Wow, thank god Google doesn't listen to them

[Subway]

http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/blog/google-you-scare-me/

Dear Google,

Recently you've been doing some strange stuff and seem to have forgotten how to communicate and quite frankly it's getting me worried.

I really don't care about PageRank updates or downgrades but what gets me scared is when you make these changes without telling people whats going on. Every webmaster that had a PR reduction is logging on to their stats and checking rankings every 10 minutes to see if a ranking penalty is about to hit them.

Reputable bloggers that were nice enough to take your helpful advice about using nofollow and not selling links are now scratching their heads wondering what they did wrong and nobody seems to have the answer.

People are sat at their computer screens having never sold a link in their lives wondering whether their sites will get caught up in some kind of penalty. Obviously we know that they won't because they follow the guidelines but the point is that you make people like me scared even though we've done nothing wrong.

What kind of company generates a climate of fear amongst people it doesn't even have a financial relationship with?

What happened to your promise of better communication?

A few years ago you were just a search engine. Now you have a direct influence over peoples lives and paychecks and that requires a whole new level of social responsibility, now is the time to take that responsibility.

Sorry, but Google isn't there to make your CEO tactics work, they're not there to make you rich, they are not business partners of you, they are there to find the best results for a searchstring. The Google search algorithm doesn't care about some "guidelines" you're basing your business on and hey, there shouldn't be any of those. Google would work best at the exact moment when CEO people can't find anymore tactics for high pageranks, at the exact moment when only the sites with the best content or the perfect match to the searchterm show up on the first searchresults. Yeah, CEO people would need to find a new job, but again, Google is not your business partner, they are there for the people that search the web. Telling people whats going on doesn't help Google at all, it just helps CEO people and lets them place litle Google bombs for money, why exactly should they do that? It's not at all in Google's interest.

Ok, sorry for the Sunday rant, but it had to be.

Fredi

[gerbick]

Perhaps I'm missing the first part of the convo... but as it stands, where's the foul? What's the issue?

[FlashLackey]

Did you mean 'SEO' people?

[Subway]

Ooops, yes of course.

Perhaps I'm missing the first part of the convo... but as it stands, where's the foul? What's the issue?

Google changed the algorithm, didn't told anybody what was changed, some big sites lost many points on their pagerank, some sites that sold links on their pages for money based on that pagerank, guys lost money, called SEO people, SEO people couldn't help, lost clients, lost money, angry at Google, demand explanation from Google ... you get the idea.

Fredi

PS: Best guess right now is that Google has done something against linkfarms.

[EVPohovich]

erm... Google has NEVER let on to their algorithm in the entire existence of the company. People are just using the "Best Guess Theory" anyways.

And seriously, when I am looking for some information on the 'net, the last thing I need to show up in my search results is some idiot's blog filled with his or her 2 cents worth of useless blabber... ..|..

[Subway]

Google didn't release the algorithm, but they revealed part of it at various conferences.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRan...Rank_algorithm

Fredi

[EVPohovich]

Part of it is not ALL of it. So, it's still speculation...

[Subway]

Yeah, of course. And if you ask me they should actually release nothing and constantly change it so that nobody can build their tactics based on it.

Fredi