Is Outing SEOs Unethical or The By-Product of Yellow Shoes?

Sorry this site requires JavaScript to be enabled in your browser. See the following guide on How to enable JavaScript in Internet Explorer, Netscape, Firefox and Safari. Alternatively you may be blocking JavaScript with an advert-related or developer plugin. Please check your browser plugins.

44
Sphinn It!

Went Hot: Oct 08, 2007 - 08:41 am
Posted By: debram 892 Days ago
Source: http://www.searchmarketinggurus.com
Category: SEM

Over on SearchMarketingGurus.com Liana asks: Is outing unethical SEO/SEM practices ethical or just fodder for linkbait? You decide...

21 Comments

Comments

from Jill 892 Days ago #

Votes: -1

Hasn’t this issue already been discussed in numerous Sphinn posts already?http://sphinn.com/story/8403 and http://sphinn.com/story/8393

from mvandemar 892 Days ago #

Votes: -1

Technically Jill, the first one you link to wasn’t about the outing at all, and the second one was about Rand himself being irresponsible over a time period, not just with the one post. I think what Li’s article is trying to get at is whether or not the root issue of Outing Thy Neighbor is in fact an unethical practice on it’s own.Thanks what I got from the article anyways.

from randfish 892 Days ago #

Votes: 2

Yeah - I say we vote it up. Sphunn.

from Harith 892 Days ago #

Votes: 0

I second Rand. Sphunn :-)

from fantomaster 892 Days ago #

Votes: 1

While I don’t care one bit about "ethical"/"non-ethical" debates (reminds me of college level essays discussing whether it’s "better" to opt fpr vacations at the seaside or in the mountains, duh...), ROI should be the main consideration here.Which is why I find outing anywhich sites plain dumb: Two (and, in fact, many more) people can play this game, and more often than not it’s just another case of the pot calling the kettle black.What this is bound to escalate to is internecine warfare - and what kind of a business model is that?Of course, it’s an entirely different game if you’re into Negative SEO - but then, that’s usually conducted anonymously which lends your ROI equation another twist...

from Jill 892 Days ago #

Votes: 4

As I posted on Lianna’s blog, I can’t see how outing sites has anything to do with ethics. Some people don’t mind doing it -- others do. Doesn’t make either one bad or good. It simply is what it is. Judging Rand or branding him unethical for it, is ridiculous, imo. It’s what the white hat supremecists do (the judging part)...blech...

from randfish 892 Days ago #

Votes: 8

Ralph - completely agree with you, and as I noted in the post, we at SEOmoz engage in link buying, and we’re certainly not trying to say it’s wrong OR unethical.I’ve said before, I make mistakes when blogging (and I expect this won’t be the last). But, yes, three popular Sphinns, a few blog posts and some forum threads all about my misstep should help to keep me in line from now on.

from Jill 892 Days ago #

Votes: 1

There’s a good boy... ;)

from DJLitten 892 Days ago #

Votes: 1

Unethical? I’m not sure that ethics has anything to do it. Personally, I’d stay away from the practice, but to each his own.

from jimbeetle 892 Days ago #

Votes: 1

Well, since at the next conference I might unwittingly be having a beer with the person I recently outed my personal comfort level would be to handle sub rosa or keep my mouth shut.

from crimsongirl 892 Days ago #

Votes: -1

I can’t believe this is even a discussion. YES, it is ethical. These people are running blogs about SEO. Are they supposed to not talk about an SEO tactic? If sites are buying links, are we supposed to keep it a secret? This is ridiculous.

from mike.tekula 892 Days ago #

Votes: 3

Raising the question of ethics in this regard I think is a bit off point. It won’t make you any friends, but I don’t really see how it is "wrong" of you to point out that someone is buying/selling links. At the end of the day, the "penalty" they may or may not suffer is at the hand of the Google Webspam team and not the person who "outed" the site. I think it also discredits the Webspam team at least in terms of their resources to say that they have to rely on this kind of thing to do their jobs properly. That may not be so far off, though, considering Matt Cutts welcomed webmasters and users to report link broking.Bottom line: I’d like to leave ethics out of it when it comes to business. Is "outing" illegal? No. Is there anything wrong with Rand citing some quickly-found examples in a blog post on the topic? You can sit and debate this in your leisure time all you like, but Rand isn’t responsible for Google banning or penalizing any websites. The more quality websites Google penalizes for buying/selling links, the lower the quality of their results will be. They’ve got to have some internal controls to this end - I doubt the word from above is "penalize all paid links, quality be damned."

from ryanol 892 Days ago #

Votes: 0

Wow the seo blog censors are still yapping about this one.ethics violation? were any of the sites that he outed competitors?

from Halfdeck 892 Days ago #

Votes: 5

First, why are people still trying to capitalize on SEOmoz? This discussion is getting tiresome. I agree with fantomaster. Rand made a marketing / strategic blunder, not an ethical one; he has nothing to apologize for.

from JohnWeb 892 Days ago #

Votes: 2

Yeah! What halfdeck said. (not much of a contribution by me, but he summed it up perfectly)

from Harith 892 Days ago #

Votes: -1

Well said, Halfdeck!Furthermore... to you fellow Sphinners who wish to report "Dofollow Links Sellers/Buyers" directly to Google, you can do it within Google Webmaster Tools:ToolsDownload data for all sitesReport spam in our indexReport paid linksRequest reconsideration

from storyspinner 892 Days ago #

Votes: -1

ryanol - yes, he did. which is why I am at the heart of things, questioning the ethical nature.He used Daily Blog Tips as an example showing for image ads that were not no followed. one of those four image ads was of Search Engine Guide (with the puppy), which is a direct competitor of SEOMoz. This is why some people have an issue with what has happened.

from 0thelisa 891 Days ago #

Votes: 2

I’m with Halfdeck, I think it’s really unfortunate that people are still trying to capitalize off the misstep of someone else. It’s not about "ethics", it’s about creating linkbait off Rand’s name.And maybe I’m confused, but in what way is Search Engine Guide a direct competitor of SEOmoz? Simply because they’re educational resources? I think that’s a bit of a stretch.

from storyspinner 891 Days ago #

Votes: -1

Lisa - I would ask that you go talk to Robert Clough and Jennifer Laycock before you go and say it’s a stretch. Maybe you can then understand why they are competitors, rather than assuming they aren’t and trying to make this a little more personal than it needs to be.

from Harith 891 Days ago #

Votes: 1

storyspinner,If Rand’s intentions were just to harm compititors, he had two better options to do it than writing an article about it risking "people reactions":- report PageRank sellers compititors directly to Matt Cutts.- file a spam report directly to Google through webmasters tools.As you might have noticed, Rand didn’t chose those two options.

from storyspinner 891 Days ago #

Votes: -1

Harith ,Great points. And actually Rand could do that, but we’d never know, but I suspect that he did not do that. Only Rand can answer that question, as he would know what his actions wereHowever, me mentioning what I did, about the competitors - was in answer to ryanol’s question "were any of the sites he outed competitors" . I also pointed out that before saying it was a stretch, perhaps Lisa should talk to Jenn or Robert about the whole compeitor thing, as they feel otherwise. Anyway... that’s my "peace". Here endeth the Li comments :)go on.. cheer, I know ya wanna ;)