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Google is Breaking the Internet

jeremypalmer.com

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Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#281

Post by mariehaynes »

PavlovsCat wrote: post #114
jonknee wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Google doesn't tell you exactly what links to remove when you have an unnatural links penalty. They'll often give you 2-3 examples but then it's up to you to determine which links were made with the intentions of manipulating Google and then asking for removal.

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#282

Post by freehunter »

gcb0 wrote: post #270
milesf wrote: post #51

My solution has been to recommend friend and family to switch to http://DuckDuckGo.com (or just http://ddg.gg ) This may seem to be an impossible task, but in days not too long ago people switched search providers often. I went from the curated links of Yahoo, to Lycos, to AltaVista, to Webcrawler, to Google, and now DDG. Google got a lot of mileage out of my in my mind with their motto "Don't be Evil", because I had…

what is the love this crowd has with duckduck?! it is nothing more than bing with EXTRA ads! also, it display a retarded "this page uses javascript. click here for the content" or something, every time i use it from my HTPC with firefox+noscript.

It's about not being tracked while you're searching.

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#283

Post by mnw21cam »

duskwuff wrote: post #202
greenyoda wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

You don't even need to formally challenge it. Any DMCA takedown request requesting that a link be removed is malformed, becuase it does not identify a copyrighted work that is being infringed. You can safely ignore such a request, or bounce it back requesting that the sender specify what copyrighted work is in question.

Yes, but the person receiving the DMCA request was the hosting service, which had no intention of being sane.

DMCA takedown notices cannot be ignored.

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#284

Post by mariehaynes »

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…

I think that a lot of people are missing the point that sites that are being penalized or demoted in the Google search results because of unnatural linking received that penalty because they were cheating.

When webmasters are writing to ask for a link to be removed it's because they believe that that link could possibly be one that was made with the intention of increasing their PageRank and manipulating Google. BUT...sometimes it's hard to tell whether a link was naturally placed or whether it was one that a former SEO made on their behalf. As such, it's certainly possible that an email requesting link removal could be sent out in error. If that's the case, then ignoring the request is fine...or even better, writing back to inform them that the link was not purchased, solicited or self made would be really helpful.

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#285

Post by discardorama »

nfoz wrote: post #109
discardorama wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Heh... that was the idea. :-)

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#286

Post by jroseattle »

mike_hearn wrote: post #195
jroseattle wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 w…

Now now, I think you're the one being disingenuous. Google's algorithm is not "everyone elses problem". If someone doesn't care about what appears on search result pages, they can just ignore everything search engines say: all their guidelines, all their advice, just chuck it out the window. Your website will still work fine. This blog does not indicate some fundamental breaking of the web. It indicates a guy got a r…

> It indicates a guy got a random email from a random website, that he is free to ignore if he wants

It's reasonably clear to me this email was anything but random. Take Google out of the picture and this communication never happens. Both the sender and receiver are taking actions with consideration of one single point -- how does this affect my Google search ranking?

If Google weren't the literal default entryway into the Internet, your argument would be valid. There is precedence in this scenario as well. Back in the 90s, many people said the same thing regarding Microsoft and attaining placement on the Windows desktop for new shipping PCs. This was a key element of the DOJ trial.

The argument that a powerful intermediary has no effect on the conduct of others is simply choosing to ignore certain facts.

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#287

Post by discardorama »

jqm wrote: post #208
discardorama wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I explained why in the first post. To be friendly and a generally good person. Legality was not a reason given so I'm not sure why you feel that's an argument. In this case, the guy posting the link does have a bad reputation, which is no doubt the reason for the search ranking hit. His deliberate posting and refusal to remove it makes him a bit of an ass. And "Why" one should not behave as an ass is self evident in…

> But we may not agree on this as evidenced by your last sentence.

That was the point of my last sentence: even though I asked that replies be in agreement, you still chose to reply. It's the same as someone asking "please don't link to me", but everyone is still free to link. That's the way discourse works, and that's how linking should work too.

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#288

Post by discardorama »

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…

> For example, we might say "we believe site-a.com has a problem with spam or inorganic links. An example link is site-b.com/spammy-link.html."

If you are able to identify problem links, you can just ignore them. Or am I missing something?

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#289

Post by EGreg »

patrickmay wrote: post #135
EGreg wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 customers are its users. No, Google's customers are primarily its advertisers. Optimizing advertising revenue has some overlap with pleasing users, as you note, but if a decision needed to be made between pleasing users and increasing revenue, there's no doubt about which way it would go.

I often heard that google's customers are its advertisers, and I want to ask why the users aren't considered end-customers since they and their interaction with google provides the majority of the MONEY that feeds the ecosystem that feeds google?

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#290

Post by jqm »

discardorama wrote: post #287
jqm wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I explained why in the first post. To be friendly and a generally good person. Legality was not a reason given so I'm not sure why you feel that's an argument. In this case, the guy posting the link does have a bad reputation, which is no doubt the reason for the search ranking hit. His deliberate posting and refusal to remove it makes him a bit of an ass. And "Why" one should not behave as an ass is self evident in…

> But we may not agree on this as evidenced by your last sentence. That was the point of my last sentence: even though I asked that replies be in agreement, you still chose to reply. It's the same as someone asking "please don't link to me", but everyone is still free to link. That's the way discourse works, and that's how linking should work too.

hahaha

Ok, I take your very well made point.

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