

Did Google just kill PR agencies? - Brajeshwar
http://www.zdnet.com/did-google-just-kill-pr-agencies-7000019182/

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andybak
Betteridge's law of headlines once again.

The article is a terrible piece of writing that doesn't make a cohesive case
at all. I can see nothing terribly new in the linked Google page other than
the usual mantra of "write content for human's and don't try and game the
system".

Lot's of "google could do this" and "the rules could be interpreted like that"
\- the truth is that Google has no interest in penalizing honest content.
Obviously there is the chance of collateral damage but nothing appears to have
changed to warrant the hyperbole herein.

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dspillett
Two things:

1\. A bit, maybe, for now. And I'd like them to succeed: when I search for
something I want to know what the general populous says about a thing, not
what some PR company says, so if the effect of PR can be minimised I should
get better results for some searches.

2\. Note the words "for now" above. the PR people will find other methods to
give them the advantage. Google and their ilk can win as many battles as they
like, but they'll never win the war.

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jblow
The author of this article does not seem to understand what good PR agencies
do. He thinks PR means 'web spam'. A good PR agency is about human
connections: they will get press interested in doing a story, they will get
you live interviews, they will provide very helpful advice on how a message
will be received.

Article is alarmist and weird. Not recommended.

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ChuckMcM
Tend to agree with that analysis, reading it I had predicted it was going to
slide into some sort of innuendo that the only way PR was going to work with
Google was if they used Google+ or some other Google product to spread it.

I also wondered if the article was confusing "Public Relations" with "Search
Engine Optimization" but its hard to tell.

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prawn
Laughably bad headline and premise. I don't think this linkbait is worth your
time. Headline writing like this should be discouraged.

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pcunite
I wish Google would focus some effort on curtailing searches for "cracks,
serial key, activation code" and other nonsense that is killing my software
sales.

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pcunite
Whoever down voted me obviously does not sell software online. I lose about
1,000 potential sales a month from entities linking license keys. I personally
"feel" like Google could do "something" about it and spend a little less time
worrying about known PR sites.

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pcl
As someone who has sold software online and seen license cracks for my
product: it is hard to know the impact of cracks on your profit.

Would the pirates have bought your software if the crack was not available?
How many customers used a cracked version at one point before becoming a
customer? How much profit do you lose by investing in making your licensing
scheme harder to crack?

We ended up deciding that our license keys were there to keep honest people
honest, not to thwart people intent on abusing our licensing terms. Whether or
not that was the most profitable choice is anyone's guess, but it certainly
was nice to look at cracks as lead-gen and a bit of a compliment, rather than
trying to wage a distracting war against people who were probably not going to
pay us anything anyways.

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pcunite
I’m still agonizing over what to do ... thanks for sharing your experience. My
first thought is that if thousands of Google links to keys and cracks did not
exist, our sales would increase. As you've noted, it’s a time sink to fight
it. That's why I want Google to at least "try" something to help us out. I
mean, they want me to purchase ads from them, right?

