Rand Fishkin is "Getting More Worried About the Effectiveness of Webspam"

Hi HunterSnake,

[sigh] To me this is just another "linkbait" article based on a popular yet controversial topic. Exactly what Rand is known for. Don't get me wrong, I like Rand and I consider him a masterful linkbait marketer. He does a great job of promoting his business by using a method I like to call "Populist Promotion".

As a Populist promoter, he looks for the political angle on topics and exploits that for the controversial advantage. He masterfully writes content that focuses on the emotional aspects of the topic which adds fuel to the controversy.

Since this is an Internet Marketing forum, I think members here are best served by studying Rands linkbait tactics, not his emotionally charged conclusions. For this article in particular, I do not even buy the premise of his article, which seems to be that Google has been charged to "fight spam".

Google's not in business to be a "spam fighter", they are are search engine charged with giving relevant results to search queries. I believe it is more important to them to deliver relevant and useful search results, and the only resources expended on filtering spam should be to serve that end. They have no obligation beyond that to "fight spam".

The whole notion of Google being some sort of "web nanny" that is in the business of punishing spammers, or penalizing websites, is extremely misguided. Google is just trying to give good results in their search engine and to help advertisers make good money from sponsored listings.

I think even though most of those websites have engaged in aggressive promotional campaigns, they do represent relevant and useful search results, regardless of promotional backlinks, which you may, or may not, consider to be spam. I think those search results demonstrate Google's excellent capacity to deliver relevant and useful results irregardless of the promotional nature of many, but not all of their backlinks. For all we know, those promotianl links may have had little or no direct impact on the rankings. Kudos to Google!

Articles like this one are more entertaining than useful. Folks that are looking for useful information should take these emotionally charged linkbait articles as such. It always gives me a bit of a chuckle when I hear folks quoting Rand as if his linkbait posts are credible facts. There may be a few facts sprinkled into them, but for the most part they are just populist opinions, not accurate facts.

On the Definition of Spam

• Spam = Totally self-serving and unwanted.
• Spammy = promotional in nature.

If we were to define "spam" as anything that is promotional, which I don't, we could argue that Google is the biggest server of spam on the planet, due to their AdWords and AdSense programs. I believe that is just too broad of a definition and dangerous to our freedom to hold such a purist attitude. That is the path to social dictatorship and the loss of our financial freedom.

I believe we are justified in our fear of anti-capitalists that want to rob us of all that we earn and turn it over to a centralized government power to dole out in exchange for obedience to them as our master. I believe it is important that we get the definition of spam right, our very freedoms may come down to how this definition is handled. There is a political struggle going on right now in America that may hinge, in part, on how "spam" is defined. Please keep that in mind as you consider definitions that could lead to oppressive government policies. Please people, let's not label all promotional activity as "spam", lest we shall doom our industry and our future as a free people.