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Google is Breaking the Internet

jeremypalmer.com

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Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#101

Post by TeMPOraL »

franze wrote: post #64

is google breaking the internet? naah (well at least not with google search - G+, google local and the new horrible google maps is a complete other story) are webmasters breaking the net because they follow SEO worst practices? definitely. i wrote this article for techcrunch in 2010 http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/07/startups-linking-to-your-co... the tl;dr: pagerank is thoughtcancer, if you start thinking of links as…

> the tl;dr: pagerank is thoughtcancer, if you start thinking of links as some flow of mystical pagerankjuice you will make bad decisions, decissions that will hurt your business, your users and in the end the internet.

Golden. It's not Google who's breaking the Internet; it's the people who try to game the search engines.

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#102

Post by newaccountfool »

javajosh wrote: post #80

Are there any documented cases of a black hat attacking a site by linking to it too much? This would seem to be a difficult attack to thwart.

Have a look at http://blackhatworld.com its one of the biggest internet marketing forums, and in between and the guff posts there is some good ones. Basically you can do all the things the pros advise you not to do to yourself to your competitor.

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#103

Post by eevee »

anon1385 wrote: post #57
Matt_Cutts wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Spammy links ... are both unnatural linking behaviors that result when sites are more concerned with pleasing search engine algorithms" ForHackernews, we say in our quality guidelines to "Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines." If the SEO whose email was quoted in the article had followed that advice, they wouldn't be in the position of trying to clean up spammy links after getting caught spamming.

>ForHackernews, we say in our quality guidelines to "Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines." The problem with that is that it's not true (in my admittedly very limited experience). I used to believe that until I created a small website and found it wasn't getting listed in Google and I had to try and guess why and carefully read the rules. Making pages primarily for users means you unthinkingly do th…

How is duplicate content made "for users"? Why would I want to find exactly the same prose in multiple places?

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#105

Post by newaccountfool »

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #72
jamesbritt wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fai…

There is no spam, you algorithm is wrong. Wrong because it's implying the link isn't mean to be there.

It appears after years and millions spent it is impossible to get the perfect search algorithm.

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#106

Post by noir_lord »

newaccountfool wrote: post #95
unfunco wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matt, what's to stop people creating a website (or multiple websites) filled with spammy links pointing to their competitors websites, thereby reducing the weighting of a competitor in Google's pagerank algorithm. Is there protection against that sort of activity?

I think this is pretty common, if you want a website to rank. Then rank it as best as you can then smash the other websites with shitty, unnatural links. Pretty good idea actually but if it continues then it creates a really bad environment for search engines.

Not just a good idea this is actually done already by the blackhat guys, they also use the same technique to extort you in the classic "nice website rankings you have here, be a shame if anything happened to them" manner.

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#107

Post by mcintyre1994 »

higherpurpose wrote: post #85
ronnier wrote: post #15

I own http://ihackernews.com which reformats HackerNews for mobile phones. I had a DMCA takedown notice sent to me on behalf of a website owner who didn't want me linking to their site. My hosting provider gave me 24 hours to remove the link or else they'd cancel my account. The owner of the link claimed that their Google rankings were dropping because my site, iHackernews, linked to their site. With this, they were…

One of the worst decision in Google search history: to base ranking on DMCA's received... It's bad enough that they have automated the process to allow companies to delete millions of links from Google every year, but to downrank sites is a bit overboard.

I didn't know they did that, I wonder how strong a signal it is. If you search for a review or something of a recent TV show (my favourite is eg game of thrones S4E5) and forget to mention you want reviews, you find lots of sites that must be getting DMCAs. Also Youtube must get a lot of them, probably one of the top served sites at a guess?

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#108

Post by ForHackernews »

eevee wrote: post #103
anon1385 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>ForHackernews, we say in our quality guidelines to "Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines." The problem with that is that it's not true (in my admittedly very limited experience). I used to believe that until I created a small website and found it wasn't getting listed in Google and I had to try and guess why and carefully read the rules. Making pages primarily for users means you unthinkingly do th…

How is duplicate content made "for users"? Why would I want to find exactly the same prose in multiple places?

Maybe you run a store where you sell Widget and Deluxe Widget. The only difference is Deluxe Widget has a higher max RPM, but the operating instructions for Widget and Deluxe Widget are identical.

As a consumer, if I came to the website looking for instructions on how to use my [Deluxe] Widget, I would reasonably expect to find the same operating guide on both product pages.

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#109

Post by nfoz »

discardorama wrote: post #46
jqm wrote: post #3

I understand the point. But you could be friendly and agree to remove the links in questions since they seem to believe it will harm their business. Not doing so "out of principal" may effect others as Google believes your links are low quality.(although it sounds like their SEO company is mostly to blame for their problems).

Why? Why should anyone remove outbound links simply because the destination _thinks_ they are harmful? And even worse, if the destination is in fear of some other _third_ party which _might_ think they are harmful? In the bad old days of the Internet, web sites would complain if you linked to them, because they though they had some sort of a right to determine who linked to them. After court cases, etc. the issue was…

> Please don't reply to this if you don't fully agree with my points.

I agreed up until this, but I think it's meant as irony?

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#110

Post by ronaldx »

andybak wrote: post #13

From my understanding Wikipedia adds nofollow to stop incentivising people from constantly trying to sneak links into Wikipedia to boost SEO. Any ranking system that gave any value to links would suffer this problem. nofollow is a necessary evil if you allow untrusted sources to publish content on your site that contains links. It's a way of saying "I don't vouch for these links in the same way I vouch for other link…

The issue here is that a link is not supposed to say "I vouch for this site".

A link is supposed to be a hyperlink.

Google creates a false incentive to link/not link, and then complains when people link in a way that they don't approve of. This is a problem of Google's making.

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