
The decay and fall of guest blogging for SEO - chaz
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-blogging/
======
halcyondaze
This is just one of the worst things I've ever read on Cutt's blog. Because
they can't really distinguish good guest posting from 'passable' guest
posting, it's all done?

Got news for you: guest blogging is relevant for many more reasons than
Google. In fact, that's probably one of the least important reasons to guest
post or guest blog these days. Referral traffic that is more qualified than
organic search, audience building, reaching new channels that organic search
cannot quite tap, and many more non-SEO oriented reasons are why guest
blogging will never really die out in the way that other types of linkbuilding
have died out.

You have to love the world's biggest scraper and source of 'duplicate content'
(all the scraped info from weather, wikipedia, etc in their sidebar these
days) making up the rules of what is and isn't allowed. Extremely
hypocritical, but the good news is that relying on Google never was necessary,
and is becoming less and less so as time goes on.

~~~
makomk
Google have reached the point where they know that every website is
fundamentally dependent on them, and now they're taking advantage of it that
to make their lives easier by forcing the entire internet to change every time
some commonplace practice makes their algorithm's life harder. They've been
doing it on a technical level for a while, in terms of stuff like how ads may
link to the destination. Now they've simply moved onto dictating the culture
and social norms of the Internet. If your way of sharing good writing with
your actual readers makes life harder for Google, well you'd better change
your practices or they'll punish you, even if you're not doing it for them.

~~~
Silhouette
_Google have reached the point where they know that every website is
fundamentally dependent on them_

Isn't that exactly the kind of institutional arrogance that the GP post was
highlighting?

OK, _some_ web sites might still be fundamentally dependent on Google.
Personally, I'd advise against relying on a business model based primarily on
search traffic for a number of reasons, but of course everyone is free to try
it if they like.

However, I somehow doubt big name brands like Microsoft or Audi or McDonalds
would suffer irrevocable harm if Google disappeared tomorrow. Nor would major
sites like Wikipedia or Facebook. Nor would all the popular forum/news
aggregator sites, or the popular source sites that repeatedly get linked from
them.

Perhaps more telling, I doubt any of the much smaller niche/hobby or family
business type sites I know about would suffer greatly if Google vanished
tomorrow either. The big G represents only a modest share of the incoming
traffic in each case, and moreover the quality of that traffic in terms of
engagement and conversions is relatively low compared to most other major
sources. They are often beaten on volume by at least one order of magnitude by
a single link from an influential blogger in a relevant field who is genuinely
suggesting that their readers visit that site, or the equivalent via Twitter,
Facebook, Reddit, Pinterest, etc. And that's before you count the viral
effect, which can bump the difference to multiple orders of magnitude. Content
is king, as Cutts has often said, but in 2014 good content can be found many
ways without any help from Google.

I suspect this issue is symptomatic of a serious and long-term difficulty for
Google search: their foundation is still basically the idea that you can judge
the worth of a page by how many incoming links it sees. I'm reasonably sure
that unless they have some shady deals going on with various popular social
media sites, they don't even know about probably 90% of the incoming links to
most of those little sites I mentioned, nor about 99% of the links my friends
and family share to other people's sites. All they've got left is the public
blogs and the assorted SEO tricksters, and that's not where a lot of people
share genuine recommendations any more.

~~~
aaronwall
"I doubt any of the much smaller niche/hobby or family business type sites I
know about would suffer greatly if Google vanished tomorrow either."

Many existing businesses already have awareness built through a variety of
channels over a number of years, but if search were to die off some newer
sites struggling to build exposure from scratch would struggle harder. That
said, as Google keeps lifting the cost barrier to entry & radiates greater
risk out to the smaller players perhaps building initially from the perception
that Google is perpetually late / behind the curve on new sites, & that one
needs exposure elsewhere isn't a bad thing.

"They are often beaten on volume by at least one order of magnitude by a
single link from an influential blogger in a relevant field who is genuinely
suggesting that their readers visit that site, or the equivalent via Twitter,
Facebook, Reddit, Pinterest, etc. And that's before you count the viral
effect"

If they don't have an SEO strategy (or are selling a unique product that
people don't know exists until they see it) & just let whatever search traffic
happen on its own then sure it is easy for other sources to drive vastly more
traffic than search. But if they are focused on commercial keywords, build
content around the consumer demands their solutions help solve, and have an
SEO strategy then search is typically in the top few referrers in terms of
revenue driven.

A lot of the top affiliate links on Twitter or such are for iTunes song sales:
low cost, low friction & low commitment purchases. I think I have had maybe a
couple Twitter conversions in years, while search has driven orders of
magnitude more. But both are channels that are part of the awareness process &
when you add them together its more like 2+2=5.

"their foundation is still basically the idea that you can judge the worth of
a page by how many incoming links it sees"

I think they fold in more usage data than they let on, but feel little
need/incentive to mention that aspect of the algorithm.

"I'm reasonably sure that unless they have some shady deals going on with
various popular social media sites, they don't even know about probably 90% of
the incoming links to most of those little sites I mentioned"

Did you see the bit about using Google Chrome's data saving caching feature on
Android? Chrome desktop also has security features baked into it. And there
are boatloads of signed in user accounts tied to both of these. And large
chunks of many social sites are crawlable.

"All they've got left is the public blogs and the assorted SEO tricksters, and
that's not where a lot of people share genuine recommendations any more."

The fact that those votes are harder to give means they (often) have greater
discrimination value. It is easy to say that social signals should replace
links, but that would effectively be Google subsidizing competing ad networks.
And even if we ignored that the "relevancy" signals in social are also the ad
units, outside of those official ads there are third party strategies to
ensure social is every bit as gamed as the link graph is.

Just today I saw this [http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/01/stealth-
marketing-micr...](http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/01/stealth-marketing-
microsoft-paying-youtubers-for-xbox-one-mentions/) and that reminded me of
this from the past [http://www.seobook.com/images/tweet-and-
get.png](http://www.seobook.com/images/tweet-and-get.png)

~~~
Silhouette
_If they don 't have an SEO strategy (or are selling a unique product that
people don't know exists until they see it)_

The second part is what I really had in mind there. One of the sites I was
thinking of is a textbook example, a start-up for people who have a certain
hobby.

The SEO strategy is reasonably effective: the site consistently ranks on the
first page of Google for almost all targeted search terms, which is not a bad
achievement starting from a page rank of nothing a few months earlier. But
it's partly able to do that because no-one in the field has really done
anything similar before, so almost no-one actually searches for anything like
it either.

In contrast, more specialised and proactive channels, such as advertising in
traditional off-line media or targeting ads at people with that particular
interest on social networks, attract very favourable comments and numerically
they tend to get far better click-through rates, similar levels of engagement,
and in some cases a much higher overall conversion rate/lower CAC.

If you only looked at the hits from Google, your first reaction might quite
reasonably be that there was no market for this product, but the feedback once
people in the target market actually see it paints a different picture.

------
lingben
so because google's algos can not distinguish between spam and ham, we have to
throw out the baby with the bathwater (sorry for mixing metaphors!)

we've already seen how google missed a massive and long running link scheme
(rapgenius) and had to do a clumsy temporary manual change to save face... now
we're seeing them try to stop guest blogging from being used for spam

well guess what, every tactic that can be used to create good SEO can be used
in the wrong hands for 'bad' SEO. you can leave a great insightful comment or
you can leave a spammy comment. you can do a great guest blog article which
adds tremendous value or you can do a spammy terrible article

google is confessing that they are incapable of telling them apart so they
want to destroy the whole thing just so they can go on saying that they still
know what they are doing

well, let me reiterate what many already know: the emperor has no clothes!

~~~
brey

      well guess what, every tactic that can be used to create
      good SEO can be used in the wrong hands for 'bad' SEO
    

I would suggest that if you're coming up with 'tactics' for SEO you're already
on the road to bad SEO.

optimise your search engine placement by, huh, here's a novel idea - having
original, good quality content. everything else is secondary. gaming the
system is an arms race and not a long-term win.

~~~
ry0ohki
You need links as well. "Sure, but good content will naturally be linked to",
but then ask yourself, when was the last time you gave something you liked a
dofollow link on your blog? And even if you did, you maybe gave one link for
every 100 you enjoyed but didn't.

People very rarely link to things these days, and the big guys will pay people
to provide links. Guest blogging was previously the ethical way to get those
links until people started abusing it.

~~~
robryan
The model is outdated, most links are now shared in closed networks which will
happily nofollow everything.

Also depending on your niche many of your users may have never actually placed
a link anywhere before (outside of a closed network sharing a link)

------
austenallred
This is the difficulty in fighting spam. Google's goal is to determine which
sites are the "best," and use, as their measure for doing so, the number of
natural (organic) links as a scorecard. And as soon as people realized that's
what Google was looking at, they started to mimic the organic links to boost
their own ranking.

In a sense, Google is the largest crowdsourced project of all-time. It's a lot
like Reddit or HackerNews in that every link is an upvote, but the genius of
Google is that each link carries a different weight, and that links are a
natural byproduct of using the Internet. In short, the people contributing to
the crowdsourced ranking system don't even realize they're doing so most of
the time. They're just doing what they like and leaving a byproduct of doing
so (links, social signals) that Google can use to tell you which sites people
consider valuable.

But that means that once people realize what Google is using to rank, they can
mimic those signals, and sway the algorithm in their favor. The problem Google
is going to run into is that once spammers can closely (and at times
programmatically) mimic what is happening "organically," Google's algorithms
cannot tell the difference.

Right now Google's approach seems to be ignoring or highly devaluing portions
of the Internet that have been overrun with spam. Article submissions, blog
comments, and now apparently guest posting, which sucks for people that do
really high quality, organic guest posting; for Google that has to be
collateral damage. Spammers will simply move on to the next portion of the
Internet, mimicking what Google still uses as a ranking signal. It's an
endless battle.

One of the big things I see happening now is entire website hijackings (I've
been meaning to email you about that, Matt). I did a quick little report on
the search engine results for "Viagra," and 81 of the top 100 are hijacked
websites, including a client I have to upgrade to a newer version of Drupal,
as the older one has been compromised. I don't know if or how Google will win
this battle, but it's far from over. I honestly feel like the new way we
gather data to rank websites, and what will be successful in 25 years, will
have to be completely unrelated from what Google is doing now, and much harder
to manipulate than spreading links all over the Internet.

~~~
Matt_Cutts
"One of the big things I see happening now is entire website hijackings"

It's true that website hacking remains a big issue in the spammiest areas of
the web even though it's completely illegal. Unfortunately, there's a lot of
unmaintained, unpatched web servers out there that blackhats exploit. It's
fundamentally a hard problem, but we've been working on the next generation of
our hacking detection algorithms.

I've always wondered why we don't see more startups offering hacker
protection, detection, clean-up, etc. Companies like McAfee made a lot of
money protecting personal computers, and there's a similar opportunity on the
web server side.

~~~
ivanbrussik
I think a lot of companies are scared of how good hackers are these days. No
one wants to guarantee protection because a hacker of a more elite variety
will come along and take that as a challenge, by hacking into the sites that X
company has created.

I definitely agree with you that it is somewhat of an under tapped market, but
definitely think it needs to be head up by the _right_ individual(s).

~~~
Matt_Cutts
It could be scary to try to outwit hackers, but even if you don't tackle the
problem head on, a website backup and recovery service could be a big help.

------
rgj
Given the fact that a very large part of the web in 2014 consists of user-
generated content, it seems like pretty much every hyperlink should be
nofollow.

It's pretty much impossible to get good rel=follow links nowadays. My startup
has gotten some pretty good and genuine attention on blogs and forums, but
almost every link appearing on the internet to my site is nofollow.

This is not how Pagerank was meant to work. Google has learned that it's core
algorithm is failing to be able to fight spam. Nofollow was invented in 2005
and it will be useless in 2015, since the entire internet will consist of
nofollow links.

~~~
rebel
I couldn't agree more. Almost every site is defaulted to nofollow. My opinion
is that nofollow has actually come full circle and now makes it easier for the
spammers. Since almost all legitimate links are nofollow, the only way to get
"follow" links is to pay people to explicitly put them up for you, have
friends give them to you, or create spam websites to link to yourself. The
people who happily find my website and are excited about it tend to post to
social media, and occasionally some blog posts, but very, very rarely a follow
link.

~~~
prawn
And of course social media links are generally going to be nofollowed. Doesn't
leave much use for it.

------
morganb180
His title should really be "The decay and fall of guest blogging for SEO"
because guest blogging is still relevant for traffic, awareness, thought
leadership, reaching new audiences, etc.

So while it may no longer a worthwhile SEO strategy, guest blogging still has
some other PR-related upsides to consider.

~~~
Matt_Cutts
Point taken. I just changed the title of the post; thanks for the suggestion.

------
beambot
Spot-on, Matt. I've been getting these requests with increasing frequency for
my old robotics blog. My typical response:

 _I 'm exceedingly picky about the topics and quality of articles on Hizook.
In fact, of the few guest posts I've done in the past.... I have (1) known the
author in person for quite some time, and (2) usually end up spending multiple
hours to help edit / mold the final result. I have so little time to curate
(even guest posts), that I'd prefer to just pass._

Of course, the difficulty arises if Google's policy is "all guest blogging is
bad." There is a lot of perfectly sound justifications for it besides PR:
credibility, new audiences, expert opinions, etc. For example, I shouldn't
incur PR penalties if I write a (sadly, too rare) robotics piece for IEEE
Spectrum.

A few are ruining it for everyone, and balance is hard.

~~~
cstross
Well, that's deeply sucky.

I'm spending three weeks on the road in the next month, so I've got three
hand-picked guest bloggers taking over the mike on my site, for the duration.
Emphasis on hand-picked, i.e. _invited because they 're interesting_ and I'm
hoping my readers will enjoy what they've got to say. I get to take some time
off, they get access to a new audience, and the audience get some new and
thought-provoking material -- because from my PoV it's not about SEO, it's
_all_ about the quality of the content. (Hint: I'm a novelist, one of the
guests is a film-maker, the other two are other novelists. We all pretty much
live or die by the quality of our writing.)

The question I'm asking is, how do google's algorithmic processes figure out
whether a post is a guest post? Are they doing style analysis on prose now? Or
counting outbound links, or looking for anomalous keywords? Or is it just a
matter of looking for spam-flavoured advertorial?

~~~
Matt_Cutts
Hey cstross, I almost added a link to your blog post at
[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/2014/01/introduc...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/2014/01/introducing-hugh-hancock.html) as an example of someone doing
it right--you've clearly put a lot of thought into people who can add value
for your blog's audience. You're at the very tip of the head in terms of
quality--most of the scuzzy people take advantage of massive numbers of small,
not-very-savvy bloggers who will throw up any submission they receive. So I
wouldn't worry at all, and I apologize if my post came across too broadly.

beambot, I agree with your comments and adjusted the title of my post and
added on to the end of my post to give more context. Certainly not all guest
blogging is bad (e.g. valid reasons for guest blogging include exposure,
branding, audience, community, expert opinions, etc.). We just see a lot of
spammers exploiting guest blogging and innocent site owners as an SEO tactic,
so I wanted to make it clear that we reserve the right to take action where we
see abuse.

~~~
davemel37
"we reserve the right to take action where we see abuse." With that option on
the table, and Googles broad and subjective discretion, I don't see any reason
to ever Do Follow a link again.

It seems like all the legit reasons to link out have nothing to do with search
rankings, so why risk Google's Ire?

More importantly, if No Follow becomes the default, wont that be a net
negative for Google's index?

------
fear91
Here comes Google, the Internet police! Do as they want or say goodbye to 80%
of search traffic.

~~~
the_watcher
Do as the people who use Google want (I'll give you that they have a big
influence on that). But come on, spammy guest post SEO hacks are not something
in any Google user's interest.

------
applecore
Ironically, with their guidelines, Google is probably responsible for shaping
web content more than any other entity or spammy SEO tactic.

~~~
prawn
PageRank and AdSense likely go a long way towards encouraging all the MFA
sites and low-quality guest-written content people would dislike on the net.

------
sixQuarks
Matt Cutts: (I know you lurk here, so hopefully you answer this)

Will guest posts on high quality sites still count toward link building? I'm
talking about well known sites that accept only a fraction of high quality
contributors. Thanks

~~~
instakill
I.e guest blogging on SmashingMagazine etc.

~~~
bmac27
Right. Same goes for VentureBeat, TechCrunch and every other major web
publication out there that solicits guest posts. And not all of them are of
great quality, either. Many come across as nothing more than thinly veiled
advertisements that wouldn't look out of place on Ezinearticles or somewhere
similar.

I understand what Matt's getting it with this decree but it's very hard to
selectively enforce this in a way that doesn't come off as favoritism towards
big brands.

------
the_watcher
This is too bad. Most of the other SEO-spam tactics (paid links, affiliate
networks, etc) were pretty clearly destined to be spam traps and invite
Google's wrath. Unfortunately, one of the things I thought was best about
content marketing and guest blogging was that it encouraged founders and
experts to find where the audience was that would appreciate their product,
and create high quality content explaining why it mattered. Many have written
about how founders can be tempted to stay in and wait for customers to come to
them, but a guest blog could help bridge that gap, as they can stay in while
still finding customers, and honing their message (plus the comments to these
are often really valuable wells of feedback from people you may not have been
able to reach before).

Here's hoping for a happy medium here.

------
mladenkovacevic
Is this a response to this? [http://nenadseo.com/new-
seo/](http://nenadseo.com/new-seo/)

Now that the cat's out of the bag (and getting some attention), I guess it's
sensible for Google to jump out of the "big brand's" pocket. Sounds like
they're trying to avoid the interpretation that big brands and Google are
scratching each other's back by blaming it all on the practice of guest
blogging.

~~~
chaz
Relevant: "Expedia Lost 25% Of Their Search Visibility In Google Possibly Over
Unnatural Links" \- [http://searchengineland.com/expedia-loses-25-of-their-
search...](http://searchengineland.com/expedia-loses-25-of-their-search-
visibility-in-google-possibly-over-unnatural-links-182113)

------
rspeer
Along similar lines, if someone offers to translate your website for free,
it's not free.

Someone might e-mail you out of the blue with a translation of a website you
control. They'll ask you to leave in the links to them as a way of giving them
credit. The links are there to give PageRank to a shady SEO organization.

I admit, I came close to falling for this once, when someone offered to
translate a documentation page I maintain into Romanian. But I have a friend
who speaks Romanian, who read it and pointed out that it was the worst
Romanian he had ever seen, and that was enough for me to look into what was
really going on.

~~~
alextingle
Somebody does you a service, and you give them a link? That seems perfectly
reasonable to me. If SEO means trading a good value service for a better
reputation, then SEO sounds like it's working pretty well.

------
instakill
Google doesn't own the internet so it's unfair that they get to decide whether
or not a concept like guest blogging should or shouldn't be allowed.

~~~
sixQuarks
You can still guest post. Google just won't be ranking it for SEO. True guest
posting is valuable regardless of SEO. You should be targeting the web site's
users, not Google.

~~~
instakill
> Google just won't be ranking it for SEO.

Ah I mistakenly remember a similar post by Matt saying there would be
penalization for that.

~~~
alanctgardner2
If you nofollow the links you won't be penalized.

------
jcc80
How can this be enforced? Will Google determine when the author meta data is
different for a blog and not pass page rank for those posts? Blog owners would
just react by making the post under their default account. Isn't the real
issue the quality of content, not who's writing it? It just seems odd to hear
that Google is going to go after guest posts instead of focusing on the
content.

~~~
the_watcher
It's easier to go after authors. My (possibly naive) hope is that they are
working really hard on evaluating content (Arguably G+'s social signals are
the most important input for this), and they'll move towards that as they
improve. High quality guest blogging is fantastic, and it would be sad to see
it vanish because of this.

------
benologist
Next up made-for-social-media articles, or why we're fed several helpings a
day of "Random Startup Anecdote" by companies just looking for backlinks and
traffic.

------
techaddict009
Can anybody give an advice on how one can gain quality backlinks?

Because competition is so high that to rank on any damn keyword it may take
years without link building.

~~~
rspeer
Did you just ask Hacker News for SEO advice? Who _cares_ whether it's you or
someone else who "ranks" for a "keyword"?

Build something of value. Then people will go there.

~~~
rebel
It's a legitimate question, although maybe not worded perfectly. I care
whether it's me or someone else who ranks for a keyword, maybe my site is
better, and I (like anyone else rational) would prefer to make the revenue. I
think understanding what ways you can gain links that is still acceptable
under Google's guidelines is a very important thing to know, and truthfully
pretty difficult to figure out. If you try to build a really great product and
never tell anyone about it, I don't think you will last long enough for Google
to give you the proper recognition.

~~~
techaddict009
Said it true sir.

------
AlexIncdeo
There are black hat groups owning high PR 6, 7, 8 websites and they're using
the sites for SERP manipulation. The high PR websites are legit too.

What would be a solution to this? I just hope it can be stopped.

~~~
Matt_Cutts
Hey Alex, I'm always happy to hear about specific link schemes or websites
that spammers are using.

~~~
josefresco
The implied solution appears to be manual discovery/detection? Google has this
[https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?pli=1](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?pli=1)

Not sure there is an automated system that could detect "legit" sites selling
links unless you have a larger body of evidence.

------
josefresco
The Boing Boing reference irked me more than I though it would. Guest posting
is bad unless you're a brand we've heard of? Sorry but the line between spammy
guest post on some anonymous blog isn't far from the trash that gets posted on
_legitimate blogs_.

The rules should apply evenly to all, no matter how well we know the brand.
Google seems to violate this when it comes to respected business models. If
you toe the line and Google hasn't heard of you? You're done.

------
SEOBSDetector
Will Google be doing something about spammy guest posts that cite a bunch of
so called experts who are part of a link scheme network like Young
Entrepreneurs Council? Or do they get a pass because they post on big name
sites like these:

[http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/ask-the-
entrep...](http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/ask-the-
entrepreneurs-15-affordable-resources-for-learning-new-business-skills.html)

[http://www.smallbiztechnology.com/archive/2013/05/10-ppc-
mar...](http://www.smallbiztechnology.com/archive/2013/05/10-ppc-marketing-
tips-for-newbies.html/)

[http://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/8-tips-
de...](http://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/8-tips-designing-
unique-call-action-0718658#!sMpQF)

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/young-entrepreneur-
council/9-s...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/young-entrepreneur-
council/9-sites-to-check-out-when_b_3398357.html)

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2013/09/25/six-tips-to-
en...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2013/09/25/six-tips-to-enhance-your-
online-brand/)

------
Pxtl
I fail to see how Google could work around this kind of thing. I mean, you've
got nothing flagging the "guest" post as illegitimate other than the fact that
it links to an SEO-target, assuming the SEO emailer is telling the truth when
he describes non-spammy unique content.

Likely, that's all they could go on - "Your blog has a dofollow link to this
site that we know is super-sketchy and now you've been sullied by the link".

------
joelrunyon
> Okay, I’m calling it: if you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links
> in 2014, you should probably stop.

Matt, are you saying guest posting is penalty-worthy or simply "not useful"?
It sort of sounds like you're threatening to penalize anyone who is, plans on
or has done guest posting. If so, it seems strange that google would
retroactively penalize people for a practice that it previously endorsed.

Can you clarify that at all?

------
tk999
If Google's street view car cannot take picture of house paints in black, you
should not painted your house in black.

------
d4nt
This article kind of reminded me if this comic strip:

[http://xkcd.com/810/](http://xkcd.com/810/)

What we're saying here is that someone offered to let the blog owner post some
well written and original content on their blog, that would be relevant to
their readership and mutually benefiting to both parties. But that's bad
because Google says so.

Now, if the content is bad, or not relevant to the readership, or overly
spammy, then the blog's readership will presumably react. So it's up to the
blog owner to protect their reputation and vet all content that they publish.
But assuming the content is good, haven't we just got to a nice place? With
marketers realising that the best way to promote their product is to persuade
respected content publishers to endorse their products and by making content
that people want to read?

------
cromwellian
Human beings can't even always tell what is faked or paid shilling, should we
really expect Google to do better than human beings?

Gaming the system seems to be a constant in nature. Species all over the
animal kingdom develop mimicry, camouflage, and other techniques to fool
predators, prey, and mates. Black hat SEOs are just the digital equivalent of
the mimic octopus
([http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-LTWFnGmeg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-LTWFnGmeg))

The Web is an ecosystem. You can expect Google to evolve overtime to respond
to cheaters, but you can also expect the cheaters to constantly involve new
ways to game the system. There's no foolproof algorithm.

------
jayjay1010
I posted and predicted this today at the same time cutts was writing his post.
[https://linkaudit.co.uk/blog/predicting-the-
beast/](https://linkaudit.co.uk/blog/predicting-the-beast/)

------
jfoster
Something I learnt recently is that what Google makes sound like blackhat and
the blackhat practices it actually enforces against are two very different
things. I realized that when I noticed that a niche site ranking highest for a
particular query was involved in link exchange as well as operating a network
of sites that despite being unrelated, pointed toward that one site. Looking
into it further, Google has made link exchange sound bad (just like this post
makes guest blogging sound bad), but stopped short of ever claiming to
penalize it or ruling it out.

~~~
josefresco
The issue is that competing marketers can use "negative" signals as a weapon
to hurt competitors. Google is handcuffed somewhat (less so as time goes on)
when penalizing for bad SEO.

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graeme
Does this mean that if I do a high quality guest post, I should ask the other
site to no follow the link? I have a few guests posts lined up and want to
stay on the right side of things.

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avighnay
If a blog owner wants to place a small ad (say via guest post) in their blog
why should they be penalized when the same blog is not penalized when they
place an ad via Google ad network? (Referring to near spam text ad placements
in between content that you see in many sites).

~~~
prawn
Because Google can easily tell that one is paid for, but not easily tell with
the other. The method of ranking by incoming links is very flawed and prone to
abuse.

------
205guy
Wow, just wow. SEO as if it were good for the people who are on the web.
Google as if it were a shadowy govt agency run by a secret cabal to rule the
world. Frankly, I am surprised at so many SEO spammers participating on HN in
this thread and not getting called out for it.

For the regular folks who want to use the Internet, let me put it this way:

Okay, I’m calling it: if you’ve ever advocated, used, bought, or benefitted
from guest blogging, you're part of the problem on the Internet. It has always
been and will always be a scummy and spammy SEO technique that devalues and
dilutes the value of information on the Internet. It is pure entropy.

And no, I'm not talking about Charlie Stross taking a vacation and having
relevant people write on his blog for his fans. I'm talking about the brokers,
the people who buy and sell content and links, the people who see their online
content as a means (way to make money by selling ads), not an end (way to give
value or entertainment to people).

------
ommunist
My 5-pence is how on Earth can you rehabilitate your position in SERP once you
have been mistakenly penalised for "spammy guest blogging"? Punishment will be
done automatically, right? Any guidelines for making things the right way?

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morganb180
The question becomes: What about links from sites like HuffingtonPost, Forbes,
and Medium?

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pgrote
Once again, Google has no method for weeding things out, so everything gets
tossed out.

It would be funny if everyone used nofollow for every link. Google would find
itself in a pickle.

~~~
isbadawi
Could you explain what you're referring to ("once again")?

~~~
alextingle
Google's ranking algorithm is getting less and less able to discriminate
between "good" and "bad" content. Their response is just to whinge at people
who won't play by their rules.

------
ysekand
Google's definition of 'good' and 'bad' is the criterion...

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James_Duval
Great to see this confirmed. ~ an SEO

------
IloveSEO
Whats your Username On BHW ?

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SEOthrowaway
From doing some SEO, truth is: Googles algorithm is stupid while they have the
image of being genius.

This results in two things: Although Google tells you that you should optimize
for your clients, if you do that, Google has no clue what the website is
about. If you sell paper, a user knows what to do with these - package gifts,
wrap books. Googel doesn't unless you put "paper to wrap books" on your site,
it doesn't show in peoples search results. A list of mobile phones? Google
doesn't know that you try to sell these, your website visitor immediatly does.
If you only have brand names and don't use smartphone, if your button is
called "add to basket", it does not show your page for "buy smartphone" unless
you stick it to your site, a lot of it, but just below the Panda threshold.
This is the reason ecommerce sites explain what a "jacket" is on their search
result page. No user needs this, but the web is plastered with "hints" for the
Google algorithm by legitimate websites, not spammers. Everytime I surf pages,
I see this Google hints making websites ugly everywhere.

The other result of Google is so much different from humans in reality: The
algo can't determine between legitimate content (e.g. good guest posts) and
spam. So there is more and more collateral, websites and blogs that are hit,
legitimate business that is lost due to some Penguin update, never to recover
- without any bought links. (Go to seo/bigseo Reddit)

Googles algorithm is so much less intelligent as they want you to belief it is
with their "just design with the user in mind" to rank on Google. If you do
this, you're lost.

PS: The only people that love Google and do not care are spammers. They put up
a website, spam it, make money and when hit move on to building the next cheap
website.

~~~
KingKurtz
This is 100% true and I can't help but agree.

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fkmattcutts
matt cutts should not be determening what is and what is not quality on the
www period. the world needs to get rid of googles influence on the web.

~~~
testrun
So don't use Google. Use Bing or DucDuckGo.

------
KingKurtz
Hey Matt, just wondering what your Username on BHW is?

