from Google
* 2007: 61,923
* 2008: 75,750

Unique Clicks from Yahoo, Windows Live, Ask, and MSN Search
* 2007: 49,291
* 2008: 50,148

Unique Clicks from Other 54/53 Search Engines
* 2007: 8,095
* 2008: 3,851

Important Data Analysis

In 2007, with 244,000+ total visitors and 61,923 visitors from Google, I would have had to turn away 182,077 visitors or 74.6% of my traffic in 2007, if I had relied solely upon Google to drive traffic to my website.

In 2008, with 169,000+ total visitors and only 75,750 of those visitors coming from Google, I would have had to turn away 93,250 visitors or 55% of my traffic, if I relied solely upon Google to deliver visitors to my website.

With 61,923 visitors from Google in 2007 and 93,250 visitors from Google so far in 2008, it is sure that Google is important.

I wonder how many of my critics are actually seeing 61,923 visitors per year? I suspect that many of those who claim that my advice is bad would be tickled pink to see my Google traffic to their websites. And I bet they would be shocked to realize that non-Google sources account for more traffic for my website than their Google God does.

Beyond Google

In 2007, my website received 119,309 total visitors from all of the search engines combined, but only 61,923 of those people came from Google. That leaves 57,386 people who arrived on my website from the 58 search engines that are not Google. In the search category, Google accounted for only 51.9% of my total search traffic.

The top five search engines accounted for 93.2% of my search traffic.

Had I ignored those unknown search engines, as my critics suggest others should, I would have been forced to turn away a full 8,095 people or 3% of all of my visitors in 2007. That is a far cry from "one hit in 100 years".

So far in 2008, Google has accounted for 58% of my total search traffic and only 45% of my global traffic.

The top five search engines have accounted for 95% of my search traffic. Those itty-bitty search engines have delivered 3,851 visitors to my website so far this year, accounting for 2.96% of all of my gross traffic in '08.

Itty-bitty is historically worth at least 3% of my yearly traffic. If you want to ignore that 3%, then that is your business. But myself, I am happy to receive traffic from anywhere that I can gain that traffic.

Beyond The Search Engines

As the owner of a professional article marketing company, who practices what he preaches, 90% of my advertising budget is spent on article marketing alone.

This is where the following two pieces of data come into play:

Unique Non-Search URL's Sending Traffic
* 2007: 9,036
* 2008: 5,811

Unique Visitors from Non-Search URL's
* 2007: 27,397
* 2008: 23,907

The remainder of my website's traffic comes from articles published in newsletters and on other websites, recommendations by other websites, bookmarks and name recognition.

In 2007, my website received 27,397 visitors from 9,036 verifiable links to my website from articles that we wrote or from recommendations people made for my website. Of course, I am willing to bet that many of the 97,294 visitors who were untrackable in 2007 were the result of the many articles of mine that were published in newsletters.

In 2008, my website has so far pulled 23,907 visitors from 5,811 verifiable external URLs. There have so far been another 15,344 visitors that I received from untrackable sources, many of which were probably from the articles that we have successfully had published in newsletters.

The article marketing that we do provides a lot of verifiable traffic to our website, and potentially a lot of our untrackable traffic was also derived from the article marketing we do.

In the end, we credit article marketing for our great search engine placement, for hundreds of keywords, and our substantial search traffic as well.

One Quarter Million Reasons Why Google Is Not God

If I believed the poster who said that "Google is everything" and I had followed his advice for the last several years, then I would have had to turn away 275,327 additional visitors to my website in the past 20 months!

OMG!!! To think that I could have turned away a quarter million visitors or 67% of all of my websites' traffic, if I had simply followed the advice of my critics.

Wow! Some of my critics are absolute idiots!

Yes, Google is important. But, is Google really "everything" ? Only if you want to fail...

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