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Google is Breaking the Internet

jeremypalmer.com

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Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#141

Post by newaccountfool »

EGreg wrote: post #115
Matt_Cutts wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 withi…

Google's users are the product, the customers are the advertisers.

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#142

Post by toddh »

Donzo wrote: post #112
toddh wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My understanding is selling links is an SEO scam. Are my "ads" a SEO scam or are they real companies to trying to sell real products to real people? How can you conflate the two?

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#143

Post by dreamfactory2 »

rmrfrmrf wrote: post #122
dreamfactory2 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Put the pitchfork down; he's just giving non-specific answers in response to non-specific situations. For all we know, the two domains in question are `bestquickdietfatloss.com` and `levitracialisfreedietpillscanadamexicoblog.com`, in which case it would be correct of Google to indicate that the author's link is linkspam.

Except that I and it seems many commenters here have seen similar things occurring with non-spam sites. Regardless of the specific domains referred to in this post, a general pattern is being talked about - the fundamental criticism is that we are getting a google-shaped web rather than a web-shaped google, due to google's de facto monopoly position. If this wasn't the case, it wouldn't be a talking point here.

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#144

Post by jonknee »

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.

You're in dangerous territory and are not selling "complete ads". You're selling links.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2013/02/a-reminde...

> Please be wary if someone approaches you and wants to pay you for links or "advertorial" pages on your site that pass PageRank. Selling links (or entire advertorial pages with embedded links) that pass PageRank violates our quality guidelines, and Google does take action on such violations.

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#145

Post by [deleted] »

jonknee wrote: post #139
ForHackernews wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, this is all hearsay and second- and third-hand information, and the article is really sparse on details. > It's quite likely they noticed a penalty... Yes, and where would they have noticed that penalty?

> Yes, and where would they have noticed that penalty? In a drop in incoming traffic, so with whatever they're using for analytics. In all honesty it's probably just a new SEO consultant trying to clean up past sins and move on with whatever the latest grey hat strategy is. IMO it's a gross overreaction to a form letter that a high percentage of webmasters have received.

[deleted]

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#146

Post by buro9 »

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #84
buro9 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example, if you run a forum and it's trivially easy for blackhat SEOs to register for your forum and drop a link on the user profile page, then that's a loophole that you probably want to close. It isn't, and never has been. We operate a nursery period ( https://www.lfgss.com/thread9350.html ) in which the actions of new members are both severely restricted and observed by existing members, and all initial cont…

buro9, this is a great example of a well-maintained forum, and as such I agree that you're doing the right thing by ignoring link removal requests. Unfortunately, if you look at wider area of forums as a whole, a very large fraction of them are unmaintained, unpatched, or otherwise not kept safe from drive-by spamming. There are entire forum spamming software packages that will register spam users for dozens of diffe…

Thanks, and I agree. But... it doesn't resolve the problem that publishers who always fought spam, who stayed as far from the SEO battles as possible, and who have largely spam-free sites, are now subject to a constant and increasing flow of link removal requests as a consequence of Google's pushback against the merchants who did use the more spammy SEO tactics.

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#147

Post by Silhouette »

rmrfrmrf wrote: post #130
dchuk wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 lin…

Can I, the potential reader, chime in? I hate this tactic because it results in lower quality content getting further up the search rankings. If I'm a gardener, I want the blogs of well-respected gardeners who have real-life community standing and mutual respect to link to each other. What I don't want is two amateur gardeners with crappy writing skills who have made side-deals to link to each other getting on the fi…

If I'm a gardener, I want the blogs of well-respected gardeners who have real-life community standing and mutual respect to link to each other. What I don't want is two amateur gardeners with crappy writing skills who have made side-deals to link to each other getting on the first page of a Google search.

That might be the ideal result, but it's hard to see how anyone could achieve it with a purely automated system. To make the kinds of distinction you're describing, in general you probably need some form of manual curation by genuine experts with uncontroversial opinions, assuming such people even exist in the field of interest.

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#148

Post by jroseattle »

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…

"If you read the original post closely, it's clear that this is a site asking for a link to be removed--the quoted email isn't from Google."

Matt, this is beyond disingenuous. If Bing or Yahoo responded in the same way, I doubt we would hear a ringing endorsement from Google on the subject.

You've indicated in other comments that basically your algorithm is everyone else's problem to deal with. You can use whatever words you like, but the actions are what matter.

At this point, it sounds more as if Google is concerned with "being right" more so than "doing right".

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#149

Post by lifeisstillgood »

lingben wrote: post #22
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…

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…

The Internet would naturally be a tragedy of the commons - and entropy fighting is something Google seems to be doing well.

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#150

Post by davemel37 »

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #93
davemel37 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If you’ve done as much work as you can to remove spammy or low-quality links from the web, and are unable to make further progress on getting the links taken down, you can disavow the remaining links. In other words, you can ask Google not to take certain links into account when assessing your site." That's taken straight from Google's webmaster support forums... https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?…

The original article dropped all the specific details like the link and the company that requested it. I'll certainly dig into this specific situation more soon, but I didn't want to pull engineers to look into this specific situation over the weekend.

I don't really see any reason to know the specifics or to investigate further. The authors point was simply that lots of organic links are requested to be removed to play it safe.

I don't think Google needs to spend resources to turn around and tell this guy, "got'ya"...

Personally, I don't see the harm in having organic links being asked to be removed. I would never remove a link that sends referral traffic, and I see no reason to keep a link that doesn't send me visitors. I have no problem having someone no follow a link that sends me traffic, because it will send me the same traffic...

so I think the issue here is less about actually breaking the internet and more about how it makes people feel when they thought they were helping you by linking, and then they get accused of destroying your rankings by asking for the link to be removed....

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