
Sick of SEO Scumbags - thehodge
http://thehodge.co.uk/2013/03/11/seo-scumbags/
======
cbeach
There's only one search engine that anyone cares about.

Companies live or die by their inclusion in that index. SEO is a nasty little
cottage industry that benefits from the algorithmic monoculture in search.

On a somewhat related note, there is only one display advertising program that
anyone cares about.

If you get banned from Adsense because a competitor hammered an ad on your
site, say - you're out. Forever. With no explanation from Google. Just an
unhelpful "you've violated one of our policies but we can't tell you which
one" stock email.

I've been there. I tried the (token) appeal system, and failed. It's hard to
appeal when you don't know what you've done wrong. Google won't tell you what
you've done wrong because it might reveal part of their algo and thus help the
bad guys.

So I forlornly moved on. Amazon ads are perhaps the next most profitable
display ads for me - they generate less than 10% of the revenue that Adsense
did.

I love Google for their excellent free services. However, I've come to depend
on them, and that's dangerous because they're so ubiquitous, yet owned by a
single entity with a single culture.

As geeks I feel we need to re-examine our relationship with Google.

Android fanboys and "Google Openness believers" could sleepwalk us all into
the next dark "Microsoft" chapter.

~~~
abeatnik
"It seems a lot of Android fanboys and "Google Openness believers" are
sleepwalking us all into the next dark "Microsoft" chapter."

If anyone is "sleepwalking" anyone anywhere then I think it's the people
making big money from companies like Google, not consumers or openness
advocates. That is, people like you before you found yourself unceremoniously
kicked out of the club.

~~~
cbeach
My point is that Openness advocates seem to place Google on a pedestal.
Whenever I see any criticism of Android, or Google, it's always immediately
flamed down. Maybe because Google is the most "open" of the major vendors
today. But don't ever imagine that Google is immune from the Microsoft
scenario.

Microsoft competed with "closed" platforms of the day by releasing a platform
that was (arguably) more open to developers, and could be installed on any
hardware. Developers actually quite liked Windows back in those days. The PC
clone wars ensured that Windows became ubiquitous, and it took years for
people to realise just how sinister that was.

I'm not going to pretend that Windows was in any way open-source, but why
aren't we drawing some parallels with Google's Android platform, and the any-
hardware clone war it's waging with iOS and true open source mobile platforms.

~~~
telent
> My point is that Openness advocates seem to place Google on a pedestal

That may be your perception, but I don't think it's universally true. Ask
anyone who's tried to build a project on AOSP ...

------
onemorepassword
I'm sick of SEO people pointing the finger at "evil" SEO people. SEO is
basically gaming search engines instead of contributing anything of value.
It's not a respectable business, it's a self-perpetuating protection racket.
If there weren't any SEO people we wouldn't need any SEO people.

You only hire an SEO for one of two reasons: 1) too cheat Google, and 2) to
compete with all the other sites that hire SEO's... There isn't an ethical
element in this whole equation.

~~~
ako
SEO is like wanting to win in sports, everybody wants to be first. You do SEO
becaus you want to become number one in google search results. Nothing wrong
with that.

SEO people are like sports coaches. You have good coaches and bad coaches.
Good coaches will help you with an effective training programs, and analyze
the competition. Bad coaches will tell you to use drugs.

Good SEO people will help you win by improving your site and inbound links,
bad SEO people will help you to win by cheating.

Nothing wrong with wanting to win, though...

------
znowi
Whenever I hear "SEO", I instantly feel a presence of something shady and
unpleasant with a desire to wash my hands afterwards :) For me, it became
synonymous to con artists and fortune tellers.

~~~
OGinparadise
It's as honorable as "pulling strings" to get your start-up reviewed by shady
sites like Techcrunch. Both serve the same purpose

------
languagehacker
Damn, this is some bad writing. I know we live in an age of post-editorial
content, but can we please avoid sharing stuff with gratuitous comma splices
and "your" vs. "you're" confusion? If I wanted to read shit like that, I'd
open up the comments on Reddit.

~~~
thehodge
I'm sorry that you found the post hard to read, I do have a tendency to get
there and their and the others mixed up and my writing style is a bit, strange
but a lot of people don't seem to mind and get used to it, I am trying to
improve with each post.

~~~
MartinCron
This might be _my_ failing, but the your/you're confusion is something that
always makes me question the worth of what I'm reading. Which is a shame,
because it was a good post otherwise.

I'm glad you're trying to improve with each post. The way to get better at
writing is to write.

------
TomGullen
People who describe themselves as SEO's usually give me the shivers at first,
but it's definitely worth mentioning that there are good top quality SEO
people out there. They do exist and they approach the problem in an
analytical, evidence based and sustainable way. Bad people exist in all
industries, but bad SEOers are particularly nauseating in my opinion because
of the types of people they target and hurt, and damage they do at often
extraordinary cost to these people.

Good SEO's are few and far between though, and generally wont reach 'mom and
pops flower shop'. The SEO's these small businesses will probably be most
exposed to are the cold calling scammers. The problem with a lot of these
scammers is some of them don't realise they are scammers, they are just awful
at their job and disguise it by charging a lot of money.

Bad SEO like the OP mentions can seriously damage your business (look up
negative SEO for good example of how bad SEO's can shoot themselves in the
foot). Before you buy anything expensive in life, it's worth doing your own
research otherwise when you pick an SEO you're gambling.

A good resource to start is SEO Moz's beginners guide to SEO:
<http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo>

If you get to grips with the basics you'll find that you're likely able to do
most of it yourself if it's something that starts to interest you. And it
doesn't need to be a big time soak either.

------
tlrobinson
What exactly is "link building"? That itself sounds pretty scumbaggy to me...

In an ideal world (white hat) SEO should include things that make the site
better for their users and search engines, and hopefully improve search
rankings organically.

"Building" links in order to increase PageRank sounds like it's manipulating
the system.

~~~
EwanToo
From what I understand, link building, in the semi-legitimate form at least,
is contacting bloggers and journalists and saying "Hey, you might really like
product X, here's a 30 day trial", sending out press releases, making sure
you're in the legitimate directories like yell.com in the UK, etc.

The illegitimate end of is is using hacked forums, wordpress blogs, etc, to
post links with exactly the keywords you want to rank for.

~~~
duskwuff
And from experience, I can tell you that most "link building" is the spammy
type. On a good day, it'll merely be sending out a ton of "link exchange"
request emails (a practice which Google also frowns upon, btw).

------
thehodge
I know HN is typically anti-seo and I understand the reasons why, it's an
unregulated industry that gives an impression of witchcraft rather than stable
practices..

But worst than that, there are many people in it just in it to make as much
money out of people in the shortest amount of time without thinking of the
long term relationship or the consequences for that business.

I wrote this so that the next time someone says, I'm thinking of taking on an
SEO company, I can point them to that and they can at least think a bit more
about what they expect and look closer at what the company is doing

~~~
Nursie
I'm not anti SEO because it's unregulated or unstable. I'm anti-SEO because it
seeks to subvert the search engine's mission (return the most useful results
for the searcher* ) to something more akin to advertising (return the results
that the person paying for SEO wants).

It pollutes and subverts the web experience for everyone.

It's not the practices that are the problem, it's the whole idea.

[*]OK so I acknowledge that that's a simplistic/altruistic outlook on what the
likes of google and bing do

~~~
netrus
Many SEO techniques are in line with the user's best interest. Sitemaps,
Keywords, accessibility (clean source code) etc. help Google to understand the
content of your page better.

That's the reason why people like Matt Cutts exist. Of course, much of SEO IS
dirty, and I am not sure if there is serious movement of "ethical SEO".

~~~
davidw
If there is some group of N companies competing for some keyword, starting
from the same 'lower quality' web sites, and they all do the same 'good' SEO
stuff, then they'll all be right where they started again in terms of
rankings, very likely. It's an arms race.

Competing for a ranking is pretty much a zero-sum game because no matter how
much money you sink into it, only one can come out on top.

Compare and contrast with actually building stuff that makes people's lives
better: there's still some competition, and winners and losers, but it's
usually not a zero-sum game at all.

~~~
bones6
Unless no one ever hears about your life changing stuff. Telling Google what
you think your service or product is about via SEO ultimately tells the users
who find the search result. THEN you win the game.

~~~
davidw
But if everyone else tells Google the same information equally well, then
you're all back where you started. Except you spent a lot of money on some
consultant who cannot realistically make any guarantees about what they
deliver.

------
csomar
Since people started criticizing Google :) I'd like to point out something
really quite annoying (and also a little Evil) that Google is doing: They are
hiding the search terms in your Google Analytics report _.

Google pretended that it's going to affect a single digit of your search terms
(check the blog post), but for me, it's from 70% to 90% on my sites (around 8
sites, same issue).

This is really the worst move that I have seen so far from the Search giant.

_ Here is a good blog post explaining the issue:
[http://www.infront.com/blogs/the-infront-
blog/2012/12/14/key...](http://www.infront.com/blogs/the-infront-
blog/2012/12/14/keyword-not-provided-in-google-analytics)

~~~
walshemj
But adwords users get that data - this is hipocrasy on teh part of Google.

~~~
disgruntledphd2
Yup, its pretty hypocritical. It also annoys me as it doesn't give me enough
insight into what search terms convert well for the company I work for, which
means that I am unable to convince my bosses to buy search terms on Google. So
its a net loss for them too.

~~~
walshemj
ironically I got voted down for that comment obviously the Google Krypteia are
out in force on HN

------
marban
The sad truth is that while SEO might just be the most uncreative and
sleaziest web industry for the authentic creator, it'd be pretty naive to
think that just putting a great product out there that people rave about will
take care of ranking your app #1 for photo filters.

------
NoPiece
Can we blame Google a bit here too? They have set-up a system that people can
game, and it causes tremendous collateral damage. Our site is under a constant
barrage of fake accounts and content trying to generate links to other sites.
Meanwhile, a competitor passed us in Google search results after getting
500,000 links over a week from a single domain in China. I hope slow, steady
and honest wins, but it doesn't feel that way.

~~~
davidandgoliath
I don't think it's fair to blame google in these situations -- they dev. their
algorithms to expect that sort of stuff, but I imagine a lot of it is tweaked
daily. Keep in mind Google hires _very_ intelligent people to deal with these
problems: we have to expect that they're giving it their all to resolve them
day by day.

Every scenario is going to be different. As for slow, steady & honest winning
the race? I certainly hope so, but it's up to you to define where the finish
line is. Being honorable & operating a business that doesn't do nefarious
stuff for short-term gain is one of my end-goals.. and it might hurt in the
interim :)

------
ignostic
This post is full of sloppy writing and sloppy thinking. The author doesn't
even define SEO, or "scumbag SEOs." Are all SEOs scumbags? What should they be
doing instead?

We can do a lot better than lazy, vague, completely meaningless rambling.

~~~
thehodge
Whilst I agree the writing is a little sloppy (as I've agreed above) I think I
clearly define what I believe is an SEO Scumbag, defining SEO and practices
will just cause debate about that rather than the actual subject

------
dworrad
To me SEO is like tax evasion... it's just a way of screwing the system. How
funny that the seo scum are toying with google the tax evasion kings.

------
Tzunamitom
The web wild west isn't just limited to SEO, most of the web has no standards
or bodies associated with it. Sometimes that works out well, other times
unsuspecting customers end up spending tens of thousands for a template
WordPress site. In the absence of regulation, the only answer is education.

------
brador
Mom and pop shouldn't completely escape blame here.

If their business was that vested in their google ranking they should have
learned a little more about it, and kept closer watch, asked more questions.

If someone offered to remodel your shop floor you'd be crazy to just let them
do anything.

------
CurtMonash
For good reason, Google (ditto other search engines) makes SEO as impenetrable
as possible. Unfortunately, that makes it difficult to disprove anything a
self-appointed SEO says. Honest error and charlatanry both follow apace.

I'm seeing the same thing in the world specifically of Amazon search rankings,
as self-published authors strive -- perhaps not wrongly -- for high Amazon
rankings without knowing either how to get them nor how to measure their
effects.

~~~
DanBC
Google do a pretty good job of saying what is acceptable and what isn't
acceptable.

And some SEO types are clearly scumbags. Some stuff is clearly, unambiguously,
bad.

So, how are naive users supposed to tell the difference between honest decent
SEO types, and sub-optimal but not clearly evil SEO types?

------
arbuge
"A business model that relies on trickery is doomed to fail" -- Charlie Munger

------
hashtree
Completely agree with the article. I was an SEO for a top 250 site (~20
million UVS a month) years ago and there are two kinds of SEOs. 99.9% of them
are this shitty, scammy, scummy personas we've defined. Absolutely worthless.
However there are the 0.01% who are "real" SEOs. They get and meet the needs
of the users and business, reverse engineer Google patents (they are often SEs
with machine learning experience), and do none of these scummy things. They
make your business better and improve the experience for users. We "SEO" for
your Amazons, Mayo Clinics, and other truly useful businesses who want to do
good for the users and who realize by doing so it gets you better rankings.
Sure there is some SE specific stuff, but it never overrides the user
experience. It complements it. /rant

------
seivan
I am sick of them to. Especially the abuse. Recently the keyword LCHF got so
polluted with this shitty website that hijacked all the search and always
popped up a banner when visiting them that pumped up my CPU to 100.

The company who made it is on my shitlist. They got loads of "SEO experts".

------
wiradikusuma
If I read it correctly, the mom and pop shop used "SEO service" to boost up
their traffic, but the service used "black hat" ways which result in Google
"ban". How do I prevent e.g. my competitor for doing the same to my website?

~~~
blauwbilgorgel
It is up to Google to prevent that. You can't do much about it (but laugh, as
your competition is trying to frame you, when they could use that wasted time
to focus on their own rankings). If it is really blatant, you could file a
spam report [1], post on the webmaster forums [2] or disavow certain links
[3].

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=HWJUU-g5U_I#t=37s)

    
    
      Is there a way that person A could hurt competitor B?
      We try really really hard to design algorithms that are 
      robust and resistant. Any algo that the search team has 
      done in the recent years, we do walk through those cases.
    

[http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...](http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=34449)

    
    
      Can competitors harm ranking?
      Google works hard to prevent other webmasters from being 
      able to harm your ranking or have your site removed from
      our index.
    

Still, some webmasters do feel it is possible to do "negative SEO". For
example the above quote used to read:

    
    
      There's almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your 
      ranking or have your site removed from our index.
    

I myself wouldn't worry about competitors trying this. There is not much you
can do to stop others from behaving a certain way. I think it is much more
likely that Google detects these attempts, than a competitor finding a way to
damage rankings that don't belong to them.

[1] <https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?hl=en>

[2] <http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/webmasters>

[3] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=393nmCYFRtA>

------
dendory
Honestly there's so many different scams online that people taking shortcuts
in the SEO world is fairly minor. The problem is that Google searches are so
crucial to so many people. Back before they were around, if you wanted to
start a business you needed startup cash for marketing, ads, etc. You needed
to become a well known brand. Now everyone and their dog are told they can
start an online business, pay $100 for an SEO package and call it a day. But
just like developers basing their code on Facebook, shops basing their traffic
on Google rankings are always at risk.

------
blauwbilgorgel
From the article:

    
    
      If your telling the client your doing high quality link 
      building, then buying the cheapest package you can from a
      link seller, that’s fraud and in todays world, you can 
      cause serious damage.
    

The mom and pop store that got hit... It is a shame. But: This mom and pop
store certainly has their own responsibility. Especially if they rely on
Google to keep their business afloat. They are webmasters, and as such should
take note of the webmaster guidelines [1]. If they want to outsource being a
webmaster, the webmaster they hire should do the SEO hiring and guideline
compliance. Having an online business is more than just putting up a website.

The webmaster guidelines are fairly clear on these matters:

    
    
      Any links intended to manipulate a site's ranking in 
      Google search results may be considered part of a link 
      scheme.
    
      Ultimately, you are responsible for the actions of any 
      companies you hire, so it's best to be sure you know
      exactly how they intend to "help" you.
    

Yes, to me, this means every "high quality" link building program is suspect
from the very start. Getting a high quality backlink from CNN or from 100 low-
quality blog sites doesn't change the manipulative nature of these (bought)
links. This makes the difference between low-quality and high-quality link
building moot.

(Google) search is not a black box most make it out to be. SEO is not magic.
Make a site accessible and search bots have no problem crawling and indexing
your site. Create quality content. Read the webmaster guidelines. Google wants
your content to rank on its own merits. Align yourself: simply stop buying
link schemes, start writing quality content, and EARN those links. Optimize
websites for users (of which searchbots are just a subset). Try inbound
marketing and website optimization.

[1]
[http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...](http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769)

P.S. I am sick of SEO scumbags too. I am also sick of the blind SEO hate on a
start-up site (start-ups often need SEO, yet a lot lack it). Didn't patio11
used to give actionable, and much appreciated advice on these matters? Do we
really want to eat the sour grapes from someone banned by Adwords or Google
("Because Google targetted them, because their competitor set them up, because
they got hit by those bloody quality updates, because they are not social
enough, because they don't buy Adwords, because they don't use blackhat SEO,
$insert_other_excuse_for_why_Google_is_required_to_rank_them").

P.P.S: The good SEO's I know often have their own sites they work on, or join
an agency to work on big traffic sites. They are not using a cold-call phone
team to get their clients, or stay busy optimizing mom and pop stores. This
may skew the experiences you have with SEO's in general.

~~~
trevelyan
<blockquote> Make a site accessible and search bots have no problem crawling
and indexing your site. Create quality content. Read the webmaster guidelines.
Google wants your content to rank on its own merits. </blockquote>

At risk of sounding bitter, this is really not the best advice to share with
any group of startup entrepreneurs who might believe it and stake their
business model on it. As with many of us here, I've struggled with this issue
for years, and the reality is that Google is a saturated distribution channel
that is horrible at identifying quality content that is not heavily branded or
pushed in mainstream media.

There are ways to tweak the signals, but it usually means having someone
working fulltime on spreading word, and smaller teams building good sites
often have better things to do than linkbait blogging (something I believe
many of us would personally define as poor quality content). And even then
this approach simply does not work in highly competitive fields where there is
literally a decade of competition over search queries at this point, and
competition from highly-funded startups and incumbents.

~~~
blauwbilgorgel
As always with SEO it is dangerous to make broad sweeping statements. What
works for a small local website, doesn't have to work for a big casino/travel
website and vice versa.

The advice I gave was sincere though. In practice I see many businesses aiming
for links, when their content just isn't up to par. Quality content alone
(without links) is enough to rank in many niches. If you get to the hyper-
competative SERPS, sure, you can't escape link building or doing most of the
work in-house. Droll: If you are about to enter a hyper-competative niche, you
should already know what you are doing, else there is little chance you
succeed.

For me, in practice, creating accessible content is still one of the best
things start-ups can do. Blog about two times a week and you will rank for it,
you don't necessarily need backlinks. If you got an inaccessible site with
poor content, you need (probably to buy) backlinks to make a dent.

Disclaimer advice: Never stake your business model on uncustomized broad SEO
advice. Especially when there are plenty of authoritative sources for sound
start-up SEO advice like:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El3IZFGERbM>

<http://vimeo.com/39473593>

<http://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/seo-for-start-ups/>

<http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/01/24/startup-seo/>

~~~
trevelyan
At risk of sounding acerbic.... :)

(1) Can you provide an example of a business with over 100k in revenues that
has been founded in the last 2-3 years in a remotely competitive niche and is
at or near the top of the search results for the most likely general search
terms? How about a bootstrapped business?

(2) And can you honestly say that the mass of blogspam that regularly hits HN
disguised as business advice is really high-quality content?

~~~
a5seo
Vayable (YC12) - coney island tour (first page) HelloFax (YC11) - fax (first
page), google fax #4, Lanyrd.com (YC11) - mobile conferences #1, ux
conferences #2, + hundreds of other high value kws TutorSpree (YC11) - tutor
(first page), private tutoring #1, ZeroCater (YC11) - catering in sf (first
page) MailGun (YC12) - email api (first page)

With some time, I could easily find better examples.

What you'll notice with these is that they are succeeding not by trying to
rank for a handful of keywords, but hundreds or thousands of keywords.
Organize and curate a collection of useful content of interest to your
customers, and you will get Google to rank it. Most large aggregations of
fill-in-the-blank are not well SEO optimized.

If I were building something, I'd look at a niche outside of travel, real
estate, and employment, and create an aggregation around that.

Look at dogvacay.com -- launched in March 2012 ranked #1 for "dog boarding" in
many markets.

~~~
trevelyan
Thanks for putting this list together. I stand humbly corrected, and am
grateful for it. I'll take a look at what these companies are doing and try
and figure out how they are managing it.

------
edraferi
I like the point about smaller firms' vulnerability to this kind of thing. I
think it speaks to the whole "code literacy" issue. An educated consumer
solves cures many ills.

------
PhilipA
Another big issue is the lack of competition for search engines. Google simply
has the power to close a lot of shops, just by blacklisting them...

------
bobsy
> I’ve seen companies who have built a site for a client, no index it then
> charge for an SEO package to ‘sort out the rankings’, Domain change audits
> with no 301′s, I’ve seen agencies charge £10k for ‘keyword research’ which
> is copied and pasted straight from Google Adwords and more than a few times
> I’ve seen companies charge a thousands per month for an IBP report.

I think I am in the wrong industry...

------
davidroberts
Maybe the OP should write an 'SEO for Dummies' book that helps people avoid
becoming victim to SEO scumbags.

~~~
hackerboos
All the information needed for good SEO is publicly available from Google.

~~~
walshemj
Can you point me to a detailed Google document on how to migrate a large say
5M page site from several platforms to another one.

I had to work with 10 RC's and almost 5 months from the third party developer
to get FWI's new classified platform in a fit state to launch - and that snot
counting the work to develop the redirect plan.

~~~
blauwbilgorgel
While 5 million pages is a very big number (that probably requires a lot more
planning) this might be the Google document you are looking for:

[http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...](http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=83105)

    
    
      Moving your site
      If you're planning on moving your site to a new domain, 
      here are some tips that will help you retain your site's
      ranking in Google's search results.
    

Edit: <http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/moving-to-a-new-web-host/> (2005)

[http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.nl/2008/04/best-
pract...](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.nl/2008/04/best-practices-
when-moving-your-site.html) (2008)

~~~
walshemj
oh a single page how generous of them :-0

~~~
Matt_Cutts
Also make sure you check out these videos:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wATxftE8ooE>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1lVPrYoBkA>

and maybe <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7M22teF3Ho> depending on your
circumstances.

------
mikec3k
I don't believe in SEO. I've always felt that they're just one tiny step above
spammers. When one contacts me, I just tell them to go f __* themselves.

~~~
adambard
I've never hired an SEO in my life, but if I ever do, you can bet I'll hire
someone I was ABLE TO FIND BY SEARCHING.

And yet, I get contacted via email by at least one a day. What a waste of
time.

------
mikec3k
It doesn't take a SEO to 'game' Google. Case in point: "Santorum". No SEO was
involved, just organic gaming of the system.

------
marssaxman
"SEO" is a scumbag activity to begin with.

------
camus
Why are we using the expression SEO since there is only one search engine
people are targetting/using ? do businesses really care if they are numero uno
on Bing or duckduckgo ? I never understood that.

Let's cut the crap , SEO is Google rank optimization.

It means there is no SEO since the only player that decides how SEO works is
google. If tomorrow Google decides using the word "FLOWER" in your header
improves your rank on its search engine, what optimisation are we talking
about ?this is not optimization , it is following google's rules. It means
google is in charge, and they are abusing their dominant position pretty well,
and the whole system is a scam anyway.

~~~
oinksoft
_IF_ Google were to bias in favor of "FLOWER" while disregarding content
relevance, it would be an abuse of their dominant market position. But from
the outside looking in, it seems like Google strives for nothing but providing
the most relevant search results for their users. Controversies tend to arise
when Google tries too hard, it seems, localizing based on fragile heuristics
and such.

If this is the scam, what's the alternative? An open search engine, perhaps,
where development, ranking algorithms, etc. are completely out in the open.
I'm not sure this is realistic any time soon though given the cost of hosting
a search engine.

~~~
cbeach
A search engine that ranks mainly on social-graph recommendation might be one
solution, because the social graph is a simple data structure that transcends
"ownership" by Facebook or Google+. The engine itself is a non-trivial system
to implement, mind you.

~~~
Silhouette
The trouble with this idea is that Google can't magically see private
links/recommendations on social networks any more than anyone else can.

For example, one site I help with has just a few inbound links from low PR
sites as far as Google is concerned, and gets a page rank of zero accordingly.
In reality, it probably gets more inbound links via social networking in a
single day on most days, and unsurprisingly those personal recommendations
often drive more inbound traffic than any search engine.

Google's basic premise of ranking the importance of a site based on how many
links it gets and where from is wildly inaccurate in the era of social
networking. Normal people mostly don't run their own public web sites or blogs
any more, they share stuff on sites like Facebook and often only with their
"friends".

Personally, I think this is a good thing, because both as a visitor and as
someone running sites I would rather rely on legitimate personal
recommendations from people who are genuinely interested in a site than on
some arbitrary algorithm running in a data centre somewhere on another
continent. I don't think it's healthy for any one intermediary to have a
dominant effect on whether interested people can find interesting content on
the Web, and sites like search engines and social networks are merely
intermediaries.

~~~
pseut
> Google's basic premise of ranking the importance of a site based on how many
> links it gets and where from is wildly inaccurate in the era of social
> networking. Normal people mostly don't run their own public web sites or
> blogs any more, they share stuff on sites like Facebook and often only with
> their "friends".

I'm not sure that I understand this point. I thought that Google _wants_ to
index Twitter (for example) but is prohibited by Twitter. So it's hard to see
that their premise is wrong: personal recommendations on social networks are
just inbound links from specific sites, just not sites that Google can index.

~~~
Silhouette
I'm sure Google would like to index all kinds of private content, but since
they can't see it, they can't index it. Moreover, a lot of public forums based
on user-generated content automatically annotate their links so they don't
contribute to page rank either; this is done for sensible reasons to prevent
blatant spamming, but does mean that a lot of legitimate positive links also
don't count. This combination undermines the entire idea that a page rank
based on the quality and quantity of incoming links _that Google can see and
will count_ is a good indicator of the value of a site.

In other news, searching for things on Google increasingly seems to turn up
large, commercial sites first and only to reach smaller, more personal, and
often more informative/less biased sites several pages down. Meanwhile,
posting a question to my friends on any private forum we share will often get
better results within a few minutes anyway.

------
martinced
The double-talk on HN never ceases to amaze me.

On one day Google is close to dying and there are lots of alternatives out
there and on the next day the very same people are writing that _"SEO = Google
pagerank ownage"_ as if Google was the one and only search engine which
mattered.

So which is it? Are Google's days numbered or not?

~~~
EvilTerran
Can you point to any instances of the same person holding both positions?

People commenting here are allowed to disagree with each other, you know, and
not everyone comments on every link.

