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Well today was off to a great start ... the weather is great ... the water looks really inviting ... it's one of those days when living in a town that's a tourist attraction is just so good.

Even the work I've got to get through today is challenging enough to really keep me interested and just to top that off I even found the solution to an ongoing problem with a template maker that has been bugging me for months.

Yep it was off to a great start and then my partner sent me an email that changed all that because something entirely beyond our control has happened and we're sure to start getting a few unhappy clients calling us over the next week or so.

So what changed the color of my day? Well it looks as though Google has just updated it's algorithm. Of course Google hasn't said anything about it but enough people are noticing big swings in their traffic and rankings to suggest that there's been an update.

And once again that all makes me wonder why we even bother playing Google's game.

Of course Google is going to send us traffic if we're winning and can rank well but the downside is that Google ... treats us like trash and doesn't even bother to tell us that major updates are going to happen ... considers us to be spammers if we dare try to make our site fit better with their algorithm ... is quite happy to tell us outright lies ... and throws us under a bus by destroying our rankings whenever it's most convenient to Google.

So why do webmasters and business owners do it? Would you deal with a supplier or a service provider if they treated you like that? Would you go on letting them walk all over you while they raped and pillaged your business?

Of course I'm not silly ... I know that many think that ranking in Google is the only way to succeed and it can often seem that in some ways they're right ... but Google isn't the only game in town. Google isn't the only way to get traffic to your websites ... in fact if you run an online shop and you follow the data you might be surprised to find that the traffic you get from Google is the least productive of all.

So why aren't you out there looking for traffic sources that are more productive ... traffic sources that aren't going to treat you like a piece of crap? Why are you still playing Google's game of bend over so Google can ream you even more?

Lots of people play that game because it's easy ... sure Google is going to screw you like there's no tomorrow but you begin to think that getting treated like that is ok just so long as they throw a few crumbs of traffic your way. Hell you might even begin to enjoy it if you can stick at it long enough.

And finding new traffic sources ... well that's not so easy ... that might require us to actually think and do some research and maybe even change the way we do things and that's nowhere near as much fun as sitting back and doing nothing while we get anally screwed by Google now is it?

These days we're starting to tell our mainstream clients that it's time to stand up and figuratively tell Google that they're not going to take it anymore. We're telling our clients to get out there and look for other traffic sources ... traffic sources that aren't going to dry up because some wally at Google decided that it was time to tweak their algorithm or may unleash Panda for another mauling.

Sadly not many people are listening to us ... many of them still think Google either owes them something or is too nice to inflict terminal harm on them and I guess we talk till we're blue in the face to those people and they will never change their mind.

But a few of our clients are listening and it's working for them. One of our guys is getting 75% of his sales through his efforts on Facebook while several others ... including us ... are showing clearly that word-of-mouth marketing tops just about every other form of marketing if your focus is a little tighter than the whole planet.

Sure, stepping away from a complete reliance on Google may be scary ... it may take a deep breath and a willingness to escape from your comfort zone ... but if you really want to survive then that's what you're going to have to do because Google hasn't finished with screwing with you yet.

And of course here in adult we can't use those other marketing channels that mainstream people are using ... or can we? It's trite to say that you have to think outside the square but that's exactly what you have to do.

You have to look at other marketing methods and ask yourself why can't you use those methods? Why can't you adapt those marketing methods to fit your business?

So what are you going to do about it?