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They'd most certainly whitelist the google ips.

that's against TOS for Google SERPs

Showing different results to google than you do to users is called cloaking and it's not allowed

Definitely, but someone at LinkedIn could get in touch with their google contact and make it all work and follow the rules.

https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/40543?hl=en

Apparently, we had something similar at Demand Media before the panda update.

How does one build such google contacts if you are a seed stage startup? I understand it wouldn't be the same league as LinkedIn Reid Hoffman level contacts, but even some kind of contact at Google search?

I wish I knew. Easiest way is to make a ton of money off google ads like we did. Even then it was hard to actually talk to someone - especially at YouTube. And they had an office a few floors up...

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