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The article accurately paints a picture of the problems with SEO. But then it makes an odd jump and blames Google for it, and seems to suggest legal action be t

The article accurately paints a picture of the problems with SEO. But then it makes an odd jump and blames Google for it, and seems to suggest legal action be taken against Google to force it to do better. That's... weird. Creating an algorithm, that searches the entirety of the web to find the answers to your questions is not easy. But I honestly believe that this is one thing Google is trying its hardest to do. They want to serve the best possible answers. And they're in a battle against an army of content creators who want to game the system. What's especially weird about the article's anti-Google conclusion is that they acknowledge that it's a game of whack-a-mole. Google improves the algorithm. SEO writers find a way to game it. Google improves again. Etc. What, exactly, would they like Google to do differently? There's a lot of reasons to criticize Google. But I don't think the search engine itself is one of them. If anyone could do better, they would be by now.

rdunham4 6y ago
This, exactly. Google's primary motivation is that the searcher gets the "best" answer with as few clicks as possible. They've gone so far as to penalize advertisers that are paying THEM if they're not seen as the best answer using all those metrics that Google harvests. If people seem to stop searching after they've hit a Youtube video or Wiki then Google considers those were the satisfactory answers. If an advertiser tends to be the end of a search a lot that advertiser becomes Google's favorite search result for that term. The SEO guys' favorite tactic any more are shady paid links to their content from other sites. That's Google's 2nd best signal that you're good content, always has been, but it gets less valid every year and they know it. They give much less credibility for external links to your site than they used to. SEO guys killed their own golden goose by overusing that. How do I know all this? I'm tasked with managing a small company's Google ads, and I've worked on various small organizations' websites (purely white-hat SEO tactics) since the web was young. I despise Internet ads. I've come to respect Google's approach to them. You really have to earn your relevancy score, and even if you're willing to pay a LOT for your ads you struggle if they consider you a "bad" answer for the chosen search terms. My current employer insists on bidding on several overly-generic and/or branded keywords and he pays through the nose for them. I applaud Google for sticking that to him so hard.

rdunham4 6y ago

This, exactly. Google's primary motivation is that the searcher gets the "best" answer with as few clicks as possible. They've gone so far as to penalize advertisers that are paying THEM if they're not seen as the best answer using all those metrics that Google harvests. If people seem to stop searching after they've hit a Youtube video or Wiki then Google considers those were the satisfactory answers. If an advertiser tends to be the end of a search a lot that advertiser becomes Google's favorite search result for that term. The SEO guys' favorite tactic any more are shady paid links to their content from other sites. That's Google's 2nd best signal that you're good content, always has been, but it gets less valid every year and they know it. They give much less credibility for external links to your site than they used to. SEO guys killed their own golden goose by overusing that. How do I know all this? I'm tasked with managing a small company's Google ads, and I've worked on various small organizations' websites (purely white-hat SEO tactics) since the web was young. I despise Internet ads. I've come to respect Google's approach to them. You really have to earn your relevancy score, and even if you're willing to pay a LOT for your ads you struggle if they consider you a "bad" answer for the chosen search terms. My current employer insists on bidding on several overly-generic and/or branded keywords and he pays through the nose for them. I applaud Google for sticking that to him so hard.