Doin' The Google Dance

Community
1

IMHO, It’s realy very simple…Google has convinced most IMers that they cannot survive without PR and SERPS.

Bad news…they can.

You see, Google wants it all, just as the old Standard Oil Monopoly wanted it all. Everything Google does is in the long term of benefit to Google and no one else.

Google is essentially telling everyone that they have to act as scavengers, waiting for something to die in order to eat and that predators, that is, those who go hunting will be mercilessly wiped out by the cute little Pandas, Penguins or whatever other cutesy animal name Google gives to its next massacre.

Thousands of sites which never engaged in an sort of SEO have nosedived with ordinary Mom-and-Pop businesses devasted by the “updates”.

Good SEO is the same thing as good advertising and is not necessarily “spam”, which term in itself has been so overused as to nearly lack meaning or refer pretty much to anything that someone doesn’t like!

I mean, if you want to get found on the Internet, you need as many link, backlinks and references of all kinds. You need a good CAN-SPAM compliant email campaign (More on that one later!).

Google doesn’t want you to have these as they might take away business from…

(Pensive drumroll)

…Google, of course!

By the way, just when was control of the Internet ceded to Google?

I don’t remember being asked about it.

How about you?

Anyone ask you?

What do you think?

2

True enough they want Google users to get good search results. But I’ve never heard them say PR was important, in fact quite the opposite. It’s all the seo-kiddies that say PR is important.

For that matter, when did Google ever say backlinks were of utmost importance? Who’s to say outgoing links don’t fit into the algo?

3

The Google Dance does have an adverse effect on many websites but conversely has the opposite effect to other sites. The volume of traffic remains the same but the distribution is now controlled by the latest algorythm.

What annoys me is having the power to override SEO efforts and to manipulate traffic, no doubt for their own benefit.

Reminds me of “Absolute power corrupts absolutely”.

Added as an after though:

Also just remembered about their recommendations concerning validating site content and their blatant disregard to standards with their own JavaScript modules. “Do as I say and not as I do” - infuriating :slight_smile:

4

No, Google is doing its best to enforce the guidelines that it has had in place for 10 years to encourage good practice from webmasters. All that’s happened is that they’ve got better at it. They haven’t changed the game, they’ve just tightened up on the rules that were already there but being ignored.

Thousands of sites which never engaged in an sort of SEO have nosedived with ordinary Mom-and-Pop businesses devasted by the “updates”.

Google reckons that only about 3% of sites will be affected by the Penguin update. How many do you know of that have “nosedived”?

Good SEO is the same thing as good advertising and is not necessarily “spam”, which term in itself has been so overused as to nearly lack meaning or refer pretty much to anything that someone doesn’t like!

[FONT=Verdana]No, SEO is not the same as advertising. I’m struggling to think of anything they have in common. SEO is about making sure that your site is easy for search robots to crawl and understand, that when it appears in the search results it is properly presented, and to present the structure in a clear and well-defined manner.

Google would be delighted if “link building” (which I assume is what you mean by “advertising”) would go away, because it muddies their waters and makes it harder for them to tell if any given link to a website is a genuine vote of approval by the owner, a solicited vote of approval or a paid link.

I agree that trying to get links put on relevant sites with good traffic levels, where people might want to click through to your site, is good advertising – it makes sense to do that, because you have a good chance of picking up some real trade – but too often link-builders focus on the “low-hanging fruit”, sites that give links to anyone and everyone, with no consideration of quality of relevance. That is spam, however you look at it.[/FONT]

By the way, just when was control of the Internet ceded to Google?

Some time around the point where they produced a search engine that was way better than any of the competition, and the vast majority of people started to use it in preference to the alternatives. They won that game, and so far they’re still at the top of the tree. But Microsoft thought IE6 would rule forever and they turned out to be wrong, so it isn’t impossible that Google will fall from grace at some point either.

5

Don’t worry, I think Google has gotten too big for it’s Goggles, they’re spending too much money on offline products and neglecting the very thing that made them famous in the first place. In most places in the world their are competition rules for companies who control too high a percentage of their marketplace so I look forward to Google answering that soon.

6

I got hit hard with a few of my sites in Google the last time it danced. Ironically one of my big sites that went from the first page to the third is now getting more traffic thanks to a site that has a link on it to my site that has gained in rank. Go figure.

:rolleyes: