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Google is Breaking the Internet

jeremypalmer.com

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Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#111

Post by nivla »

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…

>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.

So if Bing wants to rank Bing.com higher than Google.com on the keyword "Search Engine", all they need to do is to pay link farms to link to Google?

Like everything this could go both ways. If you penalize sites for having links from link farms, what is stopping your competitors from paying link farms to link to your website? or worse yet, some link farm owner comes up with an ingenious idea to hold other websites hostage until they pay up?

It would be more understanding if Google din't have any other resources on hand to make smart decisions but heck you guys have hands on realtime experience with most traffics via Google Analytics, Google Adsense and even DNS. All these resources and can't even distinguish a link farm from a legitimate site? Doesn't sound believable.

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#112

Post by Donzo »

toddh wrote: post #48
jonknee wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were selling links Google isn't that far off...

I'm selling complete ads, that certainly contain links, just like Google does. They are contained in posts clearly marked as sponsored posts. These are not link farms, spam, or payed links. Advertising should not be a crime.

If you are selling "ads" that transfer PageRank, you are selling links.

I do not care that you do this, but you should be aware of what you are doing.

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#113

Post by WildUtah »

greenyoda wrote: post #26
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…

Why didn't you challenge the takedown notice as being fraudulent? As far as I know, DMCA does not prohibit linking to web pages; it's only about hosting someone else's copyrighted content on your site (or maybe posting links to pirated content).

Challenging a DMCA takedown requires you to accept that your whole site will be taken down for ten days while you wait to have a right to challenge the takedown. Businesses or projects that have to keep functioning have to comply with any takedown regardless of its validity because they can't just go out of business for ten days in order to challenge it.

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#114

Post by PavlovsCat »

jonknee wrote: post #31
nubela wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He might have low quality links, but his points are still valid. it's not our perogative to link the way Google us to. We should link however we want, and it is up to Google to figure which is link is good, and which are bad.

> it's not our perogative to link the way Google us to. Who said it was? Google didn't ask him to do anything. A random person on the internet did. I frequently get emails from random people on the internet who ask all sorts of insanely idiotic things that have little basis in reality.

Did you even read the article?

> Apparently Google convinced them, via their Webmaster Tools portal, that the link looked “unnatural”, and that they should use the Link Disavow Tool to discredit the link.

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#115

Post by EGreg »

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…

What Matt Cutts is saying, is that as collectively smart as his employer Google is, they aren't able to always figure out if a link is natural and when it's "paid for" as part of linkspam. If they could, they would obviously put that in their algorithm.

Matt Cutts' job at Google involves him making tons of videos explaining how the Google algorithm works. It isn't omniscient, and the guidelines show how to work within its limitations. If you don't care about optimizing your Google presence (as we don't) then you shouldn't care about Google's guidelines either. But if you do comply with some guidelines, then this will probably help your rank in other search engines which also take similar measures to TRY and detect linkspam.

Google's customers are its users. It tries hard to have the most relevant results (or provide value some other way, or just maintain a brand image so people keep coming back). The advertisers come because the users find them and spend real money. And the users want relevant search results, not spam. That's why Google spends a ton of resources on combating the spam.

How do you propose they magically "know" when a link is natural?

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#116

Post by Myrth »

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?

* Paginated content with different filters or sorting? Almost the same content on multiple pages

* Product with a category name in url, or without, or under multiple categories

Both are very useful for humans, but have to be massaged with canonical urls to please Google machines

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#117

Post by jonknee »

jamesbritt wrote: post #59
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…

Someone who didn't know about the Link Disavow Tool decided on their own to email him about taking the link down. FTFA: "In short, the email was a request to remove links from our site to their site. We linked to this company on our own accord, with no prior solicitation, because we felt it would be useful to our site visitors, which is generally why people link to things on the Internet." "Apparently Google convince…

... Exactly. Someone took it upon themselves to hassle the OP to remove a link. Google has made a tool to allow you to have links that you don't vouch for to be not counted, but the webmaster in question decided to try and do it "manually".

It used to be you would get sketchy emails asking you to link XYZ and now a few years in the future the sketchy emails are asking you to unlink XYZ.

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#118

Post by ronnier »

ggreer wrote: post #96
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…

Could you please tell us your hosting provider and the website that sent the DMCA notice? I'd like to avoid both of them, if I can.

This was the link: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=jayjay1010

http://linkaudit.co.uk/

Which I've blocked: http://ihackernews.com/by/jayjay1010

My host is Softsys hosting. http://www.softsyshosting.com

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#119

Post by kordless »

justincormack wrote: post #77
karpodiem wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

agreed, matt is talking in generalities at this point

Matt is not reading what the discussion is about at this point.

More specifically, I believe people feel they aren't being heard at this point. Rationalizations are the tell.

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#120

Post by jonknee »

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?

> 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.

Genuine organic links can still be spammy. The OP seems to be a genuine affiliate marketer/spammer, it's not inconceivable that his links aren't treated with a ton of respect.

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