

An Open Letter to Matt Cutts & the Google Web Spam Team - fodunkin
http://blog.loveclients.com/2011/05/14/an-open-letter-to-matt-cutts-the-google-web-spam-team/

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byrneseyeview
Some of these are known quantities. Some are things Google shouldn't answer.

1\. If Google tells us what they're doing about paid link networks, paid link
networks will route around that. I bet Google _loves_ it when paid link
providers spend $10K/day on AdWords and Google instantly catches and devalues
their links.

3\. Yes, time-based relevancy exists. Google has lots of ways to filter this
(for example, if something is "newsy," and gets lots of links from "newsy"
sources, they'll put it on page one temporarily and then drop it once the news
cycle ends--this also affects Suggest).

5\. This is a common concern, but I've never heard of it happening.

6\. Google Local. They're taking reviews into account and building their own
review system.

7\. Yes, click-throughs affect rankings. If the #2 ranking gets as many clicks
as the #1 ranking, it'll probably be bumped up. This signal is stronger for
brands (for example, if a search for "hacker news" brought up a newspaper's
topic page on "hackers" ahead of news.yc, but most searchers were looking for
news.yc, Google would alter the rankings.

~~~
Travis
In my experience, for #1, Google claims to penalize paid links, yet when I
look at (my) major competitors, they all utilize paid link networks. Didn't
take very much investigation on my part to find it, either -- just ran a
backlink checker and checked out some of the pages. The ad networks all
advertise themselves in their link networks.

Although I don't do a lot of SEO work, it's disappointing when it feels like I
can't do techniques that other places are doing. It's not a time issue, either
-- many of these paid link networks have been on my competitors systems for a
decade.

What google says they do is often very different than what they actually do.

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unreal37
I hope Google doesn't respond to this. It's like asking Google : "I feel my
competitors outrank me in results, and I _deserve_ to be higher! Can't you see
they are clearly cheating?"

I too am tired of people trying to game the system to their financial
advantage. Build a good business and serve your customers well. Stop worrying
about "some other guy" who may or may not have bought a link on some high
ranking web site. Wrong focus!

~~~
ellyagg
Naive and wrong. Not every web based business is Demand Media. Try to be a
little more empathetic to good businesses by honest, hardworking people whose
sustainability depends on search discovery. Notice that I didn't say _google_
search discovery. It just happens that google is the monopoly search engine,
but if they weren't there, people would search with other engines.

Almost all companies are not open about the things they consider their
competitive advantage. Google likes to promote themselves as an "open"
company, but notice that their openness is almost always to support strategic
decisions that commoditize their complements. Their business, the way they
make money, is advertising from web search. And they are just as fanatically
restrictive about anything they fear jeopardizes that segment's profitability
as, say, Apple is restrictive about curating the app store.

I personally know a couple who had a thriving business for several years, then
lost their home one season when their google rankings went south. Nothing they
could do, they were doing the same things as in the past, but that was it.

What really chaps my hide in particular is that Google doesn't allow folks to
track their rankings in anywhere near the accuracy or detail that they need to
effectively manage their business. Its rationalizations for doing so are
incredibly silly and deceptive: Just build a good website with plenty of
content and we'll take care of the rest. What patriarchal and self-serving
nonsense. Is there some reason to believe that google is infallible? Or even
very close to infallible? Sites continue to successfully use paid links, sites
continue to steal content and outrank the sources, and etc. Knowing your
site's ranking data is obviously just as important a metric as any other a
business might need to help them make decisions. No one says, "Well, just
create a good business with great products. You don't need to keep financial
books and really watch your cash flow too carefully, it'll just take care of
itself." What tosh.

The hell of it is that google is well known for its fanatical approach to
decision making through data, even to the point of dumb extremes. Yet,
hypocritically, they don't allow business who depend on its monopoly of web
search to obtain the data they need.

The concessions they do make, like webmaster tools, are poor and ineffective
and feel like they were designed more to serve google's interests than
webmasters. Their web search api turns out to be incredibly restrictive. If
you talk to them directly to try to arrange something, there are even more
unpublished (I believe, at least I couldn't find them anywhere) and incredible
restrictions making it inviable for almost anyone. Remands me of that
asmartbear.com article the other day where he recommended that, if you really
don't want to do something, still offer it, but at such fantastic terms for
yourself that you would be glad to do it. Google offers a search api only to
say they do.

A hard-hearted response would be, "well, you shouldn't build a business on
such an ephemeral platform as search discovery." Really? How about we have a
world where there's a little more competition so we don't have to rely on the
vagaries of one company? Wouldn't it be a better world if we could rely on the
stability of our search platform if we continued to use the same strategies
and put in the same effort we had before?

~~~
dhimes
What people need to realize is that if you build a business that depends
strongly on Google's platform you are facing the same risk as any business
that is built atop another platform (facebook, ios, etc.). You are subject to
the whims of the company you are using.

At most you should only do it if (1) you are trying to flip to said company,
or (2) you use it as part of an interim strategy and will eventually lower to
proportion of that platform's importance to your profit.

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benologist
Time based relevancy exists - if you click "More search tools" you can choose
from fixed dates or enter your own range.

Google Places looks like it's designed to really identify the best restaurant.

~~~
herf
I use this feature every day. Wish it were more prominent.

~~~
sergioten
I think what the question meant to ask is if ages authority (backlinks) is
less valuable than a lot of new authority (new backlinks).. Making it more
relevant today

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niklas_a
The premise of a web search for "best Chicago restaurant" to provide valid
results is flawed. "Best" is undefined and means different things to different
people, maybe even different things to the same person at different times.

A perfect Google could show the following instead: ...Did you mean: "Chicago
restaurants ordered by their number of stars in the Michelin guide", "Chicago
restaurants that your friends like"

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theseanstewart
Google has no way of knowing if money was exchanged for a link. Therefore,
penalizing link buying/selling is very hard if not impossible. There are some
instances where it is possible to tell based on footprints left of known
networks that sell links. However, Google still has no idea if the link was
purchased by the website the link points to or if it was purchased by a
competitor trying to get the website penalized. The only thing that Google can
do is devalue links that look like they were purchased.

You're probably thinking - "Well what about JC Penny. They got penalized for
buying links after the NYT article came out with proof of link buying". Did
they get penalized? Or did those links just get devalued which resulted in a
drop in rankings? Or did Google take action on them just to set an example and
scare webmasters? Personally, I think the links were just devalued or JCP was
given a temporary "penalty" to appease those that were calling foul. JCP has
regained a lot of rankings for keywords that have the same manipulative link
building patterns as what they were originally "penalized" for - look at the
search results for "personalized jewelry" and you'll see JCP at #1. Look at
the backlinks using OpenSiteExplorer and you'll see exactly what I'm talking
about.

So what can Google do to detect "link buying" or other forms of manipulative
link building? Since they can't police transactions that's out of the
question. Something they can do, however, is look at the anchor text
distribution of incoming links. If a website has 1000 links pointing to their
site using the anchor text "my competitive keyword" and only a few other links
using different anchor text, then that's a good sign there's something fishy
is going on. Maybe that could signal a manual review is needed to determine if
the site in question is actually relevant to the search results for that
query. After all, if the searchers are happy then Google should be happy.
Searchers don't know if a website is "cheating". All they know is if what they
searched for is relevant to their query.

~~~
byrneseyeview
_However, Google still has no idea if the link was purchased by the website
the link points to or if it was purchased by a competitor trying to get the
website penalized._

Out of curiosity: how often does this happen? It's a really common problem--
hypothetically. I've heard all kinds of warnings about how people could buy
links to a site and report it, slamming the site's rankings. _Could_.

It would be interesting to see how often this actually happens, and how Google
responds.

~~~
chc
If it were a reliable way to see someone smacked down, it would be done all
the time. The only reason such a system would not be abused is if black hats
weren't convinced it was effective.

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askseo
The paid link question is indeed very important and I also hope get a clear
answer from google. I think google should permit link buying but discourage
link selling. Discouraging link buying can't prevent "Bad" guys from buying
links because they can flip junk site very fast and they have less or no
worries of penalty (if exist). If good guys don't buy links, how can they
compete with bad guys?

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deehard
very interested to see if he responds.. and what he may say to the Hours of
Operation question.

From a usability perspective, it does make alot of sense to use that as a
signal, but what about when someone is researching for something on mobile the
DAY before they want to use the service?

~~~
rokhayakebe
This one is tricky. How do you know if the person is in need of a service at
the moment of their search or for a later time.

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gitarr
I hate SEO with a passion.

In my opinion, if you want to get good search engine results just provide good
content.

I also think that "SEO experts" are modern day snake oil salesmen and should
be avoided.

~~~
patio11
Many self-described SEO experts get paid a lot of money and produce nothing of
value. The same can be said of programmers, and virtually every other white
collar occupation.

Quality predicts salary like quality predicts SEO results.

~~~
edanm
That's the second pithy one-liner from patio11 today.

"Development skill leads to success in software businesses like the ability to
cook amazing waffles leads to successfully running a bed and breakfast."

(Completely off topic, but I found both lines hilarious).

