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Copyright © 2007 - The Crazy Mind
A Webmaster Blog
Google Guidelines are not the ethics of Search Engine Optimization. SEO ethics define how you interact with other webmasters and websites. Search Engine Optimization is the manipulation of search engine rankings systems.
Google has the “webmaster mindshare” by virtue of its market position – in our neck of the woods Google has about 80-90% of search traffic so to ignore this would be silly. The lack of comments by Googleguys on heavily moderated forums, etc seem to reflect a much tighter corporate rein over comments made – always vague and perhaps a bit of mis-information.
SEO ethics define the relationship between the webmaster, website and the topic based online resources where the Webmaster will promote the website. This has nothing to do with Search Engines. Search Engines do not define what is an authority from a million websites. It is the webmasters(of blogs, web directories, relevant websites, social networking sites etc) and the Online users who give the site the status of an AUTHORITY and the Search Engine only crawls, stores the information in its database and gives the results as per the query.
Google is not the only resource to find the Information.
Today’s webmaster so intellectually lazy they actually believe that the best information is going to come from a heavily moderated Google Groups forum. Today’s webmaster confuses helpful information with what is essentially Kool-Aid that is being posted on Matt Cutts blog.
Do you actually believe the dialogue on a Google Group or a Matt Cutts blog is moderated for anything other than to make webmasters conform to Google’s corporate will? On WebmasterWorld, and other forums like Webmasterworld and many others, we are free to discuss every aspect of search marketing. On Matt Cutts blog and the official Google forums you are not. Google controls the dialogue and the outcomes of the discussions. Google and Matt Cutts are not concerned with helping you rank better. They are concerned about the integrity of their algorithm, and making webmasters unpaid partners in protecting Google’s algorithm through snitch networks and data mining enterprises like Webmaster Central.
Todays webmaster is so compliant, complacent, and utterly sheep-like they are willingly surrendering highly personal data to Google without understanding how it ultimately benefits Google far more than it benefits them. The toolbar was pretty invasive, but webmaster central is a shameless data grab. Old ladies resist when someone snatches their purse. Todays webmaster lacks the will to resist and the intellect to understand what Google is doing to them. Do you understand the irony of a search for “Webmaster Central” leading to several web pages that benefits Google instead of websites that benefit webmasters?
Google endeavours to control the discussion of Google by limiting it to their own network of blogs and discussion forums. How else to explain the absence of AdSense advisor, GoogleGuy, Adam Lasnik, and AdWords Advisor? ASA didn’t even bother to announce the last AdSense weekend update. GoogleGuy is absent on Webmaster Forums except to defend Google at TW or promoting their snitch programs.
When was the last time GoogleGuy or the other representatives did something on the webmaster forums to help or answer questions? Where have they gone? I will tell you where they are. They are hijacking our dialogue and moderating it on the official Matt Cutts blog and their other Kool-Aid forums. I believe it’s a conscious effort to control what you think and gain webmaster mindshare for the benefit of Google.
Am I the only one who feels it’s extraordinary how Google is becoming the arbiter of web ethics, coding practices, and the webmaster dialogue? Do webmasters really want an Internet that is defined and dicated according to what is good for Google?
Last year I spent most of my time learning about better usability. Now I spend time trying to figure out why some of my pages go missing in Google. Google charges for advertising and is a for profit company.
The discussion on Official Google forums and Official Google Blogs is understandably going to be limited to what is good for Google. No surprise there, right? As fun and entertaining as Matt’s blog is, you aren’t going to walk away a better SEO from reading it. You will walk away with a better understanding of what Google wants you to do to make Google’s life easier. It is evident that for many people that is enough, but that isn’t SEO, nor is it SEM- it’s doing things in a way that is convenient for Google.
You(Google) expect everyone on the web to give you accurate link data by flagging paid advertising with nofollow or some other google approved method, but you don’t give us the same courtesy in return. Seems rather one sided don’t you think?
The reality is that Google is n’t stopping SEO spammers, it’s encouraging honest webmasters to become spammers and Hackers.
This is why I don’t use Google Analytics. They already know 80% of everything about me… I got to keep something to the imagination… =)