I've experienced EXACT same thing on a much larger scale
Step 1: You start paying for Ads
Step 2: You start making a certain amount of money from Ads
Ratio is very good. So it is a win win
Step 3: They drop the quality of ads/quality of traffic
Step 4: It's not worth it to you any more, so you turn off the Ads
Step 5: They kill your organic traffic
Step 6: They switch it to someone willing to pay a lot for ads
3 Problems
A) Organic Traffic is allocated based on who is willing to pay the highest extortion fee
not on quality
B) If you start growing/prospering without their ads and without their organic traffic, then they don't just let you go
Then they start pollluting your search results
When people search for you they show every @#$#$ negative thing they can
They try to kill your traffic which was ALREADY coming to you
they also kill your reach on Youtube etc
They also start putting your email newsletters into wrong folders so your email list also gets hit. Only for gmail. Yahoo, outlook etc are fine. Only gmail starts dropping your emails
C) If you are still doing fine
then astroturfing starts
People make completely nonsense false claims about you
Then it becomes #1 search result when people are searching for you
If you start paying, all of it disappears and business as usual
If you stop paying, suddenly it all restarts
*
I am getting the popcorn out. Google especially and also Amazon and Facebook are going to get really @#$@#$ if there is a proper anti trust case
these companies instead of building newer businesses and better products (like Apple and Microsoft) focused all their energy on screwing over their competitors and even their partners
I've experienced EXACT same thing on a much larger scale
Step 1: You start paying for Ads
Step 2: You start making a certain amount of money from Ads
Ratio is very good. So it is a win win
Step 3: They drop the quality of ads/quality of traffic
Step 4: It's not worth it to you any more, so you turn off the Ads
Step 5: They kill your organic traffic
Step 6: They switch it to someone willing to pay a lot for ads
3 Problems
A) Organic Traffic is allocated based on who is willing to pay the highest extortion fee
not on quality
B) If you start growing/prospering without their ads and without their organic traffic, then they don't just let you go
Then they start pollluting your search results
When people search for you they show every @#$#$ negative thing they can
They try to kill your traffic which was ALREADY coming to you
they also kill your reach on Youtube etc
They also start putting your email newsletters into wrong folders so your email list also gets hit. Only for gmail. Yahoo, outlook etc are fine. Only gmail starts dropping your emails
C) If you are still doing fine
then astroturfing starts
People make completely nonsense false claims about you
Then it becomes #1 search result when people are searching for you
If you start paying, all of it disappears and business as usual
If you stop paying, suddenly it all restarts
*
I am getting the popcorn out. Google especially and also Amazon and Facebook are going to get really @#$@#$ if there is a proper anti trust case
these companies instead of building newer businesses and better products (like Apple and Microsoft) focused all their energy on screwing over their competitors and even their partners