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>Hell, I'm afraid to even say what I'm saying right now because it'll put me on record publicly opposing Matt Cutts, who can basically make or break any future companies I participate in that rely on SEO as a strategy.

You're basically making the claim that Google will manually take action on sites that they don't like, something which I've never seen any evidence for, and you haven't provided any.

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No, I'm making the claim that if you get in trouble with SEO - even if it's an honest mistake - being on the good side of the Google team can mean the difference between your company surviving or dying.

I can point to rap genius as a public example (and that wasn't even an honest mistake), but I've seen this happen myself and I've talked to a number of people who have admitted that Matt Cutts or someone on the search team personally intervened in their issue.

To clarify: I'm not saying anyone is taking action against people they don't like, I'm saying that it's very easy to not take action to help people you don't like.

Rap Genius was actively gaming the system at the time so that isn't a worthy example.

Rap genius was penalized, but then the penalty was quietly lifted after a couple months. Tell me a less well-connected company would've gotten such a deal.

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