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Went Hot: November 6, 2007 - 4:05 am
Posted By: AndyBeard 306 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.untwistedvortex.com)
Category: Google SEO
17 Comments
Went Hot: November 6, 2007 - 4:05 am
Posted By: AndyBeard 306 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.untwistedvortex.com)
Category: Google SEO
17 Comments
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Comments
You are selling services based on PageRank and then you complain when they take it away? Oh please.
Involuntarily selling services based on PageRank, only because the advertisers are looking at it. And I wasn't complaining for myself. I'm retired and I don't need the money. I have many contacts that do, however, rely on that income.
Another whinefest in the making.
Block Google from scraping your sites if you want to take a stand. Anything else is blowing hot hair.
Although I don't agree with the sentiment, it's a class title, and I loved the cartoon. I'm looking foward to the "Google causes global warming" post
Jill - Whether or not the links were provided with a nofollow, PageRank would have been used as one measure of the prominence of a site, for instance it is even used in the Adage Power150
The fact that PageRank might be mentioned in a directory of reviewers doesn't necessarily mean that that is what is on sale.
Halfdeck maybe you are missing the point.
Many of the big guys who were selling pagerank, and still in some way sell pagerank have been let off the hook, though might eventually stop selling pagerank.
Many smaller players were not selling PageRank because they were doing far more than just providing a link or some poorly written almost pre-scripted article.
Oh course some were selling pure links, but there it is hard to prove whether they were vetted.
The story now isn't that Google is penalising paid links, but that the little guys are taking a stand.
They are the ones who have in the main created a single site with pillar content only to have it degraded.
If people stop talking about it, Google wins
The professional SEOs will just do everything under the radar, the little guys who believe they were doing nothing wrong and who use disclosure end up taking it on the chin (I should really use a more descriptive term)
The whole SearchKing PageRank debacle from years and years ago should have taught people to go under the radar way back then. Why people didn't learn from that and/or simply got bold about selling PR, I have no idea.
It just seems so dumb to me that people would continue to dare Google to penalize them so brazenly and openly.
I mean...c'mon...can we have a huge DUH.....???
Exactly Jill. After the Searchking debacle there was another prominent warning: the great O'Reilly debate. Not to speak of tons of other signals from Google. Word was out for years, so Google's recent anti paid/affiliate links campaign was not exactly a surprise. Actually, I've no clue why Google waited that long. Perhaps they tried to do it the right way for a while, without success.
"the little guys are taking a stand."
And what do they gain from wasting their time whining about Google instead of writinng something constructive?
It's the little guys with crap sites that are losing the plot here. If you want to empower them, show them that they can make money with or without Google.
You want to win? Teach them how to become successful. You are leading these little guys down a one-way street to nowhere.
I think, in fairness, that a lot of the "little guys" wouldn't have had the first clue that this was going to happen. Just how many of them would have been scouring the SEO grapevine for news that Google may well be looking to punish people selling text links? They saw services like TLA as a way to make more money from their sites than using AdCents. Will they have been aware of the potential ramifications? Probably not.
If, as is widely suggested, that visible PageRank means diddly squat, why do Google continue to use it? If they were serious about putting a stop to sites selling rank then they would have removed visible PR over night rather than hand spank sites that have used PPP services or text links.
Apply nofollow to your outbound links so they don't pass PR? Whatever happened to "make pages for users, not for search engines"?
>>And what do they gain from wasting their time whining about Google instead of writinng something constructive?
They let others know that Google are a bunch of hypocritical liars. This might have one of two desirable outcomes:
- cause Google to change how they are screwing up the web to push their business agenda
- make people less trusting of Google such that if something similar happens to them they are not hit as hard
- give a Google competitor a marketing hook they could run with if they were competent at marketing
"are a bunch of hypocritical liars."
Which holds for a majority of people given any industry, including SEO.
"cause Google to change how they are screwing up the web to push their business agenda"
You have better chance of splitting a brick wall in two by smashing your head against it over and over again than pulling that off.
Besides, we are all pushing our business agendas - just the bigger fishes in the pond tend to push harder.
"make people less trusting of Google such that if something similar happens to them they are not hit as hard"
The only things People need are strategies to avoid getting bitchslapped by Google. Google is a business controlled by thousands of people, not all of whom know what the fuck they're doing. That's true of many companies, not just Google. And 90% of what it does to your site is algorithmic. How do you bunch of kids fresh out of college? How do you trust an algorithm that doesn't understand the words on a page? In either case, common sense should tell you Google is not to be trusted.
The little guys don't need you or anyone else to figure that out.
"give a Google competitor a marketing hook they could run with"
Google's competitors don't need marketing hooks, they need a doctor. Seriously, no amount of spin-doctoring done by you or anyone else is going to help MSN/Yahoo create a better search engine.
Nobody needs me just like nobody needs Google to survive. The point not being grasped though is that I am not the one spin doctoring. ;)
Regardless of the content, I had to Sphinn it just for the cartoon!
I don't get why SEOs think Google owes them anything.
Google owes it to their users to provide the most relevant results possible. SEOs who are "buying links" in an attempt to get higher in Google's organic listings are clearly trying to manipulate Google's algorithm in a "non-organic" way.
The foundation of Google's business was to provide users with the MOST RELEVANT search results, not results that were decided by who spends the most $$. Google has a product for that and its called AdWords. If you want to advertise on sites for the traffic, thats fine, just don't expect Google to reward your paid link in its organic listings.
The money and resources spent buying links could and should be better spent developing content. Develop great content and people will naturally link to you. That is what Google's listings should be about. SEO should realize that they either need to play within this system, find a way around the system (certainly possible) or find other means to drive traffic.
Either way, enough with the bitching. Just be glad that Google offers you a way to get free traffic and please realize that they owe you nothing.
Yea, Webmasters are not users..
This statement is the biggest shit of the Internet!
>The whole SearchKing PageRank debacle from years and years ago should have taught people to go under the radar way back then.
>The whole SearchKing PageRank debacle from years and years ago should have taught people to go under the radar way back then. <
That's a shame anyone sees it that way. No one should need to "go under the radar". People should be free to conduct legal business honestly and openly. anytime there is even a discussion about somebody having a need to go under the radar, it should indicate to all, especially google, that something is broken with the system.
I was hoping the Searchking "lawsuit" would have taught people they have a right to monetize their websites leagally without fear of retribution.
That said, I certainly understand the sentiment and I have learned to hold my cards much closer to my chest because for some strange reason I still can not understand, Google has made a decision to turn the issue into some kind of war. But when it is a war against human nature, it is a war that can not be won.
That too is a shame because it forces people to alter their perceptions about things like ethics, honesty and principles. if there is profit, people are going to seize the opportunity and find a way to justify their actions. That is basic human nature and that is as it should be for people and for Google.
BTW, I have NEVER looked at the SearchKing lawsuit as a debacle. I have always viewed it as standing up for what I believed was right. I wouldn't want to, (I didn't want to then), but I'd do it again if I felt I was being wronged and that was my best avenue of resolution.