Be warned - this blog isn't about golf! So if you were hoping for something golfy, go back and read something else!

I've never been blessed with a massive amount of patience, and now it is being put to the test. Let me explain...

This website has come together in record time, and I'm keen to share it with the world. In order to do that, I need two things to happen.

  • Google need to list it.
  • I need to be able to email the golf course managers with details of their listings and events so they can double-check and take ownership of their data.

It started well with Google. I created the website and they immediately started indexing it. Each day they showed more and more impressions to users, peaking at just over 2,000 by 23rd December. Our average position was around 40th, and by my calculations, if we can get that to top 10 (so our results are shown on page 1), we'd be looking at maybe 200,000 a day once Google had indexed all 40,000 or so pages. Then the next morning, disaster struck, and we dropped down to 50 impressions, and 80th position on average.

I had made some changes to the way pages were displayed, and that had obviously triggered something at Google that said, 'unstable website'. Added to the fact that it is a new website and domain meant we were 'downgraded'. If you search for 'Open Golf Events' on Google, you'll be lucky to find us. If you try it on Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo you'll find us on the front page in position 1 or 2. Which is all well and good, but Google control more than 90% of the search market, so without them, we are nothing!

The solution. Patience, which I'm not very good at. And SEO, which is a dark art. Our webpages are giving off all the right signals to Google to ensure they are indexed to the max, but we need links from other sites to add 'authority' to our website. Many people get tempted to pay money and buy links, but that is a potentially very hazardous route, and also can be a little dishonest, and if Google figures it out, then they can put you in a very dark corner for a very long time. As Google is a virtual monopoly, that's very bad news indeed.

Talking of monopolies brings me on to the behemoth that is Microsoft. Thanks to their Office365 approach, they now seem to control a vast proportion of business email addresses. They have their own anti-spam rules, and one of them seems to be that they don't like new domains. So while we are legitimately emailing golf clubs to tell them about the site, and ask them to check their data etc, at least 40% of them are using Microsoft for their email, and every email we send them goes straight in their spam folder.

So currently stuck in a bit of a catch-22 situation that only time and patience can fix. If only I had patience!

I'm writing this on 9th Jan 2026, and I'm going to keep updating this blog post as time goes on to see how this all works out. I hope you'll follow along with me...