128 replies to this topic

[mcanerin]

Ohhhh,

A debate on ethics - how can I pass this up? :laugh:

I honestly think what most people call "ethical" SEO would be better defined as compliant. Ethical is a value judgement - perhaps not a strong as moral, but it is there. Ethical and moral people would typically practise compliant SEO - but not always.

I can imagine a situation where being compliant would be unethical and even immoral - for example, in the case of a search engine run by spammers who reward self-serving trickery. Within the boundries of THAT one engine, it would be ethical to observe these expected codes of behavior - and doing so would be "compliant" as well.

The reason people consider Google to be so great is that they generally reward what most people would consider to be ethical and even moral behavior in their own lives, and therfore it's easy to think of being compliant with Google as being ethical. But if Google turned evil tomorrow this would no longer be the case.

Ethical SEO is based on a decision-making framework that produces the best net outcome for searchers, search engines and site owners, respecting the rights and roles of each of those parties.

I couldn't agree more.

I will continue to use compliant when I talk about specific technologies and techniques, and use ethical when talking about specific or general approaches towards SEO, but that is my own way of organising things in my head.

In most cases in this forum, we are talking about compliant SEO, since we are dealing with things like metatags and flash and landing pages and so forth.

But there could be a time to talk about ethical SEO - but in this case it's ethical in terms of the good of internet users as a whole rather than ethical within the guidlines of Google - though it can sometimes look like it's nearly the same thing, it's not.

My opinion, as usual
Ian

[compar]

One last kick at the can. Here is what American Heritage Dictionary says:

SYNONYMS moral, ethical, virtuous, righteous. These adjectives mean in accord with right or good conduct. Moral applies to personal character and behavior, especially sexual conduct: “Our moral sense dictates a clearcut preference for these societies which share with us an abiding respect for individual human rights” (Jimmy Carter). Ethical stresses idealistic standards of right and wrong: “Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants” (Omar N. Bradley).

So the two terms are not unrelated as has been suggested. But they have to do with rather lofty principles of personal character and idealistic standards of right and wrong. Now in my mind it is ridiculous to suggest that a SE's guidleines can set or dictate moral or ethical standards. So programming within the frame work of the SE's guidlines is to comply.

Now lying to your client or exposing them to the hazards of non compliant practices without their full knowledge and approval can be considered immoral (bad personal behavior) or unethical (violates a standard of right or wrong).

But cloaking pages of your own web site has nothing to do with morals or ethics, it is non compliant with the SEs guidelines.

If someone is caught speeding 10 miles per hour over the limit, you may say "bad, bad boy". But you would never suggest that the person was unethical or immoral. And surely the laws of the land have greater moral or ethical force than Google's Guidelines.

In my opoinion, and it is not even a humble opinion, the use of the word ethical in regard to writing web site code is a gross misuse of the language and unsupportable.

Edited by compar, 19 September 2003 - 12:37 AM.

[Alan Perkins]

In my opoinion, and it is not even a humble opinion, the use of the word ethical in regard to writing web site code is a gross misuse of the language and unsupportable.

I don't agree with your not-so-humble opinion. I suppose, since I don't agree that the use of the word "ethical" is unsupportable, I'd better try to support it.

Take a look at these ethical frameworks search results. Read some of the documents listed.

IMO, whichever framework you select, that ethical framework provides a means for evaluating your choices as an SEO.

From one of the search results, "Thinking Ethically: A Framework for Moral Decision Making":

These five approaches suggest that once we have ascertained the facts, we should ask ourselves five questions when trying to resolve a moral issue:

What benefits and what harms will each course of action produce, and which alternative will lead to the best overall consequences?

What moral rights do the affected parties have, and which course of action best respects those rights?

Which course of action treats everyone the same, except where there is a morally justifiable reason not to, and does not show favoritism or discrimination?

Which course of action advances the common good?

Which course of action develops moral virtues?

This method, of course, does not provide an automatic solution to moral problems. It is not meant to. The method is merely meant to help identify most of the important ethical considerations. In the end, we must deliberate on moral issues for ourselves, keeping a careful eye on both the facts and on the ethical considerations involved.

As I said, ethical SEO is based on a decision-making framework that produces the best net outcome for searchers, search engines and site owners, respecting the rights and roles of each of those parties. Such a decision-making framework can be said to be ethical.

But cloaking pages of your own web site has nothing to do with morals or ethics, it is non compliant with the SEs guidelines

Two reasons cloaking is not the most ethical approach are:

• It fails, actively, to respect the rights and role of the search engine to deliver search results based on what searchers will actually see - one of the main components of the search algorithm (the set of on-the-page criteria)
  
• It fails to recognise, and therefore correct, the fundamental problem with the page (usually one of accessibility), meaning that lower quality pages can flourish; rather than fixing the fundamental problem and thereby making a better Web site.

I can imagine a situation where being compliant would be unethical and even immoral - for example, in the case of a search engine run by spammers who reward self-serving trickery. Within the boundries of THAT one engine, it would be ethical to observe these expected codes of behavior - and doing so would be "compliant" as well.

IMO, the ethical thing to do in that instance would be to try as hard as possible not to be listed in that engine. Engines have to be allowed to stew in their own juices, IMO. If they can't come up with a good relevancy algorithm, let them lose out to a different engine that can. The net outcome is that good engines survive and bad engines don't - which is the best outcome.

In most cases in this forum, we are talking about compliant SEO, since we are dealing with things like metatags and flash and landing pages and so forth.

IMO, the difference between compliant and ethical SEO is as follows:

• Compliant SEO is SEO in line with the currently published guidelines.
• Ethical SEO is SEO based on an ethical decision-making process (including respect for the rights and roles of the search engine) which, assuming the search engine guidelines are ethical too , will always be compliant

One problem with compliant SEO is that it is possible to be compliant with one search engine, but not another (because their algorithms are different). Or compliant one day, but not the next (when the published guidelines change). Ethical SEO does not suffer this problem.

[Jill]

I agree completely with Alan on this. I don't generally use the term "ethical SEO" however, but it's certainly far superior to "compliant SEO."

To me, if you have to read the search engine guidelines to begin with, you're already coming at SEO from the wrong angle.

There are fundamental rights and wrongs with everything we do in life, and we don't need a rule book to know what they are. Some people obviously are more comfortable having some sort of book or codes all spelled out for them, but those are the people who will forever be questioning if what they're doing is right or wrong. (If you have to ask...?)

Rules are open for interpretation. Fundamental rights and wrongs are not.

Bottom line is we all need to find our way, both in SEO and in life. We may stumble a few times and try to push the limit thinking "it's not so bad" but in our hearts and our minds, we do know what is right and what is wrong. (Except for those who are truly psychopaths who don't know right from wrong.) We all have the ability to choose how far to the right or to the wrong we wish to travel, and that will often change as we ourselvse change and grow as an SEO and as a person.

A lot of the decisions we make will depend on how egocentric we are. If we are at a point where all we care about is "me" (or my company or my client), then we will act accordingly. Personally, I think that is the view of those who haven't quite grown into themselves. (Although I understand that a client would prefer you to JUST think about them, it's not necessarily the right frame of mind.)

This is pretty much what Alan is saying, I believe, only in a little bit different words. We're usually on the same page with this sort of stuff (after he makes me think about it for a few months or years )

Jill

[Ron Carnell]

Ethics and morality are only easy, Jill, when they also coincide with "good" results. Do a search on ethical dilemmas or read a little Aristotle, and I suspect you'll agree that "questioning if what they're doing is right or wrong" isn't such a bad thing to do.

Is it ethical to reveal something a client told you in confidence? What if the client explained how he broke a law? What if you had reason to believe the client intended to kill someone tomorrow? These are exactly the kind of ethical dilemmas many lawyers, as just one example, face every day. They also, I think, illustrate why Allan's framework for producing "the best net outcome for searchers, search engines and site owners" is at best simplistic, and at worst naïve. A lawyer is both an officer of the court and an advocate for his client, but the justice he serves often puts those two roles at odds. The only thing that makes the system work (and that point could certainly be argued pro or con), is a formal set of rules and laws which define what is and isn't acceptable ethical behavior. Would anyone really want to argue that the lawyers "should just know" what is right and wrong? Allan's "best net outcome" will remain subjective and illusive until the industry, as a collective, makes it arbitrary. I honestly doubt that will ever happen, at least not to the extent we've seen in the legal or medical profession. The stakes just aren't as high, and the best we can probably hope for is something akin to the "best practices" standards of the accounting and banking industry.

[Alan Perkins]

We're not talking about clients killing people, Ron, we're talking about compliant SEO and ethical SEO.

How do you comply with this?

Google Quality Guidelines

These quality guidelines cover the most common forms of deceptive or manipulative behavior, but Google may respond negatively to other misleading practices not listed here, (e.g. tricking users by registering misspellings of well-known web sites). It's not safe to assume that just because a specific deceptive technique isn't included on this page, Google approves of it.

Google suggests one way of complying:

Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles listed above will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit.

That's all you need, IMO. Principles, not rules. And that's another way of summing up the difference between ethical and compliant SEO.

[compar]

For Google to write:

Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles listed...

is a travesty. They are talking like they are some moral or ethical philosopher who have just handed down the overriding principles of life. They have not just written the US constitution. They at best have written some guidelines for SEO technicians and webmasters.

SEO practitioners are simply technicians. Our work hasn't got moral or ethical out reach. I think that for us to pretend it has is pompous self aggrandizement.

Edited by Jill, 19 September 2003 - 02:06 PM.

[Ron Carnell]

No, Alan, we're definitely not talking life and death issues, and that's why I don't think we'll ever see a formalized code of ethics universally accepted in this industry. But, for that same reason, I think Ethical SEO lacks any concrete meaning. Without formalization, it is too subjective and open to interpretation. How tall is tall? It depends in large part on whether you're Michael J. Fox or Michael Jordan. And even more importantly, it depends on what you're trying to reach.

FWIW, Alan, I place no greater faith in Compliant SEO. As you've pointed out, the SE rules are too vague and ill defined to even be called rules. The "No shoes, no shirt, no service" analogy falls apart because most restaurant I frequent don't tell me, "Oh, by the way, it has to be a long-sleeved shirt" after I've already started to eat my meal. But even beyond that, the so-called spirit of the SE not-rules has become so twisted as to be meaningless.

The spirit of the principles rather strongly suggests that ANY optimization of a search page is non-compliant. You've said before, and I largely agree, that we should create pages as if we didn't know a search engine existed. But, we DO know, and that genie can't just be pushed back into the bottle. The feeding frenzy for external links is proof, to me, that the spirit of compliance never survived its birth. What do you think the topic in this forum (and all other SEO forums) would be if either DMOZ or Yahoo suddenly started using JavaScript for links? How many would care that those links still benefit the general public just as much as links that Google would credit for PR?

IMO, Ethical SEO exists only for the person defining their own ethics, and Compliant SEO exists only for those who have no idea what the letters SEO mean.

Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to leave us with much, does it?

Anyone around here read Ayn Rand?

[Alan Perkins]

All I can say from your examples Alan is that both you and Google are getting carried away with your own self importance.

Thanks for your opinion.

They are talking like they are some moral or ethical philosopher who have just handed down the overriding principles of life.

I disagree. IMO, they are talking like some search engine who has been badgered into producing some guidelines (pretty good ones, as search engines go) but feel they need to qualify those guidelines in an attempt to stop them being treated as rules.

SEO practitioners are simply technicians. Our work hasn't got moral or ethical out reach.

It's the other way around. Morals and ethics affect the work you do.

[Alan Perkins]

How many would care that those links still benefit the general public just as much as links that Google would credit for PR?

They would not, as not all of the general public can read JavaScript, but all of the general public can read a plain HREF.

IMO, Ethical SEO exists only for the person defining their own ethics, and Compliant SEO exists only for those who have no idea what the letters SEO mean.

Then you don't need an SEO No-no's forum. What are you doing here?

[compar]

It's the other way around.  Morals and ethics affect the work you do.

It is obvious that we will never agree on this, but in my vocabulary morals and ethics have to do with things like human rights, freedom, equality, justice, feeding the poor, fighting the aids epidemic in Africa and capital punishment, to name a few.

Now for me whether or not someone places an invisible link on a web page or practices keyword stuffing is not in the same league. To use the term morals or ethics in reference to these practices is a ridiculous overstatement of the importance of SEO.

I am also concerned that this usage devalues and demeans the importance of the words and concepts of morality and ethics.

[qwerty]

I don't want to get myself into an argument about whether "morality" and "ethics" are different from each other. I wouldn't win.

But Bob, just because something isn't earth-shaking, it doesn't mean that you can't apply words like "moral" to it. It's immoral to steal 5 cents from a blind panhandler. It won't change the world; it probably won't even ruin the panhandler's day. But it's still wrong.

[compar]

But Bob, just because something isn't earth-shaking, it doesn't mean that you can't apply words like "moral" to it. It's immoral to steal 5 cents from a blind panhandler. It won't change the world; it probably won't even ruin the panhandler's day. But it's still wrong.

So we may agree that this is on the low end of the ethical/moral continuum. But are you saying placing an invisible link on a web site is tantamount to stealing from a blind man?

We have philosophers, theologian, and governments who say it is wrong to steal. All you are arguing about with your example is degree.

But my whole point is the SEs don't have this same moral or ethical authority. Google's guidelines were not handed down by God or Allah. They were not advocated by Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mills or Thomas Jefferson. They were not written and enacted by duly elected members of any government.

A closer analogy than stealing from a blind man would be the person who opens a new printer and consciously ignores the "Read me first" manual before forging ahead and plugging in the printer. Are you going to question his ethics as a printer installer?

[Scottie]

Hmnn.... nope. Not a good analogy, Bob IMO. Installing your own printer only affects you.

Manipulating the SERP's by using tricks to get ahead affects the quality of the search engine, the satisfaction of the searcher, and your competition, not just whether or not your printer works or doesn't work.

In my mind, it is closer to submitting false/misleading information in a press release to print media.

If they run your information, it will make them look bad and it could upset their readers. They have an obligation to check the facts- that doesn't mean erroneous information won't slip through.

An ethical press agency wouldn't attempt to promote information that is false, while an unethical agency would if it is likely to get his/her client some ink. After all, their primary concern is their client, right? The degree to which the information is misleading might make it illegal, but more likely not.

It is up to the newspaper/magazine to sort out the misleading stuff, but that doesn't mean they invite people to send them crap.

[compar]

Hmnn.... nope.  Not a good analogy, Bob IMO.  Installing your own printer only affects you.

I didn't say it was perfect. I just said it was closer than the blind man analogy.