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- Sphinn It!
Went Hot: November 19, 2007 - 3:29 pm
Posted By: UtahSEOpro 292 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.seobook.com)
Category: SEO
Topical updates include:
Google PageRank
Google Supplemental Results
Google Filtering & Google Search Result Re-ranking
Ranking Search Results by Re-ranking the Results Based on Local Inter-Connectivity
Human Review & Query Deserves Freshness
Universal & Personalized Search
Google Webmaster Central
Google AdSense/AdWords
Google Data Factoids
Yahoo!/Microsoft Search Changes
Search Analytics
Nofollow & Internal Site Architecture
Robots.txt & Meta Robots Directives
Eye Tracking of Search Results
Noteworthy PPC Changes at Smaller Portals
Blogging
Link Building Tips: Using PPC to Drive Links
New SEO Tools
Additional Reading Resources
Looks great! Can't wait to dive in.
15 Comments
Comments
Good time to take advantage of his and Cutts' little stunt. Nice. Sickening.
Nice, thanks for update tip!
Not terribly surpring really...
Does it have any Black Hat tips on how to avoid a Google Black Hat penalty?
Sorry, couldn't resist, it's too topical ;)
John - given the amount of changes and depth here, there's no way this series of events could have been planned by Aaron. Besides that, I'm guessing that Aaron gets very few customers from Matt Cutts' blog and far more from other sources of traffic - the demographics for Matt's readership probably don't match up as well as one might presume.
I honestly don't understand the need to find a negative with what should be a wholly positive announcement. Why do we do this in the SEO sphere?
Rand, I agree with you about the depth of the content in the SEObook and it's just coincidental timing, a bad-one IMO, for the update.
Aaron has been on an anti-Google tirade since his site got slapped and being the "king" of SEO with the #1 selling SEOBook, best we can tell, his street cred took a hit IMO when he went public about his site penalty. Hammering Google instead of trying to quietly solve the problem himself, or with help from his peers, certainly didn't help matters. Asking Matt privately what the problem was would've been better than the link baiting circus that happened instead.
At the end of the day being an SEO expert and publicly whining about getting a site penalized in Google simply doesn't mesh so I think he's in for some flack over this recent public spectacle and it will take a while before people forget about it.
"there's no way this series of events could have been planned by Aaron."
On the one hand, like Rand says, nothing suggests to me Aaron planned this. I also think we could use more positive karma in the SEO industry.
On the other hand, Aaron:
1) interconnected a black hat site with a white hat site (according to Matt Cutts) - a mistake I don't expect professional SEOs to make. I don't know the specifics of what type of spam tactic was involved. Aaron can insist his "black hat" site wasn't spamming. Then again, an SEO should know spam isn't what you think is spam - its what Google thinks is spam. Perception is reality.
2) misdiagnosed his de-ranking as Google hate toward SEOs instead of a legit penalty. With all that money and time invested in his site, he failed to resolve the issue. That will not only make some people question his ability as an SEO, but also question his thinking because he chose an emotionally charged, irrational answer over an actionable solution. It's like cursing god for food shortage instead of developing a more effective farming technology.
3) portrayed events as though he did nothing wrong, except mention his site in a blog post. That misinformation can potentially put a temporary dent in his credibility, because apparently he wasn't telling the whole story.
Halfdeck from the knowledge that I have and Matt have your version of the truth is much less honest than mine is. Don't forget Matt's full quote where he said
"But I can also see the situation more from Aaron’s eyes after talking with him last week."
And my site that was allegedly "black hat spam" is better looking than the #1 ranking site, has higher content quality, was referenced multiple times by governmental entities without even begging the for links, dominated the search results for years prior to being detected. It was only detected because I posted about it on my blog. And yes, over 95% of it's link equity was clean and organic and I still think they were a bit spiteful to wipe away all my link equity, even the 12,000+ organic links I built.
Most sites in that category have a large % of their link equity coming from spammy sites. Mine has a link profile that is far more organic than many of the sites that still rank.
In summary
1.) my site ranked for years
2.) it was only penalized because I mentioned it
3.) my site is far cleaner than most of the sites that still rank where mine no longer does
>>At the end of the day being an SEO expert and publicly whining about getting a site penalized in Google simply doesn't mesh so I think he's in for some flack over this recent public spectacle and it will take a while before people forget about it.
Luckily you will help ensure that prophecy comes true, eh?
Your post has some false assumptions in it BTW IncrediBill. You assume that I did some things I did not do, and you assume I did not do some things that I did.
>> Luckily you will help ensure that prophecy comes true, eh?
Nope. I'd never post anything like that in front of potential customers such as on your blog or webmaster forums where newbies lurk, I'm not that kind of a guy and I like you. Since the cat was out of bag here it seemed like a reasonable neutral place to discuss it.
Anyway, all I know are the posts and comments I read that you wrote on various sites and the posts on Matt's site, so if I made some false assumptions it was based on that material and the following comments. The only possible thing I can think of is some blogs put the commenter info above the comments and others put it below the comments so it's remotely possible I attributed the wrong comment to the wrong poster and will happily correct a point if I did err.
Rand ~ I was just making a sarcastic comment with regards to the "timining" of two events. I am surprised you'd reference "we" being in the same sphere, I'm not sure I'm on the same planet as the big dogs here, the masses have spoken and my comment is now hidden, so all's well that ends well.
To me it doesn't seem like anything was cleared up other than the parties involved decided to stop talking about it publicly. We still have Matt saying it was all black-hat spammed up and to fix it, and we have Aaron saying that the only reason it's a problem is because HE blogged about it, and the site is better than what Google does index in its place. Though we'll never know because we are only talking in theoretical without any concrete examples, it's starting to devolve into a WMW-like minus some random number penalty thread.
"my site ranked for years...my site is far cleaner than most of the sites that still rank where mine no longer does"
Aaron, I never assumed your site is black hat (that's why I wrote "black hat" in quotes in my previous comment). Since you haven't disclosed your sites, I don't pretend to know what cards you're holding.
But like I said, it doesn't matter if you have a clean site if Google thinks its dirty. It doesn't matter if a link is editorial if Google thinks its paid. It doesn't matter if you insist that a tactic is clean if it gets a client's site banned. You're not dealing with ethics or politics; you're dealing with machines, algos, and human reviewers with biases and limited experience. An SEO's job is to know the odds and play the game to tip the odds in his/her favor.
If your "black hat" site is a decent site, all you need to do is clean it up then submit a reinclusion request.
"it was only penalized because I mentioned it"
REW apparently made a similar claim against Greg Boser when Google hit sites within their link exchange network. Marc Rasmussen, for one, claimed that his site would never have been penalized if Greg didn't file a reinclusion request. That's equitable to a thief blaming someone for reporting his crime instead of accepting the fact that thievery involves risk.
You also claimed Google took action because Google hates SEOs (I'm paraphrasing). I don't think you still believe in the accuracy of that statement after your conversation with Matt.
"SEObook gets it's first update since November 2006. "
Funny - I thought he'd updated it around August/September 2007 with the new layout?
Do people who bought the book get the updates? or do they have to re-buy the book?
@rotatedspectrum - People who bought the book get the updates. If you purchased the book you should have received an e-mail with a link, username, and password to the updates.
@iBrian - the ACTUAL BOOK got a new update. Not his site.