How John Chow Used Google Ban To Flourish His Brand Name And Dot Com Lifestyle

Who Is John Chow

First Published: August 4, 2009 ADawnJournal.com

Also In This Post – John Chow Gives Practical Tips Based On His Google Ban Experience + His Tips for Blogging In General

If you don’t know John Chow, he is like the Donald Trump of the Internet. This self-proclaimed Dot Com Mogul has made the Dot Com Lifestyle world famous. Internet Entrepreneur John Chow makes roughly $40K per month from his blog John Chow Dot Com. Besides his blog, he has other Internet activities and it is likely that he makes money from those as well.

John Chow and A Dawn Journal (ADJ)

John Chow has been a friend of ADJ since its beginning. He has directly and indirectly contributed to make ADJ a success. Read my article on John Chow’s site outlining our first meetup – An Entrepreneur’s Journey Towards The Dot Com Lifestyle. I have known other celebrity bloggers, but John Chow is John Chow.  He is very honest, friendly, and willing to go the extra mile for you – if you are able to make an impression on him.

Why Google Banned John Chow

In December 2006, to make his site more visible for “make money online” search results, John Chow started a link back campaign. He would give you a link from his site if you would link him with Anchor Text “make money online.” This campaign proved to be successful, as John’s income skyrocketed from $2800 to $12,500 in six months.

So far so good, right? Not so fast! You see, this type of linking campaign goes against Google’s policy. As a result, to make an example out of him, Google completely banned John Chow from its index. As a result of this ban, “John Chow” and “make money online” search results dropped from appearing on the first page and his PageRank dropped significantly as well.

How Google Ban Helped John Chow to Flourish His Brand Name and Dot Com Lifestyle

Any regular site would go extinct once Google implements its ban from its index. But this is John Chow we are talking about, and he is like no regular entrepreneur we come across daily. He was able to take advantage of Google ban to create a heavy Internet buzz – which gave him the Extra Push he needed to become a Dot Com Mogul super fast. There are many factors that made John Chow famous, but I think these are the main which skyrocketed his popularity:

·    

o  He did what no one else would dare think about – he endeavoured to survive online without Google and worked towards achieving it

o  One single person, a solo entrepreneur, showed the courage to defy a giant like Google and still kept going on (his site only grew since the ban started) – this caught everyone’s attention

o  He was able to turn adversity into advantage. In order to be a successful entrepreneur, you need to use something negative to your advantage – what better example could there be than John Chow vs. Google?

o  What he did was very different than anything else that ever happened in the Internet world

What Made Google Lift the Ban and Got John Chow Back in Google Pavilion

You see, it’s all about relevancy. Google is all about relative search results – what people are looking for. Visitors kept searching for “John Chow” and getting scam and junk sites on the top search results – which meant that Google was not providing people with what they were looking for. On the other hand, John Chow was losing all the good traffic from Google – it’s not a situation they want to be in.

How John Chow Got Back in Google

Internet Entrepreneur Neil Patel facilitated an ice breaking between John Chow and Google. As a result, John Chow started to communicate with Matt Cuff, head of Google Webspam  Team – which put John Chow back in Google.

Lessons to Take Home – John Chow Gives Practical Tips Based On His Google Ban Experience

I asked John Chow if he could provide us with some tips for this whole Google thing. Here is what he provided:

·   Work on your brand

·   Use other methods of traffic

·   Don’t let any one traffic source account for more than 25% of your traffic; or even 20%. Too many people just have Google as their main traffic source. If they get slapped with the ban, they’re toasted.

John Chow’s General Blog Tips

John Chow was also kind enough to give these general blog tips:

·   Pick a topic you’re passionate about

·   Pick a posting rate and stick to it no matter what

·   Find solutions to your readers’ problems

·   Capture the lead. Get the email of all your readers.

·   It’s all about building relationships

Final Word

It will be really tough, if not almost impossible, for average site owners to succeed without Google’s blessings. John Chow shares the same view. If you are an Internet Entrepreneur, and would like your path to be a smooth, successful one, make Google your friend. It’s a lot easier journey when you have Google on your side.