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In my eyes, headers such as "Matt Cutts lies" loses a lot of credibility for Walter (the author of the complaint). IMHO, Matt Cutts (when he was at Google) had

by _cs2017_ 6y ago

In my eyes, headers such as "Matt Cutts lies" loses a lot of credibility for Walter (the author of the complaint). IMHO, Matt Cutts (when he was at Google) had no incentive to lie to anyone, as he could simply ignore any questions from the website owners who wanted his response. The fact that Matt actually bothered responding suggests that he was trying to help. He may have failed to help because he just didn't care enough, or ran out of time, or didn't understand what's going on, etc. But referring to his attempt as "lies" tells me a lot about Walter. In particular, it tells me that Walter isn't the type of person I'd like to help. Why bother, if things don't go to his satisfaction, he might just call me a "liar" later.

Grimm1 6y ago
Mmm sure but I think your comment is a little "seeing the forest for the trees" regardless of whether Walter is lashing out the fact that this was one of the few avenues he had to get help is telling about Google. They don't care about their users whether that is site owners, ad buyers or searchers. Walter should have never had to have had the interaction in the first place where Matt has to make the decision to help him because there should have been support avenues and no secret penalties in the first place. That's like blaming the abused.
- _cs2017_ 6y ago
  The fact that it's hard to get Google customer service to respond is a well-known and unfortunate problem. That does not mean it's ok to call people who try to help, "liars". I don't know how much Walter was "abused" by Google's bad customer service; maybe a lot, maybe not at all. But given that I only have Walter's side of the story, and I don't see him as a reliable / honest source of information, I choose to discard this complaint as "probably nothing serious".
  - Grimm1 6y ago
    Okay, I see large co vs independent site owner and I cut google absolutely 0 slack. They don't need the protection and in my opinion at this point given the continuous string of recent revelations shouldn't be afforded benefit of the doubt either. You're well within your rights to have your opinion but I think it's the wrong one.
    - _cs2017_ 6y ago
      Yeah, every one of us has their own prior (in this case, on how likely it is that big corp is at fault versus a small business owner is at fault). We then update our priors based on our interpretation of available information. Both of these steps are highly subjective. Especially the choice of the priors, since they are based on years of unique personal experiences and personal analysis of those experiences. I would never attempt to change or challenge anyone's prior. I don't know whether human civilization will some day develop a way for people to converge to similar priors, but it's certainly not happening this century, so it won't be relevant to me.
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heimatau 6y ago
> Matt Cutts (when he was at Google) had no incentive to lie to anyone Umm. Yes, he had a paycheck and bonus package as incentive. Performance reviews too. But as to Walter's attacking on Cutts, that's just someone not willing to put in the work to being a responsible adult. When it comes to Google search, you can't accidentally hurt yourself/your-site unless you're a bull in a China shop. Also, Google's search is really complicated and I can't generalize for his specific situation but it's extremely likely that it was OP's fault for using 'black hat' techniques (either directly or indirectly).
ufmace 6y ago
Accusations like that can be a bad look, but I can understand the frustration of your website being snuffed out by the whims of Google, and there's no way to figure out what happened and nobody who can tell you what really went wrong or how to fix it. I even understand that there's a ton of actual spammers out there, and it's not scalable to tell each of them "yes, you're really a spammer, you deserve de-ranking, go away". Still, I'd like to see someone at least try to find a better way to fix both problems.

Grimm1 6y ago

Mmm sure but I think your comment is a little "seeing the forest for the trees" regardless of whether Walter is lashing out the fact that this was one of the few avenues he had to get help is telling about Google. They don't care about their users whether that is site owners, ad buyers or searchers. Walter should have never had to have had the interaction in the first place where Matt has to make the decision to help him because there should have been support avenues and no secret penalties in the first place. That's like blaming the abused.

_cs2017_ 6y ago
The fact that it's hard to get Google customer service to respond is a well-known and unfortunate problem. That does not mean it's ok to call people who try to help, "liars". I don't know how much Walter was "abused" by Google's bad customer service; maybe a lot, maybe not at all. But given that I only have Walter's side of the story, and I don't see him as a reliable / honest source of information, I choose to discard this complaint as "probably nothing serious".
- Grimm1 6y ago
  Okay, I see large co vs independent site owner and I cut google absolutely 0 slack. They don't need the protection and in my opinion at this point given the continuous string of recent revelations shouldn't be afforded benefit of the doubt either. You're well within your rights to have your opinion but I think it's the wrong one.
  - _cs2017_ 6y ago
    Yeah, every one of us has their own prior (in this case, on how likely it is that big corp is at fault versus a small business owner is at fault). We then update our priors based on our interpretation of available information. Both of these steps are highly subjective. Especially the choice of the priors, since they are based on years of unique personal experiences and personal analysis of those experiences. I would never attempt to change or challenge anyone's prior. I don't know whether human civilization will some day develop a way for people to converge to similar priors, but it's certainly not happening this century, so it won't be relevant to me.
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heimatau 6y ago

> Matt Cutts (when he was at Google) had no incentive to lie to anyone Umm. Yes, he had a paycheck and bonus package as incentive. Performance reviews too. But as to Walter's attacking on Cutts, that's just someone not willing to put in the work to being a responsible adult. When it comes to Google search, you can't accidentally hurt yourself/your-site unless you're a bull in a China shop. Also, Google's search is really complicated and I can't generalize for his specific situation but it's extremely likely that it was OP's fault for using 'black hat' techniques (either directly or indirectly).

ufmace 6y ago

Accusations like that can be a bad look, but I can understand the frustration of your website being snuffed out by the whims of Google, and there's no way to figure out what happened and nobody who can tell you what really went wrong or how to fix it. I even understand that there's a ton of actual spammers out there, and it's not scalable to tell each of them "yes, you're really a spammer, you deserve de-ranking, go away". Still, I'd like to see someone at least try to find a better way to fix both problems.