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.
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...
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.
> 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.
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.
I mean we wouldn't tolerate an energy supplier disconnected arbitrary supplies because they didn't feel like selling there any more.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
"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!"
There is no such thing as organic link building. It is either organic or you're building links.
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"...
Thanks, pal.
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...
Thanks for clearing up the confusion...
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.
"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...
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.
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..
Again, best of luck with your bug...
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.
Lest you get into this territory:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_lady_doth_protest_too_much,...
"...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...
Lest you get into this territory: http://goo.gl/j7f1v
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
Google won search by being good at this when other search engines were not.
It is as much as it is the job of Microsoft to allow you to install 3rd party browser or OS on a desktop.
When you have a monopoly in an industry, you don't get to choose favorites else it will considered an abuse of power.
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.
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.
or by all the people who have a site with traffic coming from Google
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.
"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.