Jan 09 2008
Google and ethics
The latest article by Matt Cutts "Traffic Power CEO in jail” is just the best example of Google guy arrogant attitude toward those SEOs who try to beat Google at their own game. The Traffic Power was a SEO company that allegedly employed some unethical practices in the search engine optimization. In the SEO world this kind of practice is called "black hat SEO”. When you hear the phrase ‘unethical practices‘, you are immediately turned off and inclined to believe that there were some evil doings involved in their business, which were completely against your moral values or ethics in general. The very term sounds pretty awful, but the fact of the matter is that in the current context it spells ‘unethical’ as opposed to what Google considers ethical. A multi-billion dollar corporation is hardly ever thought of in terms of ethics or high moral standards, but Google’s Don’t be evil motto says it all. From a high moral stand Mr. Cutts can talk with a "smidge of glee" that those who "embrace blackhat SEO on their sites are willing to cut corners in other areas of business as well”. I think this is too far-fetched a conclusion.
In real life people try to find ways to maximize their profits and minimize their costs. This goes for mammoth like Google as well. In the virtual world the costs are minimal (no need for stores, warehouses, decorators, leases, etc), but you need visitors to your site in order to make it profitable. Those usually come from search engines. Search engines have become a very important medium in driving traffic to your website, without which your site may remain in an Internet dungeon that nobody ever realized existed. Each search engine has its own rules how it evaluates sites or what you should do to improve your site’s rankings. Frankly, I’ve never heard of MSN’s or Yahoo’s rules, but Google made their webmaster guidelines widely known all over the Internet. Not following the guidelines is tantamount to all kinds of penalties that Google can impose on your site. Breaking Google guidelines is unethical, because Google says so. All these evil webmasters who try to promote their own sites or their clients’ sites using some questionable tactics will be punished together with their guilty-by-association clients.
What is so profoundly wrong with not following Google guidelines?
Every site owner wants his site to rank high on a search engine result page (SERP). Nobody can blame them for that, but what if they play by the rules, create the greatest contents, and still rank poorly? Why? Because those evil webmasters have found a way to beat Google at their own game. They can promote sites (for money, of course) in a blackhat way, getting them to the very top positions. The honest guy has no choice. It’s either stay where you are or use a similar tactics, but risk being punished in the future. Google has created a monster. The company introduced its Adsense program that entices website owners to install Google ads on their sites. This spurred a huge number of sites made for Adsense and not for real users. If you want to promote a site on very popular keywords (Adsense clicks can generate a lot of revenue on words like real estate, loans, insurance, lawyers, etc), you are facing a lot of made-for-adsense sites (MFA), which you can never compete against. The owners of these sites (black hatters) create MFA sites by dozens and they don’t care to follow Google guidelines. They are certainly not afraid of Google penalties. If Google kills one site, they create a 100 in its place. If an honest guy’s site gets killed, he’s done, finished, and shocked. Google has just exterminated a good guy who tried to use the same weapon as the black hatters. What a shame!
Let’s go back to the article by Matt Cutts and his statement that blackhat SEOs are willing to cut corners in other areas of business if they cheat Google. I think that Google might be guilty of breaking the very rules that the company wants everyone else to follow. Here is a simple explanation
The purpose of optimizing a site is to make it rank high on search engines. Let’s assume that an honest webmaster following all Google guidelines created a site and promoted it in a legitimate way. Let’s assume that his hard work was rewarded after some time and his site ranked No1 on a particular keyword. Google algorithm evaluated the site and ranked it accordingly, which means that Google considered that site or rather a particular page on that site the best of all the pages it had indexed for that particular keyword. That’s a great achievement, isn’t it? But the honest guy’s joy would not last forever, because some day he will discover that his site ranks No3. There are two so-called "sponsored links” above him. Google’s explanation is that those links are clearly marked as sponsored (bought, paid for, purchased, acquired, hijacked for money, etc) and they don’t pass so-called PageRank, which means that websites buying the spots in the sponsored link section will not benefit from higher PageRank value. This is nice, isn’t it? On one hand Google tells you to play by their rules and on the other they say you don’t have to as long as you pay for it.
For those who don’t know what Pagerank is (a registered trademark by Google), it’s Google’s opinion as to the value of a page. The higher the better. Google places it on a scale from 0 to 10. PageRank is not a real thing. It’s just an abstract creature created by Google. You can’t see it, you can’t touch it, because it’s just an opinion and nothing else.
Now, putting a sponsored link in the No1 position is certainly Google’s opinion about the value of the page. That opinion may have a zero algorithmic value, but Google Adsense executives valued it No1 to the highest bidder. Google says to the end user that the top position is the most relevant page on a given topic, though their own algorithm disagrees with that opinion. How is that for unethical practices? The only question that I have for Matt Cutts is "does he still believe that those who manipulate the search engine result page are also likely to cut corners in other areas of business?
On the same note.
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Is there any guarantee that Google won’t come down on a website with all their wrath, because it links to a site that Google just stopped loving? Would that be ethical?
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What is wrong with the best site on cancer treatment linking to casinos, directories, or Viagra pills? A search engine should evaluate the content of the site on its merits and disregard links that are irrelevant. The user may not benefit from these links but they will benefit from the information on that website. How often, after all, do people follow links they find irrelevant? To burry such a site in serps for wanting to monetize does injustice to the end user. Would that be ethical?
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Blending Google Adsense ads with the content of a page so that the user visiting the page doesn’t even realize that what he/she is clicking is an ad. Is that ethical?
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Using a hidden text for the benefit of the user (e.g. hints in a crossword puzzle). Is that unethical?
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Putting 400 links on a single page (a list of doctors’ websites in your area for instance). Is that unethical?
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Creating the world’s largest database on each individual. Is there any particular reason for that? Is that ethical?
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Asking webmasters to fill out a reconsideration form where they have to confess to specific infractions of Google guidelines while Google never bothered to tell them if they comitted any "Google crimes" is like asking a person who is never notified about being a suspect to come to the police and talk about any wrong they did in their entire life. Is that ethical?
