Don't Screw With Google

Does that mean they're buying rehashed $5 WSOs on how to "game" their own company

James Scholes

Yes... I also like the idea. But stil there are a lot of companies who are still in top of the results with link farms etc. I would be happy if those will receive penalties but I doubt this. Maybe this will be beter with te recent Panda update.

High quality content has always been the king. While you are right that these days people are trying too hard to game the system instead of doing things the way they are supposed to be done but things have changed, times have changed and things are very competitive these days. You cant just rely on one thing anymore but you are right, if you are going to rely on one thing it better be "quality content"

I agree with your post Harlan but as they're probably reading this thread could they ask the smartest people in the world to fix the penguin because I'm getting much better and more relevant results with Bing at the moment.

Many thanks Google.

Yet Another Google FUD post ... Yes, google is very capable, can detect many methods to game serps etc., however, when people write posts like this, they usually mix dangerous tactics with tactics that google can't detect.

So how exactly google knows that i bought that particular backlink, IF it's from good site, relevant, and looks ok for a human user / google editor? Does it control my bank or paypal transactions now?

Content with amazing value is the key my friend. And with a little knowledge about marketing your content (that you can find inside the forum), you can easily outrank the competition

> I would not bet on this continuing my friend.

Ever shopped for clothes online? The results always have been and probably will be full of low quality sites.

No offense but you sound like a Google employee because I don't see how anyone who is being at all objective about this could say what you just said.

I spent a whole day researching the various effects of the Google update, reading blogs on search engine-related sites and SEO sites etc. and what you say above just simply does not follow from what I learned.

Basically this update - while its touted purpose was to punish "webspam" or spammy low content sites - in fact in many cases has had the opposite effect.

It has caused rich-content sites to tank while low- or no-content sites have taken over the first page. I gave a bunch of examples in my blog but some quick BING searches about this subject matter will prove what I am saying.

I have 2 sites, both using the same types of backlinks - a little spammy but nothing like SENUKE or other massive spammy backlink schemes - and yet my rich-content sites have both tanked. One of them went from page 1 to page 33 and other pages have gone to page 3 or page 5, or 10, etc. But meanwhile - and THIS IS THE MAIN THRUST OF MY POINT - spammy sites with NO content have dominated the first page of google for my keywords!

So while I did not come here to fight with fellow Warriors, and I don't mean to insult you, but I just could not let what you said go without challenging you to consider that you are wrong and that you need to do some research on this.

The fact is this Penguin update has killed a lot of good sites and rewarded a lot of bad ones. Period.

As a peace offering I'm sharing this funny youtube video about the new update:
youtu.be/0St9B1kmJ2g

No matter the quality content you give to your visitors, you still need backlinks of anchor text of your keywords before you can rank high in google.

Smartest people in the world not being able to kill spam for 10+ years now. Pandas, Penguins, Zebras, etc...

And look at what we get in the SERPs now. A whole bunch of junk that is worse than years ago.

Any reputable company would conduct months of tests before launching such an update, no matter what the product is. Did G do that? Don't know, but if they did, then their QA department may need a serious cleanup.

I really want to agree with the claim that they are favoring quality content, etc. Unfortunately, no matter how hard I try, I can't give a rat's arse about their claims.

They either don't really know what they are doing (or becoming slaves to the very algorithm they created at the beginning and can no longer fix it with such patches) or they have an agenda that has nothing to do with search quality.

And in addition, it may be true that Google may have very smart people working for them.

But when I read such posts (e.g. Google are smarter than us), I tend to think that people are underestimating the combined intellect of hundreds of thousands of people dealing with SEO.

Google may be hiring smart people, but not all the smart people. In terms of sheer numbers of sharp minds, they are a bucket in an ocean.

I know Google's algo is complex, so why can't it do something as simple as detecting a page which has literally copy and pasted content and contains zero original content. Why do many of these pages rank high and original useful content get pushed to the back? It makes no damn sense.

The Webmaster guidelines even state specifically "Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content."

This philosophy stems from the misguided mindset that google "owns" the internet.

No offense but ill do what i want with my content, when i want where i want. If the other site owners I do business with dont mind i really dont care what google thinks.

If google wants to de rank me thats their business , but guess what they havnt yet.

Google has talked out of both sides of their mouth so often and for so long noone can truly know what is "white hat" and what isnt. This is mostly due to the ridiculously complicated nature of their algo. I doubt if most google quality control employees can even say for certain.

Quality content is meaningless, post the best researched article on dog training and see where it gets you, nowhere thats where because noone will ever see it. BTW google doesnt know what "quality" content is because they have no social proof mechanism to tell them

What is real "quality" content, that is content that is easily promoted (ie viral videos etc).

If people spent more of their day building a business and less of their day worrying about what their overlords tell them they would actually have a business.

PS. I seriously doubt google spends much time monitoring these forums but if you have proof I am willing to listen.

Hide yo' kids...

Hide yo' wife...

Don't screw with Google, but enjoy the 'game'.. ^^
Hide and seek..

The phrasing "screw with google" betrays the misguided mindset.

Seriously? You must work for Google. How can an algorithm detect what is good content? What is good content if you sell t-shirts for example? The results suck right now and if I want to purchase something I go to Bing. The number 1 ranked site in my niche has the same title tags on every page. Been number 1 for six months and gets 60,000 uniques a month.

There is still a big difference between having a content-rich site and a site having quality content. Yes, its true that google employs some of the brightest people in the world but nevertheless since its an algorithm it wont always give you 100% satisfaction in the results. There will still be some hits and misses and they would probably still be trying to improve on those.

This is from someone who got hit and re-hit (both in a good and bad way) by panda and penguin updates.

Lol at the page title, like Google is a bada$$ or something.

Picking sides doesn't make any sense, when you can have quality content & SEO at the same time.

If your going to be scared of G, find another source of traffic.

I love reading your threads man! It's almost as if you really believe in what you're saying, but it's always on a completely different subject, so...

I like how every sentence had a new line. Formatting was funny.
Not much you can do really. Play straight and hope you work your way up.. pretty simple.

Although I disagree with the premise that Google is to be feared and is as close to omnipotent as mortal humans could ever become, I agree that it is a bad business plan to be dedicated to tricking or "gaming" Google.

Eventually they will catch you, maybe not for years, but if you are not provided stuff REAL PEOPLE can use then your website is something Google would prefer not to show to the REAL PEOPLE using their search engine.

It's not complicated. One way or the other, It's simply a business decision.

I think the OP has a point but saying that G has one of the smartest teams in the world is a bit inaccurate, their algorithm in many ways is imperfect, dumb and has taken a lot of innocent websites with it. If they were that clever they would be a bit more consistent.

The problem is that google's definition of "content and value" are not always compatible with quality websites. For example, I run a defense news aggregator website. There is no other place on the web where someone can get ALL defense and intelligence news faster. You'd have to look at over 300 sites (thats what I was doing before starting my own site). I only have 3k visitors per month, and I get about 2 "thank you" contacts per day.

But Google in their infinite wisdom doesnt like aggregators and doesnt allow them to run adwords campaigns. I offer more value than half the blogs in existence, but they get good SEO and I cant!