QFT :2 cents:

Learned that the hard way. :thumbsup

As an 'outsider', someone who isn't privy to Google's internal secrets, there is no way to prove what works and what doesn't. There's no way to prove doing x will hurt you and doing y won't hurt you.

You're up against a black box. You don't know what kind of data Google collects how they use it.
There's no way to prove the existence of a causal connection between doing Z and getting A or B as a ranking. At best you can point out some kind of correlation.

That's a logical fallacy. The fact that site X uses service Y does not prove that using service Y hurts you or won't hurt you.

There's nothing wrong with buying links as long as you buy them from a reliable source, from someone who knows what he's doing. Personally, I wouldn't buy links from 90% of the sellers out there. However, I do still spend some decent money every month on buying links.

I couldn't care less what Google's guidelines are. Google's not some almighty God we should worship or beg for guidance. Google's a company. A company that wants to make money. A company that offers (free) services and information in order to attract traffic and then tries to monetize that traffic. Guess what I do? I run a business. I want to make money. I offer (free) services and information in order to attract traffic. I then try to monetize that traffic.

Google's not my friend. Google's a competitor. A competitor with a lot more resources and capital than me. A competitor that doesn't give a shit about me or my business.

Why does Google encourage webmasters to focus on 'good quality content'? Because they scrape and use that content as part of their business model.

Of course I'm smart enough to understand that I can benefit from the way Google uses the free services I offer. I'm also smart enough to understand that if a significant part of my income comes from Google, I'm in a vulnerable position. I therefor try to minimize that risk. How? By hiding as much as I can about what I'm doing from my competitors (including Google). After all, isn't Google doing exactly the same? They keep most of their inner workings a secret. They have their own disinformation agent. etc


I get the impression your opinion about the matter is based on 2 assumptions:
1. That all sites that are promoted using seo tactics that violate Google's guidelines are not useful to visitors. (not enjoyable for users to visit).
2. That webmasters who don't violate Google's guidelines have nothing to fear from Google.

Make no mistake about it. Google doesn't give a shit about your site. They don't give a shit about your income. They care about THEIR income, not yours.


How is Google supposed to know that your site is desirable and of value to the surfer. That is purely subjective. There's no such thing as an objective measure of usefulness. Google makes a guess about how many users have already displayed certain signs that they found a site to be useful to them. With billions of pages out there and Google only displaying a very limited amount of them to its users, I'd be insane if I didn't put any information out there that could be interepreted by Google as a sign of confidence in my sites.

I disagree. Google sets out it's webmaster guidelines. Following it's guidelines will ensure that you don't get slapped with a penalty in the SERPs that it serves up. It's also possible through testing to come up with strategies that will help your results. After all everything in what we do online can be measured with metrics and end results.

Of course. Google isn't about to release a road map for gaming the system, but it does make statements clearly outlining the things it disapproves of. Avoiding doing those things will ensure they don't penalize you.

It does go down to trust however. Large mainstream companies use Raven Tools and by definition use Google Analytics, Webmaster tools and AdSense. Somewhere along the line the decision has been made that using these tools provides benefit. I know from personal experience that using these reporting tools has not hurt me. Your mileage may vary.

I agree, however Google's webmaster guidelines are generally good practice irrespective of whether Google wrote them or not. Things like not having too many ads above the fold, not running sites as spam link sinks, ensuring that a sensible linking and site structure is maintained all add to user experience. If you want to keep your visitors, monetize them and gain their trust then all these things that Google ask you to do help in that respect. The Google webmaster guidelines wont hurt you at all.

Be that as it may, I'm yet to see traffic that converts better than targeted SE traffic. As Google is the major provider of SE traffic it's probably a good idea to ensure you don't get horribly slapped by them.

So what is the alternative ? A world without search engines ?

That's your prerogative, nobody forces you to use Google's tools. My contention is, however, that using them doesn't necessarily hurt you unless you're doing things that are bad practice anyway.

Sites that don't follow Google's best practices usually have some negative effect to surfers. The most common example is a site boosted in ranking because of spam links. The site itself may be wonderfully enjoyable, unfortunately all those spammy sites that link to it are not. There is a cost somewhere and the cost is that the web is larger than it needs to be in order to house spammy links. I could go on with more examples but you get my drift.

Google has many signals it can use to tell if your site is likely to be desirable. Some include bounce messages to end users asking people who bounce quickly back to the SERPs if they want to block a site. Social signals, time on site and traffic signals, page layout algorithms, semantic text algorithms the list goes on.

I have two points. Firstly I don't think following Google's webmaster guidelines can do anything else other than help you in the SE results and secondly that using Google's tools if you do follow their guidelines shouldn't hurt you. I find their tools useful, you may not and that's your choice.

Google has no right to set out any guidelines. Show me any law that allows them to do so. They are an arrogant bunch of people who want to keep others contained in stone age so they make more money.

lol. It's their search engine.

:thumbsup

Precisely.

Still, they are not above the law.

I don't accept their rules, but they send me a lot of traffic.
Go figure.

I honestly hope Google gets even more strict in dealing with thin websites. People need to realize that repeatedly presenting the product in a lazy, haphazardly fashion devalues the product in a way similar to that of piracy.

Have you seen this network? I think it's Medium Pimpin.

http://www.clubellamilano.com/

That entire network is one big piece of garbage and it will be a great day for the industry when each and every one of it's shitty sites gets slapped to oblivion.

You cannot server lobster on a bed of shit!

Fucking awesome!

"Moderators and some advertisers seem to be joined in a brothers' club providing them with divine posting powers while criticism of such Gods, their friends and advertisers can be reason for quick bans - although you might be correct in fact."

http://www.megamasters.com/resource/gfy-webmaster-board

:thumbsup

I think the primary motivation for Google is to keep the index usable to the majority of people by serving the results that best serve people searching Google (in turn making advertising more profitable). However a technical imperative also exists - the index, even by Google's standards, is too big. Reducing the footprint of the web in the Google index is worth millions and millions of dollars in savings for Google as they have to spend less on infrastructure than they would indexing the ever growing problem of web spam.

Reducing web spam is a good thing. The better Google get at it the less we'll all have to deal with the web spam scourge which is devaluing the web as a whole.

It's always going to be a case of cat and mouse. Each time Google plugs a hole it seems someone works out a new way of gaming the system.

I'm curious, what does that site fail to deliver to the surfer looking for ella milano?

It lacks full-length videos.

I don't think there's anything wrong with Medium Pimpin's sites.

They look a lot better than many blogs that have much more text. I think it's quite a nice user experience.

It delivers the absolute bare minimum which is what many surfers have unfortunately come to expect and what many webmasters have conditioned themselves to deliver. Nothing more, nothing less. That's a problem. The concept of scaling when applied to the building out of blog networks is so out of whack. It's crazy.

"Have a shitty site that makes you $5 per month? Fabulous!
Make 2,000 more of those bad boys, rinse, repeat, and baller status will be yours for the taking!
All you have to do is make a massive amount of shitty little sites!
Critical mass be damned! Good taste be damned!"

Wow. The bar really is that low, innit?

Having a small number of "quality" sites does not make you immune from Google penalties.

I wouldn't say it's the bare minimum, there is actually content there, and enough of it to knock one out to. Nothing wrong with that biz model, and I've done very well out of giving away far less until recently. Enough content to give the surfer a good idea of what he is going to get if he signs up, not too much that you need mad traffic numbers to offset all the satisfied wanks completed. Surfer is looking for content of the model, gets exactly that - where's the problem?

As for the good taste - where does that come into aff marketing from a business POV? Until the need to adapt or die arises, as it obviously has done very recently, of course you give surfers the bare minimum, or, at least, not the whole shebang.

http://i.imgur.com/O2kOy.png

lol. That's some really funny shit.

My goal has always been to make the surfer WANT to sign up whereas it seems as if you're strategy is to make the surfer feel as if he has to sign up.

Panda does effect some businesses and others not at all. Depends on what end of the spectrum you reside.

http://exgfshomevids.com/wp-content/...bsdro1_400.gif

lol ok :thumbsup

I really don't know, what is goin on and what I am doing wrong, you are all full of some theories, and shit. My sites are going down with every update. I don't change antyhing, just one day wake up with switch off and almost no traffic, and it was rising until that day. All handwritten blogs.

If your blogs look like your sig ... you are out of luck!
Stuff like that is exactly what G is aiming at: Big Footprints.

so ,come on,give some advice

Google are important and they know it, but acting like they own the Internet bothers me.

Sending fucking warning letters, seriously? It's on a par with Paul Markham's ignore list for hurt feelings.