Sphinn - Slashdot Weighs in on Matt Cutts Post About CEO in Jail

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Slashdot Weighs in on Matt Cutts Post About CEO in Jail

Went Hot: January 10, 2008 - 4:41 am
Posted By: AndrewofNagy 544 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://slashdot.org)
Category: Google SEO

Matt Cutts wrote a somewhat controversial post about a CEO black-hat who is now in prison. He suggests that companies who are willing to employ black-hat SEO techniques will be more likely to engage in cutting corners elsewhere, possibly legal corners. Slashdot picked up the story second-hand (which I think makes this fourth-hand) and there are some interesting comments.

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from g1smd 544 days ago #

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Interesting quote:

First your boss asks you to cram in some keywords, then "borrow" some images, and then create "just a few hundred brand awareness" sites.

Eventually it becomes "please remove the copyright info from this jscript", then send an email to this "single opt-in" list of 10 million addresses, and lastly "Can you use an Ess Que El injecion to insert our website address in other people's sites?".

One big slippery slope...

from Halfdeck 544 days ago #

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The original article is here:

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/23621

"That's the suggestion being made by Google Web-spam enforcer/blogger Matt Cutts in a provocative post that's unlikely to win him friends among SEO types, many of whom already consider Cutts the enemy."

Whatever Matt Cutts says, he has been way more helpful than hurtful in his involvement with webmasters and the SEO community. Though what he writes often is purposefully vague, contain a pro-Google bias, and is open to dozens of misinterpretations, Matt Cutts - as a source of SEO information - beats the crap out of almost all major and minor SEO bloggers that exist today, 90% of whom don't even talk about SEO anymore.

What about Matt Cutts and paid links? People who do SEO for a living know better than to blatantly rub paid links on Google's face. Those professionals don't give a shit about Google's stance on paid links because they do not leave their paid links out in the open.

from planetc1 543 days ago #

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@AndrewofNagy: Just a comment to say that's a great avatar.

from AndrewofNagy 543 days ago #

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@planetc1: Well thanks! Photoshop is great, isn't it?

from MarketingGuy 542 days ago #

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There are loads of SEO consultants and agencies out there who will happily take money from naive clients and then provide them with a service that the know fine well can put the site at risk. No different from a builder using sub par materials then doing a runner.

At one point back in my agency days, I reckon about 40% of my clients came through the door with a penalised site - sometimes from DIY SEO; mostly from sub par services they paid for.

from iBrian 542 days ago #

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The old "ethics" arguments about SEO are coming up on /. which IMO are entirely missing the point - the guy was done for potential fraud outside of the net:
http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/015849.html