Negative SEO: Looking for Answers from Google • Hacker News Board

Re: Negative SEO: Looking for Answers from Google

#81

Post by rubinelli » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 4:12 PM UTC

apalmer wrote: post #60

austenallred wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their job is to show the best results for a given search query. If my website is the best but it doesn't appear at the top because a competitor has attacked it, Google isn't doing its job.

I completely get you from a human level. From a business level google's job is to sell ads, it sell ads by providing valuable search results 'for free', and one part of the intrinsic quality of the search results is that they are 'good' in the sense that you describe. Aside from that google really doesnt owe anyone anything, if tomorrow google found that showing small businesses search results negatively affected the…

Isn't it ironic? Developers moved to the web to avoid becoming sharecroppers in Microsoft's fields, and now we are even more dependent on Google's goodwill. And what options are left? App stores.

Re: Negative SEO: Looking for Answers from Google

#82

Post by btilly » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 4:16 PM UTC

magicalist wrote: post #76

btilly wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is news here is not that negative SEO exists. It is that Google has been forced to admit that it is a real issue. Edit: After reading the comments at the end of the story, magicalist is right. The story is wrong, Google made this change a lot longer than a week ago, it isn't actually news.

...10 years ago.

No, last week. So it really is news.

That's when their help page went from saying, "There's almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index." to "Google works hard to prevent other webmasters from being able to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index."

In other words from saying, "Don't worry about it" to "We're on it".

Re: Negative SEO: Looking for Answers from Google

#83

Post by Trapick » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 4:17 PM UTC

ckluis wrote: post #3

Matt if you read hackernews. This is bullshit. Spam links should count for 0 value not negative value.

That's idiotic. If spam links counted for 0 (when caught) there would be no disincentive for everyone to use them. The appropriate way is for them to count negative but have some way of legitimate sites disavowing them at some kind of time or effort cost (oh wait, that's what the system currently is).

If you have a better system let's hear it.

Re: Negative SEO: Looking for Answers from Google

#84

Post by brudgers » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 4:19 PM UTC

shawnz wrote: post #15

It's not Google's job to make sure every webmaster has a "fair shot" at rankings. It's their job to make sure the best results appear when I search for something. In Google's eyes, having false negatives is worth not having false positives, and that's just the reality of the web. Besides, it seems to me that these "problems" are only really thought of as problems by the type of people who put "search engine" in the t…

It's their job to make sure the best results appear when I search for something.

"Best" means best for Google, not most informative to you. The big deal about negative SEO is that "worse" means worse for Google - again, it has nothing to do with your or my needs.

The combination of positive and negative SEO is intended solely for Google's long term benefit. Maybe goodwill enters into it, but only to the extent it creates value for Google's shareholders.

Re: Negative SEO: Looking for Answers from Google

#85

Post by ywang0414 » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 4:23 PM UTC

Any system can be cheated. Nothing here.

Re: Negative SEO: Looking for Answers from Google

#86

Post by paul_f » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 4:24 PM UTC

magicalist wrote: post #76

btilly wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is news here is not that negative SEO exists. It is that Google has been forced to admit that it is a real issue. Edit: After reading the comments at the end of the story, magicalist is right. The story is wrong, Google made this change a lot longer than a week ago, it isn't actually news.

...10 years ago.

Who cares if it is new or not. It's a problem, and becoming a bigger one.

Re: Negative SEO: Looking for Answers from Google

#87

Post by rdtsc » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 4:24 PM UTC

austenallred wrote: post #55

shawnz wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nonsense; that is Google's one and only job. Why? You're not paying them to list your website. Meanwhile I am paying them, in ad impressions, to look at your listing. If you want reliable returns, buy an ad instead. EDIT: What I am trying to say is, it doesn't matter to me if I see "Jack's Pastries" or "Jill's Pastries" in my search results. Your livelihood is not Google's responsibility, unless you buy ad space fr…

Their job is to show the best results for a given search query. If my website is the best but it doesn't appear at the top because a competitor has attacked it, Google isn't doing its job.

> Their job is to show the best results for a given search query.

No.

Google is not there to help you, me or anyone find better cat pictures. It is not a charity. Google's job is to make money. It makes money primarily by selling ads. It can sell ads better if it can target people better so they provide free email and then also parse all the email contents.

Ads show up in search and by providing good search results they ensure people go to google.com and not facebook.com or bing.com so _they_ can show you ads as opposed to someone else showing you ads.

"If my website is the best but it doesn't appear at the top because a competitor has attacked it" try Bing, or other search engines. You can try to shame Google into providing better searches by going public and hoping their PR team will notice, that's valid, but I don't see at all how this their "job".

Re: Negative SEO: Looking for Answers from Google

#88

Post by magicalist » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 4:25 PM UTC

btilly wrote: post #82

magicalist wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...10 years ago.

No, last week. So it really is news. That's when their help page went from saying, "There's almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index." to "Google works hard to prevent other webmasters from being able to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index." In other words from saying, "Don't worry about it" to "We're on it".

No, go read the comments. The first change was made 10 years ago; the change you're referring to apparently happened sometime between March and April 2012[1].

Moreover, there's absolutely no information about how you could penalize someone's site. The article's speculation is exactly that.

Honestly, if it were as easy as buying a bunch of spam links to a site for $20 and get them penalized or delisted, there would have already been a host of exposés showing exactly that. There are a lot of motivated SEOs out there, chomping at the bit to show that their personal Google conspiracy theory is correct.

[1] http://www.seroundtable.com/google-can-competitors-harm-me-1...

Re: Negative SEO: Looking for Answers from Google

#89

Post by johnjlocke » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 4:26 PM UTC

hellweaver666 wrote: post #26

ramayac wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really?, wow... I had no idea about that. I bought some followers for a client once, but "1000's of links" for $20 sounds surreal (at least for me!)

it's mostly automated comment spam, forum spam and the like.

75% of those links won't even be valid, so you really do get what you pay for on Fiverrrrrrrrr.

Re: Negative SEO: Looking for Answers from Google

#90

Post by porker » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 4:30 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #61

austenallred wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense; that is Google's one and only job. My parents run a small e-commerce business that has supported them for years; a team of a dozen people run everything from the little website to the shipping. All of their sales come from (mostly accidental) SEO and Amazon. The scary reality is that right now that entire operation could be destroyed by a competitor in a couple minutes if they knew how. It's not hard to fin…

Assuming you are not purchasing ads, I'd argue that relying heavily on a company you have no formal commercial relationship with to bring you customers might not be a great idea.

Yet that is what most businesses are doing, even if they are buying ads. You can't get enough traffic from ads alone at a cheap enough cost to make most businesses viable.