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Google is Breaking the Internet

jeremypalmer.com

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Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#171

Post by rjzzleep »

RealGeek wrote: post #168
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…

So in this scenario, my competitors can spam links for my website and put me into trouble. Google will notice that my website has some spammy links (which my competitor created), and then penalize me for it. Then I have to contact every website that links to me to ask them to remove links to my website... else their website would get penalized too. I get such emails every week. Rather than these fear mongering tactic…

I didn't really like matts answers, some of them are not answers at all.

But! You may have hit the nail on the head. if i had to guess i would say that storing exceptions means that suddenly the algorithm had to check part of the corpus for these exceptions. at the scale at which google operates this could probably lead to rather big size and speed implications.

But maybe i'm just fantasizing.

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#172

Post by tristanperry »

kreeben wrote: post #127
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…

What a terrible hosting provider you have. Who are they?

Not sure when the post was made, but ronnier later replied that it's http://www.softsyshosting.com.

I definitely agree though - they sound like a very poor host. One of my websites received an invalid DMCA via my host, and my host handled it well (i.e. listening to my side of the story, before deciding not to pursue the 'complaint').

Any host that handles DMCAs so poorly (i.e. threatening their customers without knowing the facts) doesn't deserve to be in business IMO.

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#173

Post by makomk »

richbradshaw wrote: post #25
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…

Situation #1 happens fairly regularly - do you have/can you do a video that can be sent to the company asking for links to be removed which clearly explains what is happening? We have had clients such as a small bathroom fitting company where the company that made the showers that they fit demanded that our client remove all links to them. There was a degree of bad feeling, as our client fit a lot of showers from tha…

I guess that's kind of beneficial for Google though - now if people want to find out more about the showers your client fits, they have to Google for them, and Google can sell lots of profitable advertising space on those searches to competing bathroom fitting companies. I wonder how often it's in Google's financial interest to break hyperlinking on the web?

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#175

Post by btown »

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…

If manually disavowing a link truly has the same effect as getting it removed by contacting the third-party site's webmaster, then why would people still ask for links to be removed? Is disavowal somehow penalized, i.e. it reduces but does not eliminate the penalty induced if no action had been taken? Or is Google's line that the penalty would be eliminated, but people don't trust that Google's algorithms work the way it says they do, and still ask for the takedown to be safe?

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#176

Post by RealGeek »

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…

Yes, we get tons of spams on our blogs and forums.

Thanks to Google for creating these parasites. The link-spam problem has been caused by Google in the first place.

I don't remember getting such spam in a pre-Google Internet world.

Small website owners like us may not have the technology and human resources to combat such spam. Therefore, we are caught up in the fire and get penalized by Google.

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#177

Post by mixedbit »

To support the point from the article. StackOverflow had to put significant effort to figure out a policy that would allow some links to have a 'nofollow' attribute but wouldn't impede organic traffic from Google (see a discussion around this questions: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/51156).

Such things should be handled automatically by the ranking algorithm. High quality sites shouldn't need to research what are the ranking algorithm internals. Today most sites prefer to stay on the safe side and put 'nofollow' on everything, which is detrimental for original content creators.

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#178

Post by 205guy »

OPA_Member wrote: post #75
Matt_Cutts wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 info…

I've read the thread up to here, and I do think Google is to blame for some heavy-handedness and some rather tone-deaf spokespeople (not that Matt_Cutts ever identified himself as speaking for Google, though he acts like it). But I think the bigger point that everybody is missing is that the Internet has become awash in all sorts of information, "good" and "bad," well-curated and spammy, human- and machine-generated, white-hat and black-hat. Just because YOU post information, and post a blog article about how it is good information, doesn't make it so or not so to an objective observer.

Google is what it is: trying to sift through all that information algorithmically and using some forms of AI so it can extract what humans think is good information. I agree that a good forum that has good policies is getting hurt by some of google's actions, but it's the larger system, not Google. To make an analogy: almost everybody drives and everybody uses roads, but nobody should say: I'm a good driver or I don't drive, I've never been in an accident, therefore I cannot be in an accident. With all the information and intents behind such information on the Internet, and with google as the self-appointed traffic laws, there is still bound to be some collateral damage, sometimes because of how Google tries to deal with the dreck.

As an aside, one can view Google as a just one way of monetizing information on the Internet, competing and co-existing with many other ways. You can also view it as a giant AI algorithm that gets rewarded (advertising revenue) when it finds the good information that humans are looking for and defends itself against others who have other interests.

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#179

Post by neurobro »

I can't help but wonder why Google thinks links from OP's site are "unnatural" (assuming they're all natural). E.g. is this a consequence of allowing do-follow links in comments - and if so, does vigilant moderation make a difference? Or perhaps an indication that the site was compromised and there are pages of spam hidden off in a corner somewhere?

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#180

Post by RealGeek »

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…

If my website is getting spammy links, which I did not create. Additionally, it is out of my control to create / edit / remove those links.

In such scenario, how does Google determines if I created the links? Does Google have precognitive abilities or it can spy on my communication channels (Gmail, Google Voice, Hangouts etc.) to figure out if I am innocent?

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