
After Google bought Nest, it removed company’s biggest competitors from results - webhat
http://pando.com/2014/05/29/after-google-bought-nest-it-removed-one-of-the-companys-biggest-competitors-from-search-results/
======
Matt_Cutts
It's a shame that Pando's inquiry didn't make it to me, because the suggestion
that Google took action on vivint.com because it was somehow related to Nest
is silly. As part of a crackdown on a spammy blog posting network, we took
action on vivint.com--along with hundreds of other sites at the same time that
were attempting to spam search results.

We took action on vivint.com because it was spamming with low-quality or spam
articles like

\-
[https://web.archive.org/web/20130919184930/http://anadesign....](https://web.archive.org/web/20130919184930/http://anadesign.info/small-
attract-home-buyers.html) for "Alburquerque NM home security system"

\- [http://www.womenspk.com/5-ideas-for-keeping-your-elderly-
rel...](http://www.womenspk.com/5-ideas-for-keeping-your-elderly-relatives-
better-protected/)

\- [http://www.frugalful.com/2013/12/five-surprising-ways-to-
sav...](http://www.frugalful.com/2013/12/five-surprising-ways-to-save-money-
on-your-homes-expenses.html)

\- [http://doyoulovewhereyoulive.com/archives/top-10-benefits-
of...](http://doyoulovewhereyoulive.com/archives/top-10-benefits-of-
automating-your-home)

\- [http://arch.itect.us/2013/01/17/top-10-benefits-of-
automatin...](http://arch.itect.us/2013/01/17/top-10-benefits-of-automating-
your-home/)

and a bunch more links, not to mention 25,000+ links from a site with a paid
relationship where the links should have been nofollowed.

When we took webspam action, we alerted Vivint via a notice in Webmaster Tools
about unnatural links to their site. And when Vivint had done sufficient work
to clean up the spammy links, we granted their reconsideration request. This
had nothing whatsoever to do with Nest. The webspam team caught Vivint
spamming. We held them (along with many other sites using the same spammy
guest post network) accountable until they cleaned the spam up. That's all.

~~~
r0fl
Matt,

I have tried reporting a website that buys 100% of its links (I used to work
for them and have tons of proof) and is being rewarded with 2.5-3mil hits a
day from google and yet no one seems to care! Is there a way to get my point
across or do I have to write a blog post that gets picked up by HN to get any
action taken?

~~~
Matt_Cutts
Well, the best way to report spam is with our spam report form at
[https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?pli=1](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?pli=1)
because then we can prioritize the report along with other complaints. But you
can also post in our webmaster forum at
[https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/webmasters](https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/webmasters)
or catch us during webmaster office hours--see
[https://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/office-h...](https://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/office-
hours) for the schedule of upcoming office hours. Or catch one of us at a
search conference (I'll be at SMX Advanced in Seattle in June and at Google
I/O later in June).

If none of those work, I often pass on spam reports that people tweet to me
(or when they do a blog post and tweet me that link). You can also tweet to
@googlewmc (for Google Webmaster Central). Or if you add an email address on
your HN profile, I'll drop you a note.

~~~
r0fl
Email added in the profile. I would be more than willing to show how you guys
are sending millions of hits (daily!) to a site scraping content and buying
cheap backlinks.

I'm surprised that such tactics work in 2014, and am just as surprised that I
got your attention. Hacker news is a powerful place!

~~~
Matt_Cutts
Hey, I didn't see an email address at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=r0fl](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=r0fl)
? Maybe the page is cached and only gets rebuilt every so often, but you might
want to double-check?

~~~
Natsu
Sometimes people make a mistake and just put it into 'email' (which is non-
public) and not into 'about' (which is public).

------
absherwin
This is misleading. The article cites a single company that inadvertently
violated Google's rules by failing to mark paid links. This seems to be part
of the ongoing saga of companies making errors, sometimes honest, and being
penalized.

Is the company even a major player in the smart thermostat space? It's not
even listed in this market analysis from last fall:
[http://cleantechnica.com/2013/11/14/honeywell-leads-smart-
th...](http://cleantechnica.com/2013/11/14/honeywell-leads-smart-thermostat-
leaderboard/).

It looks more like a competitor in the home automation systems space that
sells smart thermostats mainly as part of a more comprehensive system.

Given the absence of action against any of their more major competitors, this
seems like a coincidence.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I would say it is more link-baity than misleading, Google did delist the smart
thermostat maker Vivint, and they did buy the smart thermostat maker Nest. The
article attempts to paint a picture of intrigue and conspiracy, but I suspect
it was just bad SEO on their part, or even Counter-SEO at work by another of
Vivint's competitors.

That said, three major things stand out, which are not link baity and really
do indicate a problem.

First, Google is how people find things, that gives them extraordinary power
to direct the market, and that power is operating completely unchecked.

Second, searching for Vivint, is what we at Blekko call a 'navigation search'.
If you've typed in Vivint it is pretty clear the result you want, and in the
article Google auto-corrects it away to vivino. Now I just typed vivint and it
found it, but if Pando was accurate that a navlink wasn't found when they
tried it, that would be a pretty egregious failure of a search engine, I could
see 'smart thermostat' not listing them but not a search on their name.

And the final thing is of course the opacity of it all and the challenge of
the algorithm. It really is a dead end until some sort of AI comes along,
human curation did wonders for our index and Microsoft's. Google might do well
to stop investing a billion dollars a quarter in acquiring traffic and instead
spend that money making a cleaner index.

~~~
DanBC
Google doesn't help me find things on eBay or Amazon. Both those sites have
terrible site searches, although for dofferent reasons.

For example, searching eBay for "16 GB MicroSD cards" and then sorting by
price returns a huge list of people selling a choice of an adapter for micro-
SD to SD for 99pence or a MicroSD card for £X. Thus, sorting hy price just
returns the proce for the adapter card (which I am not interested in).

Searching Amazon is a hideous experience where results are stuff with
sometimes hundreds of irrelevant near duplicate results with no way to rapidly
jump past them.

One way Blekko or DDG or Bing could earn my undying love is by making site
specific search better. I would gladly click on result links even if you
presented me with affiliate links.

------
danso
Here's another thing that Google's alleged dirty-tricks obscured: Vivint's
Wikipedia entry including its fairly lengthy "Legal Issues" section:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivint](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivint)

According to that section, Vivint has made settlement/voluntary compliance
agreements with, or been penalized by the states of Kansas, Ohio, Nebraska,
Wisconsin, Arkansas, Washington, Louisiana, South Carolina, Minnesota,
Tennessee, California, and Oregon upon accusations of fraud and deceptive
practices.

Holy shit...Google has even more power than we had yet imagined! Talk about
Pando burying the lede here.

Edit: Holy, _holy_ shit: it appears that even _Wikipedia itself_ is on the
scam. At the very top of Vivint's Wikipedia entry, some Wikipedian/Nest-
boardmember has placed a banner warning stating:

> _This article appears to be written like an advertisement. Please help
> improve it by rewriting promotional content from a neutral point of view and
> removing any inappropriate external links. (March 2014)_

So a company that Google has wiped out from the search results also, within a
few months later, has its Wikipedia entry vandalized by the Wikipedia Cabal to
make it look like an advertisement for Vivint, as if Vivint or someone
friendly to the company would ever break the rules on Wikipedia. Surely this
is a conspiracy to end all conspiracies.

~~~
lucaspiller
Take off your tinfoil hat, you are reading into this a bit too much. The basis
of the "Legal Issues" section has been there since the beginning of 2012:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vivint&oldid=47624...](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vivint&oldid=476243376)

In terms of why it's marked as an advertisement, compare Vivint's wikipedia
page to Nest Labs or Sonos and see what you think:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nest_Labs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nest_Labs)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonos](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonos)

The historical versions are written in the same way too. They are
advertisements, some PR guy at Vivint has written them to try and make the
company sound good and added loads of backlinks.

------
sivetic
No real comment on the issue at hand, but I've been targeted by Vivint's door
to door sales team on one occasion. It was a very pushy salesman that started
to ask security related questions despite my insitence for him to leave. Once
I managed to gen rid of him I found a dozen plus other similar accounts of
pushy and deceitful selling practices in my area. Serves them well I would
say.

~~~
camillomiller
So, Google is the ultimate police against companies with pesky marketing
practices? Do you even realize how bad is this mindset?

~~~
McDiesel
In their house, they are... Google isn't a democracy or a charity. They will
list you if you follow their rules, the same rules everyone else has to follow
to be listed... its their right and prerogative to set and enforce those
rules, because its their service.

~~~
camillomiller
Is that true even if you are a gigantic monopoly in the search business?

------
jamesjyu
Highly doubt that this was anything but a coincidence. Even if you don't think
it was, the Nest deal most likely took more than 2 weeks to close, and it'd be
crazy for Google to take such deliberate and egregious actions before then.

------
swinnipeg
Vivint is more of an ADT competitor. They are a security/automation company
with monthly fee model.

It is clear they have spent alot of money buying links from their profile, but
so has ADT.

A more fitting question would be why ADT hasn't also been penalized.

~~~
rtpg
A likely explanation is that ADT has also been penalised, but the organic
references to ADT counterbalance it enough to not affect them as much.

~~~
aaronwall
Manual removal from the results _supersedes_ the core relevancy algorithms.

------
nepalidude
This actually makes sense. Does it matter when they started dissecting links?
What matters is when they de indexed. Why rapgenius was given break so early?
Does Google think people will not know just because they don't have billion
dollar in their pocket? lol. Here is my version of story: Board decided to
purchase nest and naturally they looked at competitors. They send the message
down to webspam team and asked them to check their linking profile and if
anything is against the guidelines, take their ass down.

You know there are laws but prosecutors decide whether to file charges or not
or a police decide whether to pull over or not if the car is driving 8-9mph
more than the speed limit. Be polite to them, you can get away or get less
penalty. Show aggression to them, you will get charged for much more things
than you were initially approached for. Sometimes you dont even know what that
means. Once I got a traffic citation after making a wrong U-turn and since I
was "showing attitude", I got citation for having foreign materials on my
liscense plate?? LOL

Of course attitude= money in this context

------
DiabloD3
I'm sorry, but I wasn't aware Nest HAD competitors. Not only that, Vivint was
violating the rules and got punished accordingly for it.

“And, as they say, there’s no greater place to hide a dead body than on the
second page of Google’s search results.” is a massively inflammatory
statement.

~~~
brighteyes
There isn't any evidence that Vivint did anything against the "rules". You're
jumping to defend google pretty quickly, almost automatically. Just because
you like them, doesn't mean they are always in the right.

They might or might not be in this case, we don't know enough to tell.

~~~
jusben1369
From the article it appears there was a clear transgression. It's just that it
appears to be from ignorance vs deliberate.

------
jchimney
I hate government intervention in these matters, I really do. But in the case
of Google I feel that their search results should be walled off from any other
business interests. They have so much influence over the discovered internet
that maybe its time to separate search from their other business interests.

Page and Brin were geniuses in realizing early that search was the golden ring
to reach for. They deserve their billions for bringing this amazing service to
us; but now with shareholders muddying the waters I don't think this should be
leveraged for other business efforts.

------
anigbrowl
There's a potentially nasty lawsuit waiting to happen there if Vivint has
solid tracking/referral records, since the standard in civil trials is only
'preponderance of the evidence.'

------
robryan
Say what you want about how Google handles penalties but I think it is silly
to suggest that Google has acted any differently in this case than to the vast
majority of sites out there who receive penalties, but don't have friends in
high places to expedite the process of having the penalty lifted.

~~~
vidarh
The more interesting thing to me is the rapidly escalating list of conflicts
of interest. Even _if_ Google tries to remain squeaky clean for all eternity,
they'll have a harder time of ensuring that they are, with staff tweaking a
growing number of signals to their ranking algorithm while being to various
extents aware of what is part of Google.

I too, don't think Google is in the wrong in this case. But the wider issue of
having what is likely the largest gatekeeper of internet traffic own a growing
list of other properties is likely to sooner or later become a major problem.

------
hallzi
"one of the"

------
hellbreakslose
Hmm sorry to say so but Vivint does have several court orders for missleading
information.

I also don't see how vivint makes the same products as nest or even making em
a competitor... Nest is something that is coming from the future and I can
assure you that vivint is not even close in that.

Also I don't get how Google is supposed to contact every website that puts on
a banlist for innapropriate or missleading content...

------
outside1234
This is what happens when we let one company get too much power on the web.

~~~
melling
Yes, Microsoft has had a desktop and document format monopoly for about 2
decades. It's not about any company being "evil" or bad, it's just with that
much control, you can really leverage that monopoly and hinder innovation...
What should we do about it?

As for the search engine problem, just use a different search engine. It's
such a trivial problem to solve.

------
flyinglizard
And this, children, is how you get an antitrust probe started.

~~~
jusben1369
Very true. Google is to search what MSFT was to OS/PC's. As they expand into
new areas they are heading for a brick wall. Unless search is disrupted.

~~~
jusben1369
Not sure why I went negative 4 on the downvotes. Google is to search what MSFT
was to desktops and they control a super critical entry point to the Internet.
As they do more and more non search things they'll be tempted to and overly
scrutinized with how they utilize their search business to help those other
businesses. Unless search is disrupted and they lose that stranglehold.

------
apricot
Remember when the standard Google excuse was "it's not our fault, it's the
algorithm"?

Now it's "what are you gonna do about it?"

------
bhouston
I think that these manual actions are likely never to happen to Google
properties, but they can easily happen to everyone else. They are opaque and
have severe consequences on those that are affected.

How are websites selected for manual actions? Does someone get handed a list
of sites to check out? Are they selected algorithmically? How are manual
actions decided upon (when it is up to humans, it can be very inconsistently
applied)? How are the results communicated to those affected (I hear that it
is communicated in very vague and unhelpful ways via Webmaster tools)?

If one isn't friends with Matt Cutts or have deep SV connections (i.e. if I am
not RapGenius), how does one get a manual action removed quickly? Apparently
it is really really hard if you are not RapGenius.

Seriously, these manual actions are scary as hell for those relying on Google
to send them traffic. If MF can be seriously harmed by a manual action, no one
is safe.

~~~
modeless
[http://www.webmonkey.com/2012/01/google-deranks-chrome-
downl...](http://www.webmonkey.com/2012/01/google-deranks-chrome-download-
page-due-to-spam-links/)

------
nivla
If there is any truth to this article, then things are going to get really bad
for Google. This with other recent complaints may prove that Google may be
stepping beyond the gray areas of a monopoly. A good lobbying may delay the
process but it is inevitable.

OT: I don't usually complain about votes but the amount of downvotes in this
thread is appalling. Anything critical of Google has been downvoted.
Ironically, if asked, most people here would be against censorship of any
kind, however for many that is valid as long as the opinion stays within their
perception. Under the same argument, I can "predict" that this post like other
similar ones before is going to flagged off the frontpage. Its starting to get
repetitive enough to be no longer ignored. Not sure how the situation can be
improved because in reality its very hard to built a community with diverse
opinions.

~~~
skj
I guess fortunately for Google, it appears there's no merit to the accusation?

~~~
donbmarks
To piggyback on the conversation, coming from a small business that has seen a
reconsideration request wait in hibernation without a reply for over 40 days,
the bigger issue that I would hope more journalists would start to shine the
light onto is the lack of transparency and need for regulation of Google
search by an independent entity. The reality is that Google generates 60
Billion in revenue and close to 20 Billion in profits, but more importantly
they single handily control the fate of millions of companies and influence
probably a trillion dollars of commerce on a global level every year.

They create a set of rules that they apply on a very subjective basis.

Just one example, ever get hit with a thin content penalty?

Google has a video out that creating pages to market cities in every state
appears against guidelines, I guess they forgot to tell that to Zillow
(dominates google search for mortgage rates/city search) without real content
and simply a rate widget advertisement feed, and there are hundreds of these
examples out there.

Yet in a statement made over the porn model lawsuit, here was googles reply:

[http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2346899/Model-
Battles-G...](http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2346899/Model-Battles-
Google-Yahoo-in-Court-Over-Images-Linking-Her-to-Porn-Sites)

"Search engines are neutral platforms that do not create nor control content
on the web,” Google said in a statement to CNN. One of the interviewees in the
CNN video argued that the creators of content should be held responsible, not
the search engines.

The rap genius penalty has already been highly publicized, but here is a good
recap of how quickly the penalty was lifted.

[http://searchengineland.com/rap-genius-back-in-
google-181125](http://searchengineland.com/rap-genius-back-in-google-181125)

This is beyond frustrating for small businesses to see this quick turnaround,
when most small business owners are sent to the google webmaster forum, where
they have to try to get problems solved by volunteers and not actual
employees.

What small business owners need is a real voice and oversight to provide a
tangible path back into the index, as opposed to the vague answers and rules
that apply differently.

Google should be required to provide real employees supporting their web
forums

Google should be required to provide clear examples of why a website was
removed

Google should be required to provide clear timelines if a penalty has been
placed on a website

Small business are pushed out of business when they are removed from Google,
it’s time for some real change and forced transparency

