Now that Google is a static directory for three months or so at a time, some website owners are really taking it hard. Since they based their entire marketing campaign on search engines, and one of the big players isn't updating much if at all between dances, they are experiencing the fallout of basing their marketing campaigns on one source of traffic.

Google doesn't update page rank anymore until they shake things up once every few months. They seem to be keeping track of links and they are certainly spidering as much as they used to from what I see on my own sites. Other than that, for all practical purposes, they are pretty much a static directory for the months between updates.

Good! Now maybe the misguided website owners of the world who have been hooked on "Google-smack" all these years can start implementing sane marketing strategies that will have them sailing through these dead zones between updates without noticing a thing.

Since Google shut down the site spam industry this fall, (all those sites that came up in your search results that had no meaningful, useful content and a lot of adsense ads) they have made room for real websites again. Problem is, you have to wait a long long time to ever see your site move an inch.

So, the backdoor to Google, at least the big one that thousands of people took advantage of last year to the tune of millions and millions of visitors per month and untold millions of dollars in Adsense revenue, is now closed.

The only people left are real marketers with diverse sources of traffic, as it should be.

In fact, there is actually a new backdoor into Google and the other engines. It is their front door! The way to get in is listed clearly in their terms of service and by creating sites that have real value, original and syndicated content which gets updated frequently, and lots of friends (links from relevant sites).

Set it and forget it takes on a whole new meaning. Now that there is nothing an average person can do to sneak into Google, that leaves more time for real marketing. You know, the kind that keeps your business going should an engine blow a gasket and stop updating itself for months at a time.

One thing is for sure: we have reached the end of a short era on the web where people actually thought they could go up against a billion dollar company with their garage-built software and a $1 per domain budget and simply walk out with huge armfuls of cash for any significant length of time before being shut down.

You'd have to have a big set of cahones to think you could ever actually "fly under the radar" and sneak cash out of Google's adsense program with spam sites for any serious amount of time!

Any time you do something with a site that an engine doesn't like, it is not a matter of if they will shut the money pipe off, it is a matter of when.

Most people would rather avoid this boom and bust style of making a living. Most people would like to have a real business, unaffected by the direction the wind blows in the offices of MSN, Yahoo, and Google.

The only people unaffected by the whims of the engines are those who develop sites with basic SEO tactics who then simply forget about the engines. Yes! Fogedabouddit! Properly marketing a site leaves no time to spend hours per day moping about your lousy rank in the engines. You will rank higher ONLY by serving your market!

Smart marketers set their sites up with good content, basic SEO, and then go about marketing their sites with content syndication, affiliate programs, non-reciprocal links, press releases, webinars, teleseminars, viral content, and the myriad other tactics smart marketers use when they don't want their business to be at the mercy of any single entity on the web.

Take a huge weight off your shoulders and trust me: the search engines will find YOU if you market your site to your market instead of to the engines.

The irony of it all is that, whether you feel like a victim of a search engine algorithm drive-by or not, the engines are maturing, and as a result, many website owners and marketers are being forced to mature in their business and marketing practices.

I see it as a good thing for all involved. Plus, with Google and the other engines spending their time and resources on watching those backdoors, you can walk right in the front door without taking a number or waiting in line!