44 replies to this topic

[ChuckFinley]

I'm going to take a contrary position here.

Although none of our sites have received such a message this will be our position should this happen.

Dear Mr. Google:

We purchased advertising on another site. Apparently you intend to use your virtual monopoly to
force us to end this advertising or suffer the consequences. As this advertising competes directly
with your adword monopoly we believe your actions violate the law.

We'll see you in court.

regards

CC Your states attorney general, consumer affairs, (your relevant gov't agency)

Hi @gmartfin

Hmmmmm....could this be in restraint of Free Trade and be in violation of Federal laws? I'll ask my one of my colleagues that specialize in that type of law.

Please join in the conversation here, we'd love you to add to the conversation --> http://www.highranki...__fromsearch__1

On a more basic level, this is just a bad Branding and PR move for Google. They are just going out of their way to be stupid by to shining a light on all of their questionable practices such as -- privacy (the Feds are hot on the trail now), fair trade and deceptive advertising practices.

And, now they chose to go after small businesses in the middle of a 2nd Great Depression and put them of business and their employees in the unemployment lines. What a bunch of geniuses!!!

You couldn't make this stuff up!!! What a PR nightmare!

They've chosen to put a hatchet man out front, in the form of Matt Cutts, rather than an evangelist such as Guy Kawasaki was for Apple. Seemed to work pretty well for Apple.....hmmmmmm............ One is about building buy-in and a customer base that is ecstatic about the company, Apple in this example, the other is about Power and Domination, Google.

Sergey Brin is over at Google worrying about the oppressive forces in the world that are trying to shut him down. --> http://www.webmaster....htm#msg4442138

It serves him right, now he knows how it feels and he's going to get little support in his fight. What goes around comes around -- there are 1,000's of small businesses that are worried about the oppression of Google! Businesses that got suckered into Google's game with free everything and now find out that Google was really trying to give them a taste of the drug so they could force it on them in the form of their advertising products. Having said that, it's a free world (at least in the US) and they can use that business model if they want, but I think it's a really dumb way to go. It's been tried before and has never succeeded.

Have you ever tried Facebook Ads or the other larger Media Networks who are all highly reputable and will appreciate your business?

Edited by ChuckFinley, 18 April 2012 - 03:00 PM.

[ChuckFinley]

Hi Jill,

This is exactly the kind of thing I've been talking about. This young lady is in a highly risky situation. And, if Google penalizes her, they won't communicate with her and it will take months and hours and hours and hours of work to resolve it. If you don't have an established brand, it's easier to just go get a new domain.

Hi Dabblingum.

You need to find a programmer with a security/hacking skill set -- quick.

You need to find someone who knows what they are doing to remove those links, Now!!!

If Google penalizes your site over this, it will likely be a long and painful process and they won't tell you what you have to do to meet their Quality Guideline and get the penalty lifted. I know it's not fair....... I hope you don't depend on that site for your living.

Edited by ChuckFinley, 18 April 2012 - 03:17 PM.

[Jill]

And, if Google penalizes her, they won't communicate with her and it will take months and hours and hours and hours of work to resolve it. If you don't have an established brand, it's easier to just go get a new domain.

It's not up to Google to fix people's broken or hacked sites. That's your developer or sometimes your SEO's job.

[AriM]

I wonder if anyone (Google?) has considered how to handle situation where a competitor "helped" by signing your site up for any of those link programs, or simply adding your link to questionable blog networks without your knowledge. Isn't this new penalty a virtual invitation for cut-throat competitors? In the past, the general understanding was that Google might discount, or ignore such links, in part because there's no way to know if the site owners actually did that. An actual penalty may open the doors to a "wild west" link wars.

[Jill]

AriM I'm sure they do consider that heavily.

[ChuckFinley]

Google considers lots of things like -- how their automated algorithm can't possibly prevent them from victimizing 1,000's of sites that are just honest, hard working business owners and how they don't want to have to spend any money on customer service to correct the unintended consequences.

It's worse than what you think @AriM. Google's mass link penalties against sites has caused a whole new industry to spring up.

Google -- negative seo

These are businesses that will bomb your competitors with spam links to get them penalized or banned. All they would have to do is join a blog network, pay $500 to point a bunch of blog network links at your site, then report the blog network to Google.

The next time the "unnatural link" algorithm runs, Bam! your site is gone.

[chrishirst]

Chuck, We do realise that you are waging a personal vendetta against Google because you feel that the Google deity has unjustly punished you for what is probably your own stupid fault in the first place.

"Google" is not a vengeful deity or a demon waiting to smite you down when you transgress from the path of righteousness, It is simply a machine, it does not think, it simply analyses input and ranks the result, and if the "naughty" scale tips further than the "nice" scale you drop down. It is none of this silly -nn "penalty" being given, all that has happened is that the balance has tipped slightly the wrong may, from your PoV of course.

The secret is, not that it is particulary secret, having been known and practised by many savvy people since circa 1993, is to keep piling the weight on the "nice" side. Then for example, some kind person buying advertising on your behalf will not cause any "harm" because your "nice" weight can withstand such silly tricks.


HOWEVER if you are dumb enough to rely on "rankings" and consider that useful traffic can ONLY arrive on your pages from Google referrals ..... then quite honestly, you deserve all that you get, or not get as the case maybe.

Edited by chrishirst, 19 April 2012 - 09:57 AM.

[1dmf]

But if they're banning sites from their search results because they are buying ads on other sites, it's totally a violation of laws.

What laws are they Jill? i thought it was G!s engine and they can do what they want with it?

Is there now legislation holding Google to account over the websites in their index and how they 'penalise' them?

[Jill]

Laws regarding restraint of trade, I think.

[piskie]

Differs from Country to Country.
Although here in the UK, I expect it is very much under the auspices of the EU.
Maybe something in the realm of Anti-Trust.

[chrishirst]

Google do not actually categorically say that you cannot buy advertising links on other pages, which would of course be an unfair restraint placed on business owners, what they do say is do NOT buy advertising links that are intended to subvert or manipulate their ranking algorithm. Which in actual fact SHOULD make the system fairer, as it means that owners who have the budget to buy advertising links will get no unfair benefit over owners who do NOT have the budget.

Think of it as buying TV adverts in the half-time superbowl slot, the companies with big budgets who can afford them, do so, and get a bigger slice of the sports viewing audience than a company that can only afford a slot in the televising of the inter-schools tiddly-winks championship games.

Their [Google] "warnings" are a simple message of, "Either YOU make sure your [paid] advertising links do not affect rankings, or WE WILL and you won't like it when that happens"

[AriM]

AriM I'm sure they do consider that heavily.

So how does that come into play in the situation we're discussing here? Google doesn't seem to say "if these unnatural links were not added by you or your agent, then just let us know and we'll simply ignore them"... They treat all these links as if they're the responsibility of the site owner and their's to clean up.

And Chrishirt, "nice" weight is not something the vast majority of site owners even worry about - they simply put up a web site, add a few meta-tags (if that) and go on running their businesses. The local roofing contractor isn't busy piling on the "nice" weight over time, and can definitely be harmed by an unscrupulous competitor signing him up on link farms.

[Jill]

Yeah, I don't know anymore. After I posted the above I saw a lot of stuff that has me wondering. See this thread on negative SEO. http://www.highranki...seo-is-working/

[1dmf]

Isn't the rel='nofollow' attribute supose to sort all this out?

[piskie]

If links point to your site from other low quality sites, you have no control to either rel='nofollow' or delete the link.
That is the whole negative SEO thing, it's done to you not by you.