It's not Google's job to make sure every webmaster has a "fair shot" at rankings. It's their job to make sure the best results appear when I search for something. In Google's eyes, having false negatives is worth not having false positives, and that's just the reality of the web.
Besides, it seems to me that these "problems" are only really thought of as problems by the type of people who put "search engine" in the title of their blog.
My parents run a small e-commerce business that has supported them for years; a team of a dozen people run everything from the little website to the shipping. All of their sales come from (mostly accidental) SEO and Amazon.
The scary reality is that right now that entire operation could be destroyed by a competitor in a couple minutes if they knew how. It's not hard to find a package on Fiverr that includes 1,000 spammy links for $5, so a competitor could easily direct 5,000 spammy links (more than the entire amount of links directed at them right now) for $50.
Is that use case emotionally loaded? Sure. But it isn't extreme. I recognize that the company only exists because Google gave it a chance to, but the idea that the livelihoods of a dozen people could vanish if someone got a little bit ambitious deserves a better response than what Google has given it.
Google's current options for removing negative SEO are very hand-wavy, mostly because they don't really believe negative SEO is a large issue. Admittedly, potential for negative SEO is a cop-out black-hatters use to cover their tracks more than it is a real threat, but that doesn't mean Google can ignore it.
Google's current solutions for combating negative SEO: "Ask webmasters to remove the links" - a complete joke and everyone knows it, and the Link Disavow Tool, which is pretty difficult to use, and Google admits that it may be several months before the rankings are updated after links are disavowed.
Why? You're not paying them to list your website. Meanwhile I am paying them, in ad impressions, to look at your listing. If you want reliable returns, buy an ad instead.
EDIT: What I am trying to say is, it doesn't matter to me if I see "Jack's Pastries" or "Jill's Pastries" in my search results. Your livelihood is not Google's responsibility, unless you buy ad space from them.
Their job is to show the best results for a given search query. If my website is the best but it doesn't appear at the top because a competitor has attacked it, Google isn't doing its job.
From a business level google's job is to sell ads, it sell ads by providing valuable search results 'for free', and one part of the intrinsic quality of the search results is that they are 'good' in the sense that you describe.
Aside from that google really doesnt owe anyone anything, if tomorrow google found that showing small businesses search results negatively affected their bottom line, your mom and pop ecommerce site and all like it would disappear (until searchers moved on to another service). Google's 'fairness' only exists and should be counted on as long as game theortic/min max optimization of bottom line happens to align googles interests with your own...
I'm speaking from a user level. If I'm a user and Google isn't showing me the best results, it's not doing its job for its users. If Google doesn't have users, its ad space isn't worth anything, and its business model ceases to exist.
Google is the epitome of a consumer web business model. They sell users. So yes, they have to have buyers, but their most important job is to have users to sell.
You are not Google's customer though. You are product sold to their customers. Your buying power, add viewing abilities, knowledge of your age, hobbies and other stats is what makes Google money by proving their add buying customers with quality "product".
> If Google doesn't have users, its ad space isn't worth anything, and its business model ceases to exist.
Yes but that is a second order effect. Basically the majority of "products" have to be convinced that Google is not good enough _and_ there is another alternative (I like DuckDuckGo for example), then as you say, people will stop using Google Search. Then if Gmail goes South, people stop using that. Then Android goes South, they start using iPhones. Eventually Google will provide a lower quality "product" to their customers and Google's stock will take a hit. However, don't be fooled into thinking you are Google's primary customer because you use them for search.
Isn't it a bit scary that the entire internet (and by association a huge chunk of the overall economy) is effectively beholden to a company that "doesn't owe anybody anything"?
I mean we wouldn't tolerate an energy supplier disconnected arbitrary supplies because they didn't feel like selling there any more.
It is scary, in that you have a near-monopoly, operating in a market that affects almost everyone who goes on-line to some degree, without much regulation.
Having said that, it's important to remember that without a site like Google, many of these small businesses wouldn't exist in the first place. For all the criticism, having a search engine that does a good if imperfect job is almost certainly a big net win for society. As long as that is the case, and as long as Google aren't actively/unreasonably harming anyone, I think we're a long way from saying they are dominant and dangerous enough to require statutory regulation, which would be the normal next step if an actual monopoly provider of an actually essential service was misbehaving.
In the case of subsidized, "merchant" (free-market, privately financed) energy suppliers, they do in fact disconnect when they don't feel like selling.
If you have a gas-powered merchant plant, and the spark spread isn't good, you turn it off until energy prices rise again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spark_spread
Isn't it ironic? Developers moved to the web to avoid becoming sharecroppers in Microsoft's fields, and now we are even more dependent on Google's goodwill. And what options are left? App stores.
Separate from the fact that a comparison between sharecropping and developing for Microsoft is absolutely absurd, pretending like the only jobs available in the developer community are dependent on either Google or app stores is ridiculous.
It's not ironic, and it's not true. Being a developer gives more freedom and more pay than the vast majority of jobs. The fact that there are some developer jobs that are gasp dependent on large companies in the field does nothing to change this.
It may sound absurd today, but there was a time when every small to medium-sized software company was trying to be successful, but not TOO successful, lest it attracted Microsoft's attention to its market.
And you're right that a developer/entrepreneur doesn't have only Google and app stores as choices, but the options don't go much further than that. Facebook and Twitter, perhaps? In the end, the company that controls your customer acquisition channel controls you.
From a business level google's job is to sell ads, it sell ads by providing valuable search results 'for free', and one part of the intrinsic quality of the search results is that they are 'good' in the sense that you describe.
I think this gets to the heart of the conflict of interest which Google experiences and those who depend on them are afraid of. On the one hand, they have a reputation for valuable and high-quality search results which are not vulnerable to gaming. On the other hand, they have an established monopoly on search, which will not disappear overnight, and a business selling ads which compete against their own search results for clicks. Their interests do not currently align with those who appear in their organic search results, except tangentially and in the long-term (as a way of keeping eyeballs on those results because everyone views them as trustworthy).
So there is a tension there as good search results mean less ad clicks short-term, and less ad clicks means less money for Google. In an ideal world for Google as a corporation, their first page would simply be search results, tailored to a user's request, with no organic search results whatsoever, and indeed, their space on the results page does have a growing advertising component (paid ads, G+, ads for google places or other services like shopping). Obviously at present Google has managed to walk that tightrope and provide great search results, downgrade spammy results and ignore bad links, while making money from advertising displayed with those results, but it's a delicate balance, and there are commercial pressures to improve advertising clicks, but no short-term commercial pressures to improve search result clicks.
If those results can be poisoned or gamed easily, it doesn't really affect Google in the short term, only in the long term, and only if users start to notice and desert their service (over a period of years probably) - that's not necessarily the case if users don't have many comparison points because of Google's scale and dominance. It might even be good for Google in the short term, as businesses start to buy more adwords visits when their organic results decline. I'm not trying to suggest there is some conspiracy at Google, just pointing out the intrinsic tension at the heart of their business between good results and good ad revenue.
Let's say 999 out of 1000 times some signal penalizes spammy sites enough to get them off the first pages of search results.
Those 1 out of 1000 good sites that were penalized do mean that "Google isn't doing its job" in that its job is never complete, but that doesn't mean that it wasn't the right choice to make for its users (while it then tries to refine new signals to get a better set of results).
The crap filtered out can vastly outweigh the good results (temporarily?) lost, depending on the good sites that were filtered out. Yes, it sucks, but false positives always come with this type of filtering.
Also, remember that "best" is itself just a confluence of signals, and that the guy next to you may very well disagree with you for any particular "best" choice.
> Their job is to show the best results for a given search query.
No.
Google is not there to help you, me or anyone find better cat pictures. It is not a charity. Google's job is to make money. It makes money primarily by selling ads. It can sell ads better if it can target people better so they provide free email and then also parse all the email contents.
Ads show up in search and by providing good search results they ensure people go to google.com and not facebook.com or bing.com so _they_ can show you ads as opposed to someone else showing you ads.
"If my website is the best but it doesn't appear at the top because a competitor has attacked it" try Bing, or other search engines. You can try to shame Google into providing better searches by going public and hoping their PR team will notice, that's valid, but I don't see at all how this their "job".
You are ignoring Google's customers, those of us paying for advertising. If Google's content (it's search results) goes south, then the value in advertising goes down.
This is how advertising works. People don't go to Google to see advertising. They go to find things. I pay to appear when the best the web has to offer isn't good enough. It also works wonders when someone is searching for something because they trust google's content, and is actually looking to buy, so they specifically look at the advertisements knowing these are places they can pay for a service.
And yes, I'm giving money to Google, essentially hiring them to provide that service. And that service is not merely to show advertisements, but rather to show advertisements beside excellent search results. The same way the rest of advertisement works in every other medium. I pay for advertising on radio at certain times because of the reach, and this reach is based not on advertising, but on the quality. So I have a direct monetary incentive to ensure the quality of the content my advertising surrounds.
Of course, that also means Google has a directly responsibility to ensure the quality of the search as well, because that's what they are selling to me.
If you buy ad space, the quality of the content does matter. No one buys ad space devoid of content of some sort. Good content does more than attract eyes, but advertising next to good content elevates the advertised product. People associate it with the quality of the content.
So no, Google has ever incentive to provide high-quality content precisely because paying customers are being sold on that as a major part of advertising with Google.
Assuming you are not purchasing ads, I'd argue that relying heavily on a company you have no formal commercial relationship with to bring you customers might not be a great idea.
Yet that is what most businesses are doing, even if they are buying ads. You can't get enough traffic from ads alone at a cheap enough cost to make most businesses viable.
Google's job is not to be fair. Google's job is to have good results. If they really wanted to, they could have 99% perfect results, and deliberately screw over companies the other 1% of the time, and they would still be doing their job.
Do I want a fair search engine? Yes I do. Does a search engine have to be fair to have good results? Not at all.
* The scary reality is that right now that entire operation could be destroyed by a competitor in a couple minutes if they knew how... but the idea that the livelihoods of a dozen people could vanish if someone got a little bit ambitious deserves a better response*
Isn't this always the state of running a business, though? A new competitor can always come along out of the blue and undermine your complete offering or drastically undercut you on prices.
A company that has a better business model, better customer service, or better goods/services is not the issue here. The issue is a competitor can tank your rankings by dropping $100 on crappy links. The disavow process is a good step forward but negative seo can still destroy several months worth of revenue while waiting for Google to sort it out.
Besides, it seems to me that these "problems" are only really thought of as problems by the type of people who put "search engine" in the title of their blog.
Or anyone who runs an online business...?
Let's say you're a small ecommerce site, your site is growing, your blog is gaining readership as it's become a great resource. One of your nasty competitors who doesn't like that your rankings are going up for all this hard work decides to hop on Fiverr and buy tons of terrible links all pointing at your site and your rankings all the sudden drastically drop because your site is now viewed as spam.
That's a very realistic concern for a lot of webmasters and small business owners (the big guys suffer a lot less from negative SEO because their link portfolio is far more balanced out). I'd much rather have Google just give a ZERO value to low quality and shady links as opposed to a negative value.
"...hop on Fiverr and buy tons of terrible links all pointing at your site and your rankings all the sudden drastically drop because your site is now viewed as spam..."
I saw this very thing happen in real life, actually... though it wasn't a competitor...
A well meaning team member on a project which I was previously affiliated with decided "Hey, I know how we can get this project some exposure! FIVERR!"...
Yes, I know that there are better, less shady, approaches to generating traction, but we will just blame inexperience and a temporary lapse in judgement for the expensive lesson in negative SEO...
Long story short, weeks of organic link building and organic service/site promotion were completely obliterated within 72hrs of $20 worth of Fiverr backlink purchases...
Needless to say, so far as I know, the team only uses 100% whitehat approaches for site and product promotions now...
I guess that I, along with countless others (http://goo.gl/W1P69), have just been ignorantly using a fictional term that nicely summarizes the concept that we are trying to convey - i.e. "the building up of back-links via non-automated, traditional routes - such as those stemming from legitimate interations with other businesses and clients"...
Ah, I got you... So you were stating your personal opinion on back-links, rather than stating a factual observation about organic back-links being similar to unicorns...
You're stance definitely makes more sense as an opinion - unlike factual statements, opinions afford space for both fact and fallacy (i.e. "it is either organic or you're building links.")...
When stating things in a matter of fact manner ("...There is no such thing as organic link building..."), it tends to lead people to believe that you are debating the legitimacy of some point they've made...
The confusion is in your head, but I doubt I'm going to dispel it. Google managed to improve over altavista because it used something that wasn't abused by spammers yet: links. As soon as spammers (like you) realized that they could game the system once again and reduce search to a game of who most effectively manages to spoil the soup by introducing untold billions of meaningless backlinks into the game page-rank's days were numbered. So now we're more or less back where we started.
I personally don't think there is a metric that you could come up with that can't be gamed but it saddens me that the quality of the web is spoiled in such a crass way. Props to google for trying to combat it. I wish you much good luck at breaking some more windows.
Pardon me, Jacques, but why is that you are now resorting to baseless and unfounded personal attacks against me (aside from the obvious: "When your argument is shown to be invalid: 1)resort to name calling in order to confuse the topic 2) _____ 3)PROFIT!!!")?
"Spammers like me"? I've never used this tactic nor ANY other 'blackhat' SEO tactic - please check your facts (I know, I know... I've gathered thus far that this task may prove to be a difficult exercise for you - flying off the cuff and making unfounded accusations is far easier)...
I did however provide an anecdotal account of someone that I knew that had used this tactic - which I characterized as 'inexperienced' and as a 'lapse in judgement'... Furthermore, not that it really matters in the court of Jacques, I did voice concerns to the team when I learned this approach was being considered by a team lead.
I do believe that this practice is bad for the web and that any site proven to have used it should be hit in their SEO ranking.
This said, I am not confused on any of the points that you or I have made... I do however believe that you are correct on one point - you are likely incapable of dispelling anything currently present in my head on this topic... From our interaction here, I have gathered that your intent isn't to further discussion, to clarify a confused point or to factually correct an incorrectly stated claim - in short, your intent would merely appear to be 'trolling'. So... Congratulations on your success! You win the trolling Internets!
Let us recall this failed attempt at rational discourse - I provided a cautionary tale which related to the original post. You decided that it was your job as keeper of the interwebs to correct a statement that I had made - a statement which was already correct and so did not merit correction. When confronted with the reality that no correction was needed, instead of conceding or clarifying any confused points, you decided to continue to argue against a point which was never made ("derp. I don't care what you call it, even if you do use the common and widely accepted vernacular, I am right and you are a stoopidhead spamming me!") - moving away from the corrective form of your first comment to an opinion-based prose in your 2nd (using the correct conversational form finally, though still largely failing to make any valid or related points)... And finally, when all else failed, you resorted to a personal and baseless attack against me in calling me a spammer...
Jacques, I really do hope that you have a wonderful day... and I do hope that you are able to find that bug - just a hint, I don't think it's in your code... it's possible that it's of the posterior variety...
Anecdotes about spammers abound, nobody actually spams, go figure. But lots of people talk about their spammer friends and accidents and defend spamming practices but of course they'd never think of spamming themselves.
Let me know which company would let a junior team member spend any money at all, let alone on buying link spam in the name of the company without some higher up ok'ing it.
" I, along with countless others (http://goo.gl/W1P69), have just been ignorantly using a fictional term that nicely summarizes the concept that we are trying to convey - i.e. "the building up of back-links via non-automated, traditional routes - such as those stemming from legitimate interations with other businesses and clients""
Strongly suggests you do more than just talk about it, it sounds like typical SEO marketing drivel.
Wow... Just wow... Clearly you, my friend, are a very special individual...
Let us just go ahead and reiterate this for the readers: Jacques incorrectly attempted to correct the usage of a commonly used phase and when confronted with this reality, he/she/it has derailed the discussion in an effort to assert it is about something that it was never intended to be about... Bad form and not constructive, mate.
So, now on to your dribble...
1) "People always say they didn't do something when they did - so clearly you're a spammer"... Man, your logic is so watertight you should patent it as "The Holey Bucket"(I'll give you that gem for free!) - with idiots clearly abound, you'll be rich in no time!!! Or perhaps you should go into business as a legal prosecutor - surely, every judge and legal expert will agree with your line of reasoning... (facepalm)
2) "would let a junior team..." - I've already indicated that this was a 'team lead', though I am not terribly surprised by your inability to read and comprehend...
3) A google link to the results page showing widespread usage of the term that you've been arguing doesn't exist ("organic link building") and a summary of the concept, derived from the common sense interpretation of the words that were strung together, somehow shows that I am in reality an expert spammer??? (mind blown)... Wow... Just wow... Thanks for the tip, man - You're full of gems! I think I may quit dev and just start talking about being rich all the time as all one clearly needs to do, according to you, is provide commonly known, widely documented and highly accessible details in order to be an expert on something... EFFFFFF YEAHHHHHH!!!! http://goo.gl/6nKaZ - lemme go check my back account!!! WOOT!!!! IMMA BILLIONAIRE!!!!
As a backend banking software developer (who's previously dabbled in custom banking, medical and legal document web applications... who's SEO experience could be summarized with 'pretty urls', 'h1' and using page titles), I can definitively say with complete honesty and integrity that you are about as far off the reservation as one can get with your continued assertions - i.e again, and for the final time, you are wrong... completely, 100%, without a grain of correctness, flat out wrong... and I stand by my original hypothesis that you are a blowhard who really cares less about being correct and more about 'winning'... Which, in my opinion, is a worse person than most spammers (WHO DO SUCK) - someone hell bent on ignoring simple truths and reality to just try and 'win'... Lame..
Interesting. Look, if you're not into spamming stop using terms like 'organic link building' as though they are somehow normal use of the words. To me organic link building is a thing only an SEO 'expert' would use as though those things have a normal meaning. People that are just focusing on the content of their website and that are being run into the ground by the SEO crowd with joe jobs and other nasties are definitely not busy with 'organic link building', but the SEO crowd is. There was a time when links were organic in the sense that the whole web was held together by those links because that's what the web was, a set of pages held together by links.
Then google came along, the SEOs spoiled it for the rest of us with their 'organic link building' campaigns and that was that. "Oganic" in this context means nothing more than 'unpaid', and even that is a quite a stretch judging by the number of requests I get to place such links (obviously, they're very organic and the payment is just a token compensation for my time, even if it is recurring and the amounts offered suggest there is more to it than that.).
The better meaning for that set of words - which you apparently don't subscribe to - is that 'organic' means 'natural', in other words, links that you, the site owner, have nothing to do with, and that therefore you can not be building.
If you're not into spamming and if your SEO experience is as limited as you say it is then get off your high horse, stop using typical spammer terminology that creatively redefines words that had a perfectly good usage before the SEO crowd came along and call it a day.
Ohhhh, ok.. I got you.. So, 'organic farmers' just happen across natural fields of tomatoes and lettuce that animals have just been politely saving their poo for?!!!? Damn, dude - I never knew!!! That's so awesome!!! Heck, I think I want to be an organic farmer now that I know they don't actually have to do anything - it being 'natural' and all... That's so awesome - I never knew that's what 'organic' and 'natural' really meant... You're just so awesome - I am serious about patenting your logic... You clearly have it all figured out, with your accusations against strangers on the Internet and all, and I'm telling you, man, "The Holey Bucket" is GOLD! Just remember us little guys...
"...stop using terms like 'organic link building'..."
Na, I think I am just going to keep on trucking and just start ignoring argumentative, condescending know-it-alls a bit better... starting with you...
> The better meaning for that set of words - which you apparently don't subscribe to - is that 'organic' means 'natural', in other words, links that you, the site owner, have nothing to do with, and that therefore you can not be building.
Not quite nothing to do with: crafting content with the intent that people encountering it would be prone to link to it, so that site owners (and SEO firms working on their behalf) wouldn't need to engage in out-of-band link promotion to get the links, would seem to be organic link building, in that it proceeds naturally from the content rather than via separate efforts.
True, you could construe that as such. But I think that the real distinguishing factor should be that the links themselves are there to establish proximity between nodes in the graph of the web, not the secondary effects on page rank in a search engine.
Links that represent real-world relationships are not meaningless, because a human being decided to create them. Those are exactly the sort of real-world "votes" that Page Rank is supposed to key off of.
I agree fully with this sentiment - this is the very concept that was intended to be encapsulated by the phase "organic link building"...
It's valid and valuable to have these sorts of links and they are very relevant when factoring SEO weight.
If a developer writes a web application for a client, links to the client's application from his portfolio page and then the client, so happy with his product, links back to the developer.. Well, this is exactly how the world should operate... and a large part of how SEO should be factored, imho. This didn't just magically happen - the developer and the client both had a role in the creation of these links, which will factor into their ranking... And while people 'had their hand in this creation' and despite the fact that this 'benefits' both parties, I consider this 'organic link building'...
But then again, it would appear that I am clearly spammer as has been demonstrated by the indisputable evidence presented in this thread and so am likely not to be trusted...
I know plenty of people who know just enough to be dangerous like that -- they know that links are the one of the main factors in rankings and then get tunnel vision in increasing linking domains.
"Boy that 1000 links for $5 sure seems a lot more efficient than the slow, organic process of building up a resourceful, industry-relevant blog!"
I don't understand why the quality of the blog should have anything to do with the search results that link to the ecommerce site. Just because your site should show up in the ranking for "reset color scheme Samsung monitor" doesn't mean it should show up in the ranking for "buy samsung monitor".
To the extent google is conflating the positive signals for the first with the second, that's a bug in their algorithm that should be fixed over time. When it is I certainly won't cry any tears for the people that exploited the bug all this time.
I think the quality of the blog creates domain authority and brand trust, therefore your overall rankings should increase. It doesn't even have to be a blog; it can just be great evergreen content that presents itself resourcefully on your site.
Specific (edit: off site, on site should remain important) anchor text should eventually and ideally be worthless, as then results won't be based around who got the most links that say "buy Samsung monitor" pointing at their site. I think that is a slow train coming though.
The government may some day think otherwise. Google's monopoly on search is substantial enough that they risk much by eschewing fairness in favor of quality. I would tread very lightly if I were in Google's shoes.
I hate the word myself as it means little outside of sports.
However, there is a very real perception of "fairness", and often the status quo defines that perception. Whatever changes Google makes will be interpreted as unfair by someone, and given their dominant status - that could be a problem if enough people get nervous.
It is Google's job to make sure every webmaster has a fair shot - any unfairness ensures the top results will go to organisations who are best at gaming the system: unfairness harms the results.
Google won search by being good at this when other search engines were not.
"It's not Google's job to make sure every webmaster has a "fair shot" at rankings. It's their job to make sure the best results appear when I search for something."
I would think it's pretty obvious they have to ensure every webmaster has a fair shot to guarantee the best results.
If a crappy website rises to the top by doing negative seo and denying the best results their fair shots, Google is not doing its job.
You are partly right, but you seem to think it is googles job to serve you, it is not. It is googles job to make money when you click on ads, so their job is to make you click on ads.
And while you are right that some false positives may be acceptable there is a hell of a difference between accidental false positives and false positives created because of competitors actions.
You don't want to live in a world where the scummiest bastard gets to put his links ahead of they guy who is actually providing a service. We already have that situation if you google for the names of certain appliances (eg. my dishwasher) where all the results are to meta-shopping sites.
> Besides, it seems to me like these "problems" are only really thought of as problems by the type of people who put "search engine" in the title of their blog.
or by all the people who have a site with traffic coming from Google
Is it easier to increase your rankings by a) building solid quality backlinks to your site or b) building tons of spam links to your competitors' sites?
If the answer is b), which I suspect it might due to reading some comments here citing fiverr examples, then allowing negative SEO is decreasing the quality of search results.
Also, my guess is where the damage is really done is w/ long tail searches. That's when I almost always encounter random, irrelevant, spammy sites - when I search for something very specific in Google.
It's their job to make sure the best results appear when I search for something.
"Best" means best for Google, not most informative to you. The big deal about negative SEO is that "worse" means worse for Google - again, it has nothing to do with your or my needs.
The combination of positive and negative SEO is intended solely for Google's long term benefit. Maybe goodwill enters into it, but only to the extent it creates value for Google's shareholders.
Besides, it seems to me that these "problems" are only really thought of as problems by the type of people who put "search engine" in the title of their blog.