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Google is Breaking the Internet

jeremypalmer.com

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Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#71

Post by magicalist »

pygy_ wrote: post #62
jonknee wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google here is saying that all links from this site are suspect, even when the link in question is 100% valid, quality and relevant. I read the article and didn't see any mention of what site the link was on or even what site it was linking to. It's impossible to say if it was legitimately spammy or not, but either way Google never asked him to do anything. Someone who didn't know about the Link Disavow Tool decide…

A spammy link is a link created on behalf of the target site. In this case the author says he created the link independently, because he thought it would be useful to his users. That's, by definition, a genuine, organic link. I wonder if a link flagged by the disavow tool and confirmed by the user weaken the Google juice of the source site. @MattCutts (or another Googler), is it the case?

It seems like it would be odd to not incorporate a "spamminess" measure into the strength of the link, so hopefully you'd be losing very little.

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#72

Post by Matt_Cutts »

jamesbritt wrote: post #53
Matt_Cutts wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just Google that recommends to avoid link spamming. For example, at http://www.seroundtable.com/bing-links-knowledge-18535.html you can read where Bing said "You should never know in advance a link is coming, or where it’s coming from. If you do, that’s the wrong path." When SEOs break the quality guidelines of all major search engines (not just Google), then they might need to do some work to clean things u…

When SEOs break the quality guidelines of all major search engines (not just Google), then they might need to do some work to clean things up if they get caught. This still seems to be missing the point. As I understand it, sites that are not doing anything in the realm of SEO can get penalized because of the actions of people outside of their control. If the wrong sorts of sites (however defined), sites outside my c…

"If the wrong sorts of sites (however defined), sites outside my control, are linking to my site, why am I penalized, and why should the burden be placed on me to go fix it?"

Well, if a website was link spamming then it seems appropriate that the site should attempt to clean up the spam they made before they can rank well in Google again. Otherwise it's not fair to the other websites that have been trying to rank fairly and would like a level playing ground.

In general, if you weren't trying to create spam links, then it's very unlikely that any of this is an issue for you and the burden isn't on you to fix it. I made a video about the "what if the wrong sorts of sites link to my site" question here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWJUU-g5U_I

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#73

Post by dreamfactory2 »

jamesbritt wrote: post #53
Matt_Cutts wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just Google that recommends to avoid link spamming. For example, at http://www.seroundtable.com/bing-links-knowledge-18535.html you can read where Bing said "You should never know in advance a link is coming, or where it’s coming from. If you do, that’s the wrong path." When SEOs break the quality guidelines of all major search engines (not just Google), then they might need to do some work to clean things u…

When SEOs break the quality guidelines of all major search engines (not just Google), then they might need to do some work to clean things up if they get caught. This still seems to be missing the point. As I understand it, sites that are not doing anything in the realm of SEO can get penalized because of the actions of people outside of their control. If the wrong sorts of sites (however defined), sites outside my c…

Frankly a bit worrying that Matt Cutts doesn't seem to get the fairly straightforward point (to the rest of us) being made here. Or he does and the criticism stands. Either way not so great.

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#74

Post by dchuk »

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #40
lingben wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matt, this does not address whatsoever the point being brought up. And in case you missed it, I will try to cite it as clearly as possible here: This is a case where google wants people to mold the internet according to what their current incarnation of their algorithm says the way it should be. Rather than google trying to mold its algorithm to understand the internet, natural links vs. spams, and their respective a…

It's not just Google that recommends to avoid link spamming. For example, at http://www.seroundtable.com/bing-links-knowledge-18535.html you can read where Bing said "You should never know in advance a link is coming, or where it’s coming from. If you do, that’s the wrong path." When SEOs break the quality guidelines of all major search engines (not just Google), then they might need to do some work to clean things u…

"You should never know in advance a link is coming, or where it’s coming from. If you do, that’s the wrong path."

That is an absolutely ridiculous rule of thumb to follow. What exactly is wrong about doing something like:

1) Having a good article on your site about a certain topic 2) Reaching out to other site owners who have similar content and asking them to link to you as an additional resource 3) Getting that link.

Can you honestly, with a straight face, tell me that's BAD!?

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#75

Post by OPA_Member »

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #58
buro9 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been complaining of this problem for a few years now and it's getting worse. I now receive several new "link removal" requests per day (I receive many more repeats of old removal requests). Yes, Google isn't sending these so you could argue that Google are not directly to blame. But, the merchants in question who are sending them are doing so because Google has made them believe they are (or will be) subject t…

It's not a huge surprise that some sites which went way too far spamming for links will sometimes go overboard when it's necessary to clean the spammy links up. The main thing I'd recommend for a site owner who gets a fairly large number of link removal requests is to ask "Do these requests indicate a larger issue with my site?" For example, if you run a forum and it's trivially easy for blackhat SEOs to register for…

And there it is again, the point that the author of the article is making . .

"Do these requests indicate a larger issue with my site?"

When the truth of the matter is that it's Google's issue. Why does the burden of the cost have to be on the publisher?

This is the 3rd time someone is pointing this out, and it pretty much showcases "Google"'s attitude on this.

At this point the cost of becoming a good source of information has increased greatly to the point that very few publishers with resources can actively manage all the rules and "guidelines" Google decides to throw at the content creators that provide the content that makes the search engine valuable.

I see this everyday in our business as smaller but richer sources of content just disappear on many topics. Blogs, forums and independent enthusiast content sources.

Google has created a one sided ecosystem. That is consolidating traffic to so called "good" sites.

As a long time publisher for a large media company I think it's time to take the internet back from Google. Who care's what Google thinks and does and start building for a better internet.

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#78

Post by Matt_Cutts »

pygy_ wrote: post #62
jonknee wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google here is saying that all links from this site are suspect, even when the link in question is 100% valid, quality and relevant. I read the article and didn't see any mention of what site the link was on or even what site it was linking to. It's impossible to say if it was legitimately spammy or not, but either way Google never asked him to do anything. Someone who didn't know about the Link Disavow Tool decide…

A spammy link is a link created on behalf of the target site. In this case the author says he created the link independently, because he thought it would be useful to his users. That's, by definition, a genuine, organic link. I wonder if a link flagged by the disavow tool and confirmed by the user weaken the Google juice of the source site. @MattCutts (or another Googler), is it the case?

"I wonder if a link flagged by the disavow tool and confirmed by the user weaken the Google juice of the source site."

We haven't been using disavowed links as a reason not to trust a source site. So it wouldn't weaken the Google juice of the author's/source site if the company that sent the email had just disavowed the link.

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#79

Post by magicalist »

selmnoo wrote: post #67
Matt_Cutts wrote: post #5

I talked about this phenomenon recently on This Week in Google with Leo Laporte and Gina Trapani: http://twit.tv/show/this-week-in-google/248 Skip to 4:15 in to listen to the discussion. Note that there are two different things to keep in mind when someone writes in and says "Hey, can you remove this link from your site?" Situation #1 is by far the most common. If a site gets dinged for linkspam and works to clean up…

Hey Matt_Cutts, sorry that this is a little off-topic, I don't really know what would be the correct medium for this... so here I go: could you please kill mypdfmanuals.com from Google hits? I was searching for some instruction manuals (my exactly query was: ), and again and again the top hits were unhelpful mypdfmanuals.com links, which don't even have manuals , they just tell you to go a site where you can get the…

This doesn't help solve the problem itself (and is an annoying extra step), but as a user you can append '-site:annoyingsite.com' to your query to get rid of results from the offender.
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