It’s 2026 and many big publishers consider blocking Google search bots.
It’s not a new idea to me!
I banned Google on my blog in 2012. Why?
Isn’t it ironic for a self proclaimed SEO (as in “search engine optimization”) blog to ban Google?
Let me tell you the whole story below!
The enthusiastic start of this blog
When I started out this blog in 2007 I did not get any significant organic Google search traffic for months.
I was proud of that. After all I preached “SEO” beyond Google.
I got thousands of visitors back then from a social media site called StumbleUpon.
SU was the place to go in those days.
It let you “channel surf the Web”. You stumbled upon intriguing websites curated by other users.
It’s long gone yet a new tool called Cloudhiker is very similar to the original.
Also many other bloggers linked to me so I got traffic from them too.
My articles have been translated into dozens of languages from all over the world, many exotic ones included.
Thus people arrived here from various sources and Google or search in general weren’t my focus despite the “SEO” in the title.
SEO 2.0 was more “2.0” than SEO in the sense of search engine optimization really.
Google found me. I suffered ever since
Then one day Google finally realized that I’m there. I think it was like 6 months later.
In the meantime I was hugely popular all over the place especially for a boring niche topic like SEO.
Of course SEO 2.0 was never really about SEO and Google.
- It was more about social media and blogging from the start!
- It was about relationships and engagement.
- It was about enthusiasm.
Somewhere on the way I lost this enthusiasm.
I ended up following Google and trying to make bots like my site.
I relied more and more on Google. I even used boring headlines and added “seo blog” both to my title and h1 heading.
This way I ensured that Google finally gets that I’m writing an SEO blog here.
I’ve been ranking top ten for [seo blog] for years because of these measures.
I did until some time in late 2011 Google decided that my blog is low quality and dumped me.
The query [seo blog] is not an important one yet it was a proof of concept.
A few years later I was checking out the new Google knowledge graph for [seo].
I wanted to see what happens when you search for [seo blog]. So what did I find? On #11 a really spammy “seo blog”.
I had been at 11 for a long time as well. Thus it felt as if this blog had changed places with me.
It was apparently the lowest quality possible and only a few months old.
It wasn’t even really a blog. I did not want to out it here though. I did it on Twitter (now X).
After Google penalized me at the end of 2011 I did not check my rankings anymore because there were no rankings to check left.
I didn’t rank for anything anymore really.
I fixed some obvious duplicate content issues and the likes. It didn’t help.
Nowadays as more and more people are suffering from being demoted by the helpful content system e.g. I can relate.
Of course I try to help as well.
And indeed I helped myself long the way. This blog here now called seo2.blog for the sake of simplicity ranks again.
At least it ranks to some extent.
As of mid 2026 I rank for some SEO related search queries for example.
When people search for things like
- [freelance seo]
- [seo acronym]
- [advanced seo]
they might end up on my blog by way of Google.
Yet I’m still not getting “huge traffic” or competing with the likes of Semrush (who own most of the popular SEO blogs by now).
Un-googling the blog
Back in 2012 I was glad I could de-optimize my title and call my blog “SEO 2.0” again like before my optimization for Google.
Approx. 40 – 50% of my traffic was still arriving by way of Google even after the penalty.
Yet Google traffic was mostly offtopic or even parasitical.
- People not interested in this blog found it via Google to steal my images.
- “dofollow blog commenting” spammers could find me via Google.
- Automatic scrapers that wanted to copy my content came via Google.
Only a few percent of the Google traffic was valuable at all.
That’s still the case to some extent.
Just a few people reach me looking for SEO.
Most visitors come from general interest search terms looking for
As most of Google traffic was “not provided” in 2012 already I didn’t even know what people were searching for on my site.
I didn’t care enough to frantically try to overcome the encryption of referral data problem.
Nowadays I use Google Search Console to get at least a peek at some of the data.
This blog has always been a proof of concept.
It was about being independent from Google. Then Google itself reminded me that you can’t rely on it.
I have been always providing “great content” and got myriads of natural organic links.
Plus I did all those things Google demands you to do.
All that “white hat SEO” stuff people recommend to you.
It doesn’t work though when Google decides to penalize you.
Yes, I said it. White hat SEO does not work.
You can be the whitest hat alive like I was on this blog and in the end you get a kick in your guts.
So-called “black hat SEO” (or SPAM) gets you penalized even faster but white hat SEO does as well.
The only thing that works long term is SEO 2.0 as in my original concept.
You have to become independent of Google.
You need to establish an audience on social media and direct traffic alias subscribers and returning visitors.
Google is not a reliable traffic source whatsoever.
Thus I banned Google search on this blog!
I wanted to be free like in the early days again!
People not robots
I used the noindex, follow meta robots tag starting in 2012.
This way the people I linked out to didn’t get hurt but Google (and Microsoft) weren’t allowed to capitalize on my content anymore.
It was meant to solve the content theft problem and the comment spam problem ideally. The scrapers outranked me anyway.
I do not make this site for Google bots.
It’s not a drop-in and take away blog. I wanted to write for regulars who appreciate me and my writing style. Thus I said:
Google: Fuck You, I won’t do what you tell me.
I even considered to start a new “seo blog” as a proof of concept.
There I planned to use all of the spammy “techniques” the low level but ranking blog I described above did. Things like:
- Using stock photo cliches.
- Linking out to YouTube videos on a static blog “homepage”.
- Using the term “seo blog” all over the place.
- Getting some dodgy links.
In the meantime I wanted to try to regain my enthusiasm on this blog here.
Also I wanted to make my real audience happy, especially the people who stayed with me for 5 years!
Some regular readers still stay with me after almost 20 years!
I love you! You rock!
This is a blog for people and about people not about search engines and built for engines.
I considered only banning Google in future by robots.txt and let Bing etc. in. Yet I asked myself: why should I?
In case you wonder: I unbanned Google search three years later in 2015. Why?
I wanted to publish an SEO 2.0 ebook.
Yet Google showed some low quality sites above me when ranking for [SEO 2.0].
That would be misleading!
By now — a decade+ and almost 500 optimized, updated or pruned posts later — I got some albeit very few rankings back.
Was it worth the effort? Probably not.
I owe it to my few remaining readers though.
Some of them still do arrive here on their own accord!
Plus I love blogging. I would write even without an audience.
For a publishing business you need a stable number of ideally paid subscribers though.
The seo2.blog gets theoretically financed by my clients who order content for their own blogs from me.
Thus consider working with me! Check out my services.
