241–250 of 306 posts
>As a publisher I refuse to nofollow any links, outside of banners and advertisements. I compel you to do the same. No. No, you don't. You implore. If you compel, I rebel. Also, if someone doesn't want you linking to their site, shouldn't it be more a case of "Whatever. Your loss."? It's one thing if you're pointing out fraud, abuse, illegal acts or unethical behavior (in which case, you'd probably be posting the evi…
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>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…
> All these resources and can't even distinguish a link farm from a legitimate site? Doesn't sound believable. The Google webspam team seems to prefer psychology over technology to solve the problem, especially recently. Nearly everything that's come out of Matt Cutt's mouth in the last 18 months or so has been a scare tactic. IMO all this does is further encourage the development of "churn and burn" websites from bl…
>Nearly everything that's come out of Matt Cutt's mouth in the last 18 months or so has been a scare tactic.the bizarre thing is the gap in perceptions internal to Google versus external. https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/449008706655510528 https://polldaddy.com/poll/7916680/
>IMO all this does is further encourage the development of "churn and burn" websites from blackhats who have being penalized in their business plan.Absolutely. churn & burn sites, and then some mixed in parasitic hosting on sites which are already highly trusted.
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).
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>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…
Now you're talking about a malicious attack. If that's what it takes for this to be a real issue then I don't think many people need to be too concerned.
The cost of throwing scummy links at a website is under $100.
And if their first $5, $10, or $20 test doesn't work? Then so what for them. They put it on cron job and throw another $20 at it again and again. http://www.seobook.com/images/sape-sape-sape.gif
The key point here is that there's a 100X or 1000X gap between 4 figures & 6 to 7 figures. The cost of burning things to a crisp is much lower than building them up. Whenever incentive structures have a 1000-fold difference in outcomes the path of least resistance becomes a popular path.
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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.
Ask Google engineers how they feel about centralization of power in telecom or finance or politics & they will tell you it is the worst thing ever http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik1AK56FtVc
Yet that same sort of centralization is fine when it is Google.
Those same engineers will admit that any algorithm has some level of false positives & false negatives. They may try to minimize these, but they can't make them zero.
The other thing which gets very little coverage, but is crucially important is that in spite of already having a monopoly market position Google keeps buying search marketshare with: their secret Android partner contracts, Firefox default search placement, iOS default search placement, Flash embedded into Chrome (so security updates happen in the background without sending you to a download site where trash can be bundled in with the update) & Flash security updates that hit all other web browsers coming bundled with Chrome bundleware which sets Chrome as your default browser, etc.
If Google decides they don't like you (for any reason), then you need searchers to use a different search engine in a browser which isn't paid off by Google for default placement. And you need to hope that users are savvy enough to repeatedly say "no thank you" to the automatically bundled Chrome install with their frequent Flash updates.
Google mentions how anything is only a click away or similar, but most people tend to use defaults.
When someone changes those defaults on Chrome users, that's a horrible user experience & the "hijacked" settings must be reset. http://chrome.blogspot.com/2014/01/clean-up-your-hijacked-se... But when those defaults are paid for by Google or changed through Google bundleware it is "a great user experience."
If Google believes their marketshare is a reflection of their superior search offering, they are welcome to stop buying default search placement in other web browsers & stop bundling Chrome installs on Flash security updates. But currently they are spending north of a billion Dollars a year on these activities, which indicates they clearly feel there is significant value to them.
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But in this case they didn't spam. The op's site linked naturally to that site, and that site's admin got a message from Google that the op's link is unnatural (when it was natural). That's what's wrong with this picture. The link was perfectly valid and yet Google recommended that site's admin to disavow the natural link, simply because Google's algorithm isn't good enough to see what's natural and what isn't. So hi…
higherpurpose, nowhere in the original article did it say that Google said the link was bad. This was a request from a random site (we don't know which one, since the post dropped that detail), and the op can certainly ignore the link removal request.
The whole point is, Google spreads FUD to paper over its inadequate algorithm. People believe and look up to you as a source of truth. However, you take that trust, and you ask people to do your dirty work. That means more work for them, and not every small business has all sorts extra time money to spend on stuff like that. This is not to mention that there are probably a bunch of other more important things they could be doing. (and I know you know this, your friendly face is the head of FUD over at Google)
With all of your power and authority, you have a responsibility be more honest and straightforward. Not everyone knows better, and when people end up listening to your Google/self serving advice, they are ruining the open and free nature of the internet.
This wouldn't make me so salty, but the complete BS and favoritism exhibited by you and Google is obnoxious. So, sometimes, it might be better if you just shut up.
sorry if there are any typos etc, my (virtual) keyboard is spazzing out.
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"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 wa…
So then what's the difference between disavows and having the links removed? Getting the links removed costs far more time & money. And it gives Google a data mining stream of feedback they can leverage to dish out further penalties.
Google requires some of the links to be removed not because it improves the web, but rather their goals & interests are aligned with punishment. They want to add cost & uncertainty to SEO in order to discourage investment in SEO from entities not formally connected to Google.
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"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…
Your comments on this post are a great demonstration of the attitude that is driving me off Google properties, as quickly as I can find viable replacements.
Don't like YouTube's copyright claim issues on video game playthroughs? Use Twitch. Oh wait, what's that? Google is trying to buy Twitch. http://kotaku.com/report-youtube-is-buying-twitch-for-1-bill... Oooops.
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> Google's customers are its users. No, Google's customers are its advertisers. They're the ones who pay money to Google. I agree with your general point though, the algorithm isn't perfect and sometimes it goofs. What I think people are having a negative reaction to is Matt Cutts' seemingly obtuse responses, as though he doesn't even understand the issue at hand (Google's actions distorting natural behavior), so he…
The icing on the cake is that Matt Cutts is obviously a very bright and very perceptive person so it's easy to assume that his not understanding is intentional. That would be right out of the PR/Politics "avoiding awkward questions 101" textbook but it's a scummy tactic.
Think of some of the stereotypes of engineers. Many can code but struggle to communicate. Matt can code, has his name on many patents, leads a team, makes hundreds or thousands of videos, regularly keynotes at conferences & interacts with thousands of people, was GoogleGuy for years, participates in the comments here, was an expert in some of the past lawsuits against Google ... he has basically had a near infinite number of opportunities to put his foot in his mouth & yet how many times has he ever done it? Almost never, if ever.
About the only times I think he has potentially missed at all was the "breaking their spirits" bit on TWIG, and then two minor bits in a few YouTube videos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muZuX9OaMLo&feature=youtu.be&... "We got less spam and so it looks like people don't like the new algorithms as much."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jap11IIxfw "the gap between what you can get away with and what google says you can get away with is getting smaller all the time"
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Who do you know who has as much media exposure as he has had who hasn't repeatedly put their foot in their mouth? For me, that answer is nobody.
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What makes Matt's performance even more impressive is how scummy some of Google's policies have been, even as he came off smelling like roses. There are endless debates on how reasonable it is for Google to infer intent on links & so on, yet at the same time some of the past Google executive emails have quotes in them like:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/google-faces-new-pres... "As with all of our policies, we do not verify what these sites actually do, only what they claim to do." (for AdWords advertisers)
http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/23/3906310/the-no-hire-paper-... "I would prefer that Omid do it verbally since I don't want to create a paper trail over which we can be sued later? Not sure about this. thanks Eric"
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"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…
How do you feel about Google sponsoring educational seminars for market regulators where they do not disclose their sponsorship, actively conceal it, and request the entity putting on the sponsorship do the same thing?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-google-is-transfo...
It is also worth mentioning that when Google was lobbying against regulation they indeed DID control & manipulate the placement of favorable media masquerading as regular content:
"the staff and professors at GMU’s law center were in regular contact with Google executives, who supplied them with the company’s arguments against antitrust action and helped them get favorable op-ed pieces published, according to the documents obtained by The Post."
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Another thing with the line of thinking based on pureness...should companies which have repeatedly been caught rigging actual physical markets (e.g. municipal bonds, California energy, LIBOR, interest rate swaps, forex, etc.) in the real world get a penalty by Google for it?
Or is it reasonable that they take their outsized gains from their market rigging behavior & invest some small portion of it into buying out smaller competitors, lobbying & writing regulations to harm smaller competitors, buy some feel good brand ads & do various charity donations to paint a picture of themselves?
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I also want to quote the following past statement from a Google executive about the AdWords ads Google puts directly in the search results:
"As with all of our policies, we do not verify what these sites actually do, only what they claim to do."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/google-faces-new-pres...
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and, some icing on the cake, ... ;)
check out the keyword rich deep links to some of Google's affiliate offers on BeatThatQuote.com (for credit cards, car insurance, etc.)
Google bought BTQ & then put a bunch of cross-site keyword rich deep links on it. is that natural? how is that any different than buying links?
