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The decay and fall of guest blogging for SEO

159 points by chaz 13y ago

jcc80 13y ago
How can this be enforced? Will Google determine when the author meta data is different for a blog and not pass page rank for those posts? Blog owners would just react by making the post under their default account. Isn't the real issue the quality of content, not who's writing it? It just seems odd to hear that Google is going to go after guest posts instead of focusing on the content.
- the_watcher 13y ago
  It's easier to go after authors. My (possibly naive) hope is that they are working really hard on evaluating content (Arguably G+'s social signals are the most important input for this), and they'll move towards that as they improve. High quality guest blogging is fantastic, and it would be sad to see it vanish because of this.
applecore 13y ago
Ironically, with their guidelines, Google is probably responsible for shaping web content more than any other entity or spammy SEO tactic.
- prawn 13y ago
  PageRank and AdSense likely go a long way towards encouraging all the MFA sites and low-quality guest-written content people would dislike on the net.
instakill 13y ago
Google doesn't own the internet so it's unfair that they get to decide whether or not a concept like guest blogging should or shouldn't be allowed.
- maxmcd 13y ago
  They own Google search. Bloggers can decide if that means they own the internet.
- sixQuarks 13y ago
  You can still guest post. Google just won't be ranking it for SEO. True guest posting is valuable regardless of SEO. You should be targeting the web site's users, not Google.
  - instakill 13y ago
    > Google just won't be ranking it for SEO. Ah I mistakenly remember a similar post by Matt saying there would be penalization for that.
    - alanctgardner2 13y ago
      If you nofollow the links you won't be penalized.
- the_watcher 13y ago
  Google owns Google. Feel free to keep guest blogging in spammy ways and working with Yahoo and Bing (or AOL or all the other search engines that show up at conferences). Still, it is a bit sad that this will discourage some of the extremely high quality guest posts that I've seen founders and experts contribute recently.
  - instakill 13y ago
    > Feel free to keep guest blogging in spammy ways... Make assumptions much? I don't guest blog, I'm merely asking a question.
    - Kiro 13y ago
      I don't see any question.
lingben 13y ago
so because google's algos can not distinguish between spam and ham, we have to throw out the baby with the bathwater (sorry for mixing metaphors!) we've already seen how google missed a massive and long running link scheme (rapgenius) and had to do a clumsy temporary manual change to save face... now we're seeing them try to stop guest blogging from being used for spam well guess what, every tactic that can be used to create good SEO can be used in the wrong hands for 'bad' SEO. you can leave a great insightful comment or you can leave a spammy comment. you can do a great guest blog article which adds tremendous value or you can do a spammy terrible article google is confessing that they are incapable of telling them apart so they want to destroy the whole thing just so they can go on saying that they still know what they are doing well, let me reiterate what many already know: the emperor has no clothes!
- brey 13y ago
  well guess what, every tactic that can be used to create good SEO can be used in the wrong hands for 'bad' SEO I would suggest that if you're coming up with 'tactics' for SEO you're already on the road to bad SEO. optimise your search engine placement by, huh, here's a novel idea - having original, good quality content. everything else is secondary. gaming the system is an arms race and not a long-term win.
  - ry0ohki 13y ago
    You need links as well. "Sure, but good content will naturally be linked to", but then ask yourself, when was the last time you gave something you liked a dofollow link on your blog? And even if you did, you maybe gave one link for every 100 you enjoyed but didn't. People very rarely link to things these days, and the big guys will pay people to provide links. Guest blogging was previously the ethical way to get those links until people started abusing it.
    - robryan 13y ago
      The model is outdated, most links are now shared in closed networks which will happily nofollow everything. Also depending on your niche many of your users may have never actually placed a link anywhere before (outside of a closed network sharing a link)
sixQuarks 13y ago
Matt Cutts: (I know you lurk here, so hopefully you answer this) Will guest posts on high quality sites still count toward link building? I'm talking about well known sites that accept only a fraction of high quality contributors. Thanks
- instakill 13y ago
  I.e guest blogging on SmashingMagazine etc.
  - bmac27 13y ago
    Right. Same goes for VentureBeat, TechCrunch and every other major web publication out there that solicits guest posts. And not all of them are of great quality, either. Many come across as nothing more than thinly veiled advertisements that wouldn't look out of place on Ezinearticles or somewhere similar. I understand what Matt's getting it with this decree but it's very hard to selectively enforce this in a way that doesn't come off as favoritism towards big brands.
- alextingle 13y ago
  Ah yes, the commando Google support desk.
fear91 13y ago
Here comes Google, the Internet police! Do as they want or say goodbye to 80% of search traffic.
- the_watcher 13y ago
  Do as the people who use Google want (I'll give you that they have a big influence on that). But come on, spammy guest post SEO hacks are not something in any Google user's interest.
the_watcher 13y ago
This is too bad. Most of the other SEO-spam tactics (paid links, affiliate networks, etc) were pretty clearly destined to be spam traps and invite Google's wrath. Unfortunately, one of the things I thought was best about content marketing and guest blogging was that it encouraged founders and experts to find where the audience was that would appreciate their product, and create high quality content explaining why it mattered. Many have written about how founders can be tempted to stay in and wait for customers to come to them, but a guest blog could help bridge that gap, as they can stay in while still finding customers, and honing their message (plus the comments to these are often really valuable wells of feedback from people you may not have been able to reach before). Here's hoping for a happy medium here.
morganb180 13y ago
His title should really be "The decay and fall of guest blogging for SEO" because guest blogging is still relevant for traffic, awareness, thought leadership, reaching new audiences, etc. So while it may no longer a worthwhile SEO strategy, guest blogging still has some other PR-related upsides to consider.
- Matt_Cutts 13y ago
  Point taken. I just changed the title of the post; thanks for the suggestion.
Pxtl 13y ago
I fail to see how Google could work around this kind of thing. I mean, you've got nothing flagging the "guest" post as illegitimate other than the fact that it links to an SEO-target, assuming the SEO emailer is telling the truth when he describes non-spammy unique content. Likely, that's all they could go on - "Your blog has a dofollow link to this site that we know is super-sketchy and now you've been sullied by the link".
benologist 13y ago
Next up made-for-social-media articles, or why we're fed several helpings a day of "Random Startup Anecdote" by companies just looking for backlinks and traffic.
halcyondaze 13y ago
This is just one of the worst things I've ever read on Cutt's blog. Because they can't really distinguish good guest posting from 'passable' guest posting, it's all done? Got news for you: guest blogging is relevant for many more reasons than Google. In fact, that's probably one of the least important reasons to guest post or guest blog these days. Referral traffic that is more qualified than organic search, audience building, reaching new channels that organic search cannot quite tap, and many more non-SEO oriented reasons are why guest blogging will never really die out in the way that other types of linkbuilding have died out. You have to love the world's biggest scraper and source of 'duplicate content' (all the scraped info from weather, wikipedia, etc in their sidebar these days) making up the rules of what is and isn't allowed. Extremely hypocritical, but the good news is that relying on Google never was necessary, and is becoming less and less so as time goes on.
- stephp 13y ago
  Exactly. I've been an avid guest blogger, and it has never had anything to do with Google. It's about a wide-reaching, respected brand vouching for my work. There's no PR more valuable than when a relevant influencer grants you their audience. Having a well-trafficked blog of my own, I also receive hundreds of these awful spam emails. But why would I ever take their offer? My blog is respected by my niche because I would never post junk. Niether would the publications I write for. That's why there's still an audience there.
  - Matt_Cutts 13y ago
    stephp, it's great that you sound like a high-quality contributor, but my intent was to highlight the issues around the hundreds of awful spam emails that you mentioned receiving. I've seen a lot of business owners fall for them. :(
    - graeme 13y ago
      Matt, if that's the case, then perhaps you should clarify the original blog post. Guest posting is something I would do even if Google didn't consider links at all in their ranking. If a site author accepts high quality guest posts, should they no-follow the outbound links? That appears to be the message in your blog post.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
austenallred 13y ago
This is the difficulty in fighting spam. Google's goal is to determine which sites are the "best," and use, as their measure for doing so, the number of natural (organic) links as a scorecard. And as soon as people realized that's what Google was looking at, they started to mimic the organic links to boost their own ranking. In a sense, Google is the largest crowdsourced project of all-time. It's a lot like Reddit or HackerNews in that every link is an upvote, but the genius of Google is that each link carries a different weight, and that links are a natural byproduct of using the Internet. In short, the people contributing to the crowdsourced ranking system don't even realize they're doing so most of the time. They're just doing what they like and leaving a byproduct of doing so (links, social signals) that Google can use to tell you which sites people consider valuable. But that means that once people realize what Google is using to rank, they can mimic those signals, and sway the algorithm in their favor. The problem Google is going to run into is that once spammers can closely (and at times programmatically) mimic what is happening "organically," Google's algorithms cannot tell the difference. Right now Google's approach seems to be ignoring or highly devaluing portions of the Internet that have been overrun with spam. Article submissions, blog comments, and now apparently guest posting, which sucks for people that do really high quality, organic guest posting; for Google that has to be collateral damage. Spammers will simply move on to the next portion of the Internet, mimicking what Google still uses as a ranking signal. It's an endless battle. One of the big things I see happening now is entire website hijackings (I've been meaning to email you about that, Matt). I did a quick little report on the search engine results for "Viagra," and 81 of the top 100 are hijacked websites, including a client I have to upgrade to a newer version of Drupal, as the older one has been compromised. I don't know if or how Google will win this battle, but it's far from over. I honestly feel like the new way we gather data to rank websites, and what will be successful in 25 years, will have to be completely unrelated from what Google is doing now, and much harder to manipulate than spreading links all over the Internet.
- lubujackson 13y ago
  Google handles content spam much like an email blacklist. What we need is a whitelist alternative, at least for searching spammy subjects like healthcare advice. How could this work? Well my company is trying something like that now, though it is early going. The easiest way to do this is by filtering the Web by domains instead of individual web pages. This alone removes several magnitudes of complexity.
rgj 13y ago
Given the fact that a very large part of the web in 2014 consists of user-generated content, it seems like pretty much every hyperlink should be nofollow. It's pretty much impossible to get good rel=follow links nowadays. My startup has gotten some pretty good and genuine attention on blogs and forums, but almost every link appearing on the internet to my site is nofollow. This is not how Pagerank was meant to work. Google has learned that it's core algorithm is failing to be able to fight spam. Nofollow was invented in 2005 and it will be useless in 2015, since the entire internet will consist of nofollow links.
- rebel 13y ago
  I couldn't agree more. Almost every site is defaulted to nofollow. My opinion is that nofollow has actually come full circle and now makes it easier for the spammers. Since almost all legitimate links are nofollow, the only way to get "follow" links is to pay people to explicitly put them up for you, have friends give them to you, or create spam websites to link to yourself. The people who happily find my website and are excited about it tend to post to social media, and occasionally some blog posts, but very, very rarely a follow link.
  - prawn 13y ago
    And of course social media links are generally going to be nofollowed. Doesn't leave much use for it.
graeme 13y ago
Does this mean that if I do a high quality guest post, I should ask the other site to no follow the link? I have a few guests posts lined up and want to stay on the right side of things.
morganb180 13y ago
The question becomes: What about links from sites like HuffingtonPost, Forbes, and Medium?
SEOthrowaway 13y ago
From doing some SEO, truth is: Googles algorithm is stupid while they have the image of being genius. This results in two things: Although Google tells you that you should optimize for your clients, if you do that, Google has no clue what the website is about. If you sell paper, a user knows what to do with these - package gifts, wrap books. Googel doesn't unless you put "paper to wrap books" on your site, it doesn't show in peoples search results. A list of mobile phones? Google doesn't know that you try to sell these, your website visitor immediatly does. If you only have brand names and don't use smartphone, if your button is called "add to basket", it does not show your page for "buy smartphone" unless you stick it to your site, a lot of it, but just below the Panda threshold. This is the reason ecommerce sites explain what a "jacket" is on their search result page. No user needs this, but the web is plastered with "hints" for the Google algorithm by legitimate websites, not spammers. Everytime I surf pages, I see this Google hints making websites ugly everywhere. The other result of Google is so much different from humans in reality: The algo can't determine between legitimate content (e.g. good guest posts) and spam. So there is more and more collateral, websites and blogs that are hit, legitimate business that is lost due to some Penguin update, never to recover - without any bought links. (Go to seo/bigseo Reddit) Googles algorithm is so much less intelligent as they want you to belief it is with their "just design with the user in mind" to rank on Google. If you do this, you're lost. PS: The only people that love Google and do not care are spammers. They put up a website, spam it, make money and when hit move on to building the next cheap website.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- KingKurtz 13y ago
  This is 100% true and I can't help but agree.
beambot 13y ago
Spot-on, Matt. I've been getting these requests with increasing frequency for my old robotics blog. My typical response: I'm exceedingly picky about the topics and quality of articles on Hizook. In fact, of the few guest posts I've done in the past.... I have (1) known the author in person for quite some time, and (2) usually end up spending multiple hours to help edit / mold the final result. I have so little time to curate (even guest posts), that I'd prefer to just pass. Of course, the difficulty arises if Google's policy is "all guest blogging is bad." There is a lot of perfectly sound justifications for it besides PR: credibility, new audiences, expert opinions, etc. For example, I shouldn't incur PR penalties if I write a (sadly, too rare) robotics piece for IEEE Spectrum. A few are ruining it for everyone, and balance is hard.
- cstross 13y ago
  Well, that's deeply sucky. I'm spending three weeks on the road in the next month, so I've got three hand-picked guest bloggers taking over the mike on my site, for the duration. Emphasis on hand-picked, i.e. invited because they're interesting and I'm hoping my readers will enjoy what they've got to say. I get to take some time off, they get access to a new audience, and the audience get some new and thought-provoking material -- because from my PoV it's not about SEO, it's all about the quality of the content. (Hint: I'm a novelist, one of the guests is a film-maker, the other two are other novelists. We all pretty much live or die by the quality of our writing.) The question I'm asking is, how do google's algorithmic processes figure out whether a post is a guest post? Are they doing style analysis on prose now? Or counting outbound links, or looking for anomalous keywords? Or is it just a matter of looking for spam-flavoured advertorial?
  - bradleyjg 13y ago
    Here's a question: Did they agree to take the guest blogging stint to promote their careers / work generally (or just for fun)? Or did they do it for the purpose of increasing the page rank of whatever websites they happen to have an interest in? If it was one of the former reasons, I don't think whatever changes are coming down the pike should be a big deal. Although I can't speak for google, I imagine that whatever algorithm they use will look for pervasive patterns. So assuming that this guest blogging stint is a rare or unique thing for these guys whatever changes are made will probably have no effect at all (i.e. the dofollow links will still "work"). The next most likely thing to happen is that the algorithm somehow figures out that they are guest posting and disregard the any backlinks. Finally, there's a possibility that there will be a slightly negative effect. If it does turn out to be the case there is a penalty, then in the future you can configure the CMS software to put nofollow on guest post links and then it will certainly be neutral. Regardless, they will still all get the exposure that comes from getting their names out in front of your blog's regular audience.
frenetical 13y ago
[24 hours later]: Following an email from a16z, Mr Cutts would like to apologize to guest bloggers and now accepts that they're an excellent way of connecting with users and generating value and meaning.
techaddict009 13y ago
Can anybody give an advice on how one can gain quality backlinks? Because competition is so high that to rank on any damn keyword it may take years without link building.
- rspeer 13y ago
  Did you just ask Hacker News for SEO advice? Who cares whether it's you or someone else who "ranks" for a "keyword"? Build something of value. Then people will go there.
  - vdaniuk 13y ago
    Enterpreneurs care. And I mean really care. Because ranking equals their cashflow, simple as that. And hackers are the best to ask for advice when searching for a complex engineering problem. That explicit desdain for SEO is misguided, at best.
  - rebel 13y ago
    It's a legitimate question, although maybe not worded perfectly. I care whether it's me or someone else who ranks for a keyword, maybe my site is better, and I (like anyone else rational) would prefer to make the revenue. I think understanding what ways you can gain links that is still acceptable under Google's guidelines is a very important thing to know, and truthfully pretty difficult to figure out. If you try to build a really great product and never tell anyone about it, I don't think you will last long enough for Google to give you the proper recognition.
    - techaddict009 13y ago
      Said it true sir.
  - 205guy 13y ago
    Upvoted rspeer to counteract all the SEO creeping out of the woodwork on this thread.
- jfoster 13y ago
rspeer 13y ago
Along similar lines, if someone offers to translate your website for free, it's not free. Someone might e-mail you out of the blue with a translation of a website you control. They'll ask you to leave in the links to them as a way of giving them credit. The links are there to give PageRank to a shady SEO organization. I admit, I came close to falling for this once, when someone offered to translate a documentation page I maintain into Romanian. But I have a friend who speaks Romanian, who read it and pointed out that it was the worst Romanian he had ever seen, and that was enough for me to look into what was really going on.
- alextingle 13y ago
  Somebody does you a service, and you give them a link? That seems perfectly reasonable to me. If SEO means trading a good value service for a better reputation, then SEO sounds like it's working pretty well.
mladenkovacevic 13y ago
Is this a response to this? http://nenadseo.com/new-seo/ http://nenadseo.com/new-seo/ Now that the cat's out of the bag (and getting some attention), I guess it's sensible for Google to jump out of the "big brand's" pocket. Sounds like they're trying to avoid the interpretation that big brands and Google are scratching each other's back by blaming it all on the practice of guest blogging.
- chaz 13y ago
  Relevant: "Expedia Lost 25% Of Their Search Visibility In Google Possibly Over Unnatural Links" - http://searchengineland.com/expedia-loses-25-of-their-search-visibility-in-google-possibly-over-unnatural-links-182113 http://searchengineland.com/expedia-loses-25-of-their-search...
SEOthrowaway 13y ago
Truth is: Google is corrupt to the bone. If you're a startup or small business, you need to play by the rules, and often get hit as collateral. If you're big, like spending >$20M on Google adwords, and might be Expedia, you can do as much black SEO as you want (spammy links included) http://nenadseo.com/new-seo http://nenadseo.com/new-seo You can buy Googles love, plain and simple. Guess this goes for guest blogging also.
tk999 13y ago
If Google's street view car cannot take picture of house paints in black, you should not painted your house in black.
jfoster 13y ago
Something I learnt recently is that what Google makes sound like blackhat and the blackhat practices it actually enforces against are two very different things. I realized that when I noticed that a niche site ranking highest for a particular query was involved in link exchange as well as operating a network of sites that despite being unrelated, pointed toward that one site. Looking into it further, Google has made link exchange sound bad (just like this post makes guest blogging sound bad), but stopped short of ever claiming to penalize it or ruling it out.
- josefresco 13y ago
  The issue is that competing marketers can use "negative" signals as a weapon to hurt competitors. Google is handcuffed somewhat (less so as time goes on) when penalizing for bad SEO.
jayjay1010 13y ago
I posted and predicted this today at the same time cutts was writing his post. https://linkaudit.co.uk/blog/predicting-the-beast/ https://linkaudit.co.uk/blog/predicting-the-beast/
trololololo 13y ago
What's your BlackHatWorld.com username?
IloveSEO 13y ago
Whats your Username On BHW ?
AlexIncdeo 13y ago
There are black hat groups owning high PR 6, 7, 8 websites and they're using the sites for SERP manipulation. The high PR websites are legit too. What would be a solution to this? I just hope it can be stopped.
- fkmattcutts 13y ago
  i hope google can be stopped first
- Matt_Cutts 13y ago
  Hey Alex, I'm always happy to hear about specific link schemes or websites that spammers are using.
  - josefresco 13y ago
    The implied solution appears to be manual discovery/detection? Google has this https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?pli=1 https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?pli=1 Not sure there is an automated system that could detect "legit" sites selling links unless you have a larger body of evidence.
fkmattcutts 13y ago
we need to end the google era ASAP as they should not be running the web they should not be telling whoever where or not to link to or anything else. matt cutts is a hypocrit because his serps are filled with their own spam all their ads all the google spam is there but he goes around telling everyone what to do. alright we don't pay for google but they have a monopoly. the www should be free of google asap, their spying is imoral their influence on the web has been positive in the past now it is indecent google is one of the greatest threats to a free and open www
fkmattcutts 13y ago
matt cutts should not be determening what is and what is not quality on the www period. the world needs to get rid of googles influence on the web.
- testrun 13y ago
  So don't use Google. Use Bing or DucDuckGo.
  - mastersat 13y ago
    Google is loosing his trust more and more !! there is too many sites using this method and they rank pretty good in your search engine , even more they have stolen content from other website . i can give many examples about those sites if u want . others are using paid link from high pagerank sites in footer and they have now pr 5 within 6-8 month with last Google update , example can u please check this sites backlink strategies a9d2.com , girls-ly.com , almastba.com ( i have too many urls also ) , this site in using this code <div style="display:none"> <a href="http://www.a9d2.com/" http://www.a9d2.com/" title="شبكة اصداء"> شبكة اصداء </div> in too many high pr site let me know , please regards
KingKurtz 13y ago
Hey Matt, just wondering what your Username on BHW is?
avighnay 13y ago
If a blog owner wants to place a small ad (say via guest post) in their blog why should they be penalized when the same blog is not penalized when they place an ad via Google ad network? (Referring to near spam text ad placements in between content that you see in many sites).
- alextingle 13y ago
  Because Google makes money from one form of advertising, and makes no money from the other.
- prawn 13y ago
  Because Google can easily tell that one is paid for, but not easily tell with the other. The method of ranking by incoming links is very flawed and prone to abuse.
joelrunyon 13y ago
> Okay, I’m calling it: if you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop. Matt, are you saying guest posting is penalty-worthy or simply "not useful"? It sort of sounds like you're threatening to penalize anyone who is, plans on or has done guest posting. If so, it seems strange that google would retroactively penalize people for a practice that it previously endorsed. Can you clarify that at all?
pgrote 13y ago
Once again, Google has no method for weeding things out, so everything gets tossed out. It would be funny if everyone used nofollow for every link. Google would find itself in a pickle.
- isbadawi 13y ago
  Could you explain what you're referring to ("once again")?
  - alextingle 13y ago
    Google's ranking algorithm is getting less and less able to discriminate between "good" and "bad" content. Their response is just to whinge at people who won't play by their rules.
205guy 13y ago
Wow, just wow. SEO as if it were good for the people who are on the web. Google as if it were a shadowy govt agency run by a secret cabal to rule the world. Frankly, I am surprised at so many SEO spammers participating on HN in this thread and not getting called out for it. For the regular folks who want to use the Internet, let me put it this way: Okay, I’m calling it: if you’ve ever advocated, used, bought, or benefitted from guest blogging, you're part of the problem on the Internet. It has always been and will always be a scummy and spammy SEO technique that devalues and dilutes the value of information on the Internet. It is pure entropy. And no, I'm not talking about Charlie Stross taking a vacation and having relevant people write on his blog for his fans. I'm talking about the brokers, the people who buy and sell content and links, the people who see their online content as a means (way to make money by selling ads), not an end (way to give value or entertainment to people).
d4nt 13y ago
This article kind of reminded me if this comic strip: http://xkcd.com/810/ http://xkcd.com/810/ What we're saying here is that someone offered to let the blog owner post some well written and original content on their blog, that would be relevant to their readership and mutually benefiting to both parties. But that's bad because Google says so. Now, if the content is bad, or not relevant to the readership, or overly spammy, then the blog's readership will presumably react. So it's up to the blog owner to protect their reputation and vet all content that they publish. But assuming the content is good, haven't we just got to a nice place? With marketers realising that the best way to promote their product is to persuade respected content publishers to endorse their products and by making content that people want to read?
cromwellian 13y ago
Human beings can't even always tell what is faked or paid shilling, should we really expect Google to do better than human beings? Gaming the system seems to be a constant in nature. Species all over the animal kingdom develop mimicry, camouflage, and other techniques to fool predators, prey, and mates. Black hat SEOs are just the digital equivalent of the mimic octopus (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-LTWFnGmeg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-LTWFnGmeg) The Web is an ecosystem. You can expect Google to evolve overtime to respond to cheaters, but you can also expect the cheaters to constantly involve new ways to game the system. There's no foolproof algorithm.
James_Duval 13y ago
Great to see this confirmed. ~ an SEO
josefresco 13y ago
The Boing Boing reference irked me more than I though it would. Guest posting is bad unless you're a brand we've heard of? Sorry but the line between spammy guest post on some anonymous blog isn't far from the trash that gets posted on legitimate blogs. The rules should apply evenly to all, no matter how well we know the brand. Google seems to violate this when it comes to respected business models. If you toe the line and Google hasn't heard of you? You're done.
SEOBSDetector 13y ago
Will Google be doing something about spammy guest posts that cite a bunch of so called experts who are part of a link scheme network like Young Entrepreneurs Council? Or do they get a pass because they post on big name sites like these: http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/ask-the-entrepreneurs-15-affordable-resources-for-learning-new-business-skills.html http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/ask-the-entrep... http://www.smallbiztechnology.com/archive/2013/05/10-ppc-marketing-tips-for-newbies.html/ http://www.smallbiztechnology.com/archive/2013/05/10-ppc-mar... http://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/8-tips-designing-unique-call-action-0718658#!sMpQF http://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/8-tips-de... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/young-entrepreneur-council/9-sites-to-check-out-when_b_3398357.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/young-entrepreneur-council/9-s... http://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2013/09/25/six-tips-to-enhance-your-online-brand/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2013/09/25/six-tips-to-en...
ysekand 13y ago
Google's definition of 'good' and 'bad' is the criterion...
ommunist 13y ago
My 5-pence is how on Earth can you rehabilitate your position in SERP once you have been mistakenly penalised for "spammy guest blogging"? Punishment will be done automatically, right? Any guidelines for making things the right way?

159 points by chaz 13y ago

jcc80 13y ago

How can this be enforced? Will Google determine when the author meta data is different for a blog and not pass page rank for those posts? Blog owners would just react by making the post under their default account. Isn't the real issue the quality of content, not who's writing it? It just seems odd to hear that Google is going to go after guest posts instead of focusing on the content.

the_watcher 13y ago
It's easier to go after authors. My (possibly naive) hope is that they are working really hard on evaluating content (Arguably G+'s social signals are the most important input for this), and they'll move towards that as they improve. High quality guest blogging is fantastic, and it would be sad to see it vanish because of this.

applecore 13y ago

Ironically, with their guidelines, Google is probably responsible for shaping web content more than any other entity or spammy SEO tactic.

prawn 13y ago
PageRank and AdSense likely go a long way towards encouraging all the MFA sites and low-quality guest-written content people would dislike on the net.

instakill 13y ago

Google doesn't own the internet so it's unfair that they get to decide whether or not a concept like guest blogging should or shouldn't be allowed.

maxmcd 13y ago
They own Google search. Bloggers can decide if that means they own the internet.
sixQuarks 13y ago
You can still guest post. Google just won't be ranking it for SEO. True guest posting is valuable regardless of SEO. You should be targeting the web site's users, not Google.
- instakill 13y ago
  > Google just won't be ranking it for SEO. Ah I mistakenly remember a similar post by Matt saying there would be penalization for that.
  - alanctgardner2 13y ago
    If you nofollow the links you won't be penalized.
the_watcher 13y ago
Google owns Google. Feel free to keep guest blogging in spammy ways and working with Yahoo and Bing (or AOL or all the other search engines that show up at conferences). Still, it is a bit sad that this will discourage some of the extremely high quality guest posts that I've seen founders and experts contribute recently.
- instakill 13y ago
  > Feel free to keep guest blogging in spammy ways... Make assumptions much? I don't guest blog, I'm merely asking a question.
  - Kiro 13y ago
    I don't see any question.

lingben 13y ago

so because google's algos can not distinguish between spam and ham, we have to throw out the baby with the bathwater (sorry for mixing metaphors!) we've already seen how google missed a massive and long running link scheme (rapgenius) and had to do a clumsy temporary manual change to save face... now we're seeing them try to stop guest blogging from being used for spam well guess what, every tactic that can be used to create good SEO can be used in the wrong hands for 'bad' SEO. you can leave a great insightful comment or you can leave a spammy comment. you can do a great guest blog article which adds tremendous value or you can do a spammy terrible article google is confessing that they are incapable of telling them apart so they want to destroy the whole thing just so they can go on saying that they still know what they are doing well, let me reiterate what many already know: the emperor has no clothes!

brey 13y ago
well guess what, every tactic that can be used to create good SEO can be used in the wrong hands for 'bad' SEO I would suggest that if you're coming up with 'tactics' for SEO you're already on the road to bad SEO. optimise your search engine placement by, huh, here's a novel idea - having original, good quality content. everything else is secondary. gaming the system is an arms race and not a long-term win.
- ry0ohki 13y ago
  You need links as well. "Sure, but good content will naturally be linked to", but then ask yourself, when was the last time you gave something you liked a dofollow link on your blog? And even if you did, you maybe gave one link for every 100 you enjoyed but didn't. People very rarely link to things these days, and the big guys will pay people to provide links. Guest blogging was previously the ethical way to get those links until people started abusing it.
  - robryan 13y ago
    The model is outdated, most links are now shared in closed networks which will happily nofollow everything. Also depending on your niche many of your users may have never actually placed a link anywhere before (outside of a closed network sharing a link)

sixQuarks 13y ago

Matt Cutts: (I know you lurk here, so hopefully you answer this) Will guest posts on high quality sites still count toward link building? I'm talking about well known sites that accept only a fraction of high quality contributors. Thanks

instakill 13y ago
I.e guest blogging on SmashingMagazine etc.
- bmac27 13y ago
  Right. Same goes for VentureBeat, TechCrunch and every other major web publication out there that solicits guest posts. And not all of them are of great quality, either. Many come across as nothing more than thinly veiled advertisements that wouldn't look out of place on Ezinearticles or somewhere similar. I understand what Matt's getting it with this decree but it's very hard to selectively enforce this in a way that doesn't come off as favoritism towards big brands.
alextingle 13y ago
Ah yes, the commando Google support desk.

fear91 13y ago

Here comes Google, the Internet police! Do as they want or say goodbye to 80% of search traffic.

the_watcher 13y ago
Do as the people who use Google want (I'll give you that they have a big influence on that). But come on, spammy guest post SEO hacks are not something in any Google user's interest.

the_watcher 13y ago

This is too bad. Most of the other SEO-spam tactics (paid links, affiliate networks, etc) were pretty clearly destined to be spam traps and invite Google's wrath. Unfortunately, one of the things I thought was best about content marketing and guest blogging was that it encouraged founders and experts to find where the audience was that would appreciate their product, and create high quality content explaining why it mattered. Many have written about how founders can be tempted to stay in and wait for customers to come to them, but a guest blog could help bridge that gap, as they can stay in while still finding customers, and honing their message (plus the comments to these are often really valuable wells of feedback from people you may not have been able to reach before). Here's hoping for a happy medium here.

morganb180 13y ago

His title should really be "The decay and fall of guest blogging for SEO" because guest blogging is still relevant for traffic, awareness, thought leadership, reaching new audiences, etc. So while it may no longer a worthwhile SEO strategy, guest blogging still has some other PR-related upsides to consider.

Matt_Cutts 13y ago
Point taken. I just changed the title of the post; thanks for the suggestion.

Pxtl 13y ago

I fail to see how Google could work around this kind of thing. I mean, you've got nothing flagging the "guest" post as illegitimate other than the fact that it links to an SEO-target, assuming the SEO emailer is telling the truth when he describes non-spammy unique content. Likely, that's all they could go on - "Your blog has a dofollow link to this site that we know is super-sketchy and now you've been sullied by the link".

benologist 13y ago

Next up made-for-social-media articles, or why we're fed several helpings a day of "Random Startup Anecdote" by companies just looking for backlinks and traffic.

halcyondaze 13y ago

This is just one of the worst things I've ever read on Cutt's blog. Because they can't really distinguish good guest posting from 'passable' guest posting, it's all done? Got news for you: guest blogging is relevant for many more reasons than Google. In fact, that's probably one of the least important reasons to guest post or guest blog these days. Referral traffic that is more qualified than organic search, audience building, reaching new channels that organic search cannot quite tap, and many more non-SEO oriented reasons are why guest blogging will never really die out in the way that other types of linkbuilding have died out. You have to love the world's biggest scraper and source of 'duplicate content' (all the scraped info from weather, wikipedia, etc in their sidebar these days) making up the rules of what is and isn't allowed. Extremely hypocritical, but the good news is that relying on Google never was necessary, and is becoming less and less so as time goes on.

stephp 13y ago
Exactly. I've been an avid guest blogger, and it has never had anything to do with Google. It's about a wide-reaching, respected brand vouching for my work. There's no PR more valuable than when a relevant influencer grants you their audience. Having a well-trafficked blog of my own, I also receive hundreds of these awful spam emails. But why would I ever take their offer? My blog is respected by my niche because I would never post junk. Niether would the publications I write for. That's why there's still an audience there.
- Matt_Cutts 13y ago
  stephp, it's great that you sound like a high-quality contributor, but my intent was to highlight the issues around the hundreds of awful spam emails that you mentioned receiving. I've seen a lot of business owners fall for them. :(
  - graeme 13y ago
    Matt, if that's the case, then perhaps you should clarify the original blog post. Guest posting is something I would do even if Google didn't consider links at all in their ranking. If a site author accepts high quality guest posts, should they no-follow the outbound links? That appears to be the message in your blog post.

deleted 13y ago

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austenallred 13y ago

This is the difficulty in fighting spam. Google's goal is to determine which sites are the "best," and use, as their measure for doing so, the number of natural (organic) links as a scorecard. And as soon as people realized that's what Google was looking at, they started to mimic the organic links to boost their own ranking. In a sense, Google is the largest crowdsourced project of all-time. It's a lot like Reddit or HackerNews in that every link is an upvote, but the genius of Google is that each link carries a different weight, and that links are a natural byproduct of using the Internet. In short, the people contributing to the crowdsourced ranking system don't even realize they're doing so most of the time. They're just doing what they like and leaving a byproduct of doing so (links, social signals) that Google can use to tell you which sites people consider valuable. But that means that once people realize what Google is using to rank, they can mimic those signals, and sway the algorithm in their favor. The problem Google is going to run into is that once spammers can closely (and at times programmatically) mimic what is happening "organically," Google's algorithms cannot tell the difference. Right now Google's approach seems to be ignoring or highly devaluing portions of the Internet that have been overrun with spam. Article submissions, blog comments, and now apparently guest posting, which sucks for people that do really high quality, organic guest posting; for Google that has to be collateral damage. Spammers will simply move on to the next portion of the Internet, mimicking what Google still uses as a ranking signal. It's an endless battle. One of the big things I see happening now is entire website hijackings (I've been meaning to email you about that, Matt). I did a quick little report on the search engine results for "Viagra," and 81 of the top 100 are hijacked websites, including a client I have to upgrade to a newer version of Drupal, as the older one has been compromised. I don't know if or how Google will win this battle, but it's far from over. I honestly feel like the new way we gather data to rank websites, and what will be successful in 25 years, will have to be completely unrelated from what Google is doing now, and much harder to manipulate than spreading links all over the Internet.

lubujackson 13y ago
Google handles content spam much like an email blacklist. What we need is a whitelist alternative, at least for searching spammy subjects like healthcare advice. How could this work? Well my company is trying something like that now, though it is early going. The easiest way to do this is by filtering the Web by domains instead of individual web pages. This alone removes several magnitudes of complexity.

rgj 13y ago

Given the fact that a very large part of the web in 2014 consists of user-generated content, it seems like pretty much every hyperlink should be nofollow. It's pretty much impossible to get good rel=follow links nowadays. My startup has gotten some pretty good and genuine attention on blogs and forums, but almost every link appearing on the internet to my site is nofollow. This is not how Pagerank was meant to work. Google has learned that it's core algorithm is failing to be able to fight spam. Nofollow was invented in 2005 and it will be useless in 2015, since the entire internet will consist of nofollow links.

rebel 13y ago
I couldn't agree more. Almost every site is defaulted to nofollow. My opinion is that nofollow has actually come full circle and now makes it easier for the spammers. Since almost all legitimate links are nofollow, the only way to get "follow" links is to pay people to explicitly put them up for you, have friends give them to you, or create spam websites to link to yourself. The people who happily find my website and are excited about it tend to post to social media, and occasionally some blog posts, but very, very rarely a follow link.
- prawn 13y ago
  And of course social media links are generally going to be nofollowed. Doesn't leave much use for it.

graeme 13y ago

Does this mean that if I do a high quality guest post, I should ask the other site to no follow the link? I have a few guests posts lined up and want to stay on the right side of things.

morganb180 13y ago

The question becomes: What about links from sites like HuffingtonPost, Forbes, and Medium?

SEOthrowaway 13y ago

From doing some SEO, truth is: Googles algorithm is stupid while they have the image of being genius. This results in two things: Although Google tells you that you should optimize for your clients, if you do that, Google has no clue what the website is about. If you sell paper, a user knows what to do with these - package gifts, wrap books. Googel doesn't unless you put "paper to wrap books" on your site, it doesn't show in peoples search results. A list of mobile phones? Google doesn't know that you try to sell these, your website visitor immediatly does. If you only have brand names and don't use smartphone, if your button is called "add to basket", it does not show your page for "buy smartphone" unless you stick it to your site, a lot of it, but just below the Panda threshold. This is the reason ecommerce sites explain what a "jacket" is on their search result page. No user needs this, but the web is plastered with "hints" for the Google algorithm by legitimate websites, not spammers. Everytime I surf pages, I see this Google hints making websites ugly everywhere. The other result of Google is so much different from humans in reality: The algo can't determine between legitimate content (e.g. good guest posts) and spam. So there is more and more collateral, websites and blogs that are hit, legitimate business that is lost due to some Penguin update, never to recover - without any bought links. (Go to seo/bigseo Reddit) Googles algorithm is so much less intelligent as they want you to belief it is with their "just design with the user in mind" to rank on Google. If you do this, you're lost. PS: The only people that love Google and do not care are spammers. They put up a website, spam it, make money and when hit move on to building the next cheap website.

deleted 13y ago
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KingKurtz 13y ago
This is 100% true and I can't help but agree.

beambot 13y ago

Spot-on, Matt. I've been getting these requests with increasing frequency for my old robotics blog. My typical response: I'm exceedingly picky about the topics and quality of articles on Hizook. In fact, of the few guest posts I've done in the past.... I have (1) known the author in person for quite some time, and (2) usually end up spending multiple hours to help edit / mold the final result. I have so little time to curate (even guest posts), that I'd prefer to just pass. Of course, the difficulty arises if Google's policy is "all guest blogging is bad." There is a lot of perfectly sound justifications for it besides PR: credibility, new audiences, expert opinions, etc. For example, I shouldn't incur PR penalties if I write a (sadly, too rare) robotics piece for IEEE Spectrum. A few are ruining it for everyone, and balance is hard.

cstross 13y ago
Well, that's deeply sucky. I'm spending three weeks on the road in the next month, so I've got three hand-picked guest bloggers taking over the mike on my site, for the duration. Emphasis on hand-picked, i.e. invited because they're interesting and I'm hoping my readers will enjoy what they've got to say. I get to take some time off, they get access to a new audience, and the audience get some new and thought-provoking material -- because from my PoV it's not about SEO, it's all about the quality of the content. (Hint: I'm a novelist, one of the guests is a film-maker, the other two are other novelists. We all pretty much live or die by the quality of our writing.) The question I'm asking is, how do google's algorithmic processes figure out whether a post is a guest post? Are they doing style analysis on prose now? Or counting outbound links, or looking for anomalous keywords? Or is it just a matter of looking for spam-flavoured advertorial?
- bradleyjg 13y ago
  Here's a question: Did they agree to take the guest blogging stint to promote their careers / work generally (or just for fun)? Or did they do it for the purpose of increasing the page rank of whatever websites they happen to have an interest in? If it was one of the former reasons, I don't think whatever changes are coming down the pike should be a big deal. Although I can't speak for google, I imagine that whatever algorithm they use will look for pervasive patterns. So assuming that this guest blogging stint is a rare or unique thing for these guys whatever changes are made will probably have no effect at all (i.e. the dofollow links will still "work"). The next most likely thing to happen is that the algorithm somehow figures out that they are guest posting and disregard the any backlinks. Finally, there's a possibility that there will be a slightly negative effect. If it does turn out to be the case there is a penalty, then in the future you can configure the CMS software to put nofollow on guest post links and then it will certainly be neutral. Regardless, they will still all get the exposure that comes from getting their names out in front of your blog's regular audience.

frenetical 13y ago

[24 hours later]: Following an email from a16z, Mr Cutts would like to apologize to guest bloggers and now accepts that they're an excellent way of connecting with users and generating value and meaning.

techaddict009 13y ago

Can anybody give an advice on how one can gain quality backlinks? Because competition is so high that to rank on any damn keyword it may take years without link building.

rspeer 13y ago
Did you just ask Hacker News for SEO advice? Who cares whether it's you or someone else who "ranks" for a "keyword"? Build something of value. Then people will go there.
- vdaniuk 13y ago
  Enterpreneurs care. And I mean really care. Because ranking equals their cashflow, simple as that. And hackers are the best to ask for advice when searching for a complex engineering problem. That explicit desdain for SEO is misguided, at best.
- rebel 13y ago
  It's a legitimate question, although maybe not worded perfectly. I care whether it's me or someone else who ranks for a keyword, maybe my site is better, and I (like anyone else rational) would prefer to make the revenue. I think understanding what ways you can gain links that is still acceptable under Google's guidelines is a very important thing to know, and truthfully pretty difficult to figure out. If you try to build a really great product and never tell anyone about it, I don't think you will last long enough for Google to give you the proper recognition.
  - techaddict009 13y ago
    Said it true sir.
- 205guy 13y ago
  Upvoted rspeer to counteract all the SEO creeping out of the woodwork on this thread.
jfoster 13y ago

rspeer 13y ago

Along similar lines, if someone offers to translate your website for free, it's not free. Someone might e-mail you out of the blue with a translation of a website you control. They'll ask you to leave in the links to them as a way of giving them credit. The links are there to give PageRank to a shady SEO organization. I admit, I came close to falling for this once, when someone offered to translate a documentation page I maintain into Romanian. But I have a friend who speaks Romanian, who read it and pointed out that it was the worst Romanian he had ever seen, and that was enough for me to look into what was really going on.

alextingle 13y ago
Somebody does you a service, and you give them a link? That seems perfectly reasonable to me. If SEO means trading a good value service for a better reputation, then SEO sounds like it's working pretty well.

mladenkovacevic 13y ago

Is this a response to this? http://nenadseo.com/new-seo/ http://nenadseo.com/new-seo/ Now that the cat's out of the bag (and getting some attention), I guess it's sensible for Google to jump out of the "big brand's" pocket. Sounds like they're trying to avoid the interpretation that big brands and Google are scratching each other's back by blaming it all on the practice of guest blogging.

chaz 13y ago
Relevant: "Expedia Lost 25% Of Their Search Visibility In Google Possibly Over Unnatural Links" - http://searchengineland.com/expedia-loses-25-of-their-search-visibility-in-google-possibly-over-unnatural-links-182113 http://searchengineland.com/expedia-loses-25-of-their-search...

SEOthrowaway 13y ago

Truth is: Google is corrupt to the bone. If you're a startup or small business, you need to play by the rules, and often get hit as collateral. If you're big, like spending >$20M on Google adwords, and might be Expedia, you can do as much black SEO as you want (spammy links included) http://nenadseo.com/new-seo http://nenadseo.com/new-seo You can buy Googles love, plain and simple. Guess this goes for guest blogging also.

tk999 13y ago

If Google's street view car cannot take picture of house paints in black, you should not painted your house in black.

jfoster 13y ago

Something I learnt recently is that what Google makes sound like blackhat and the blackhat practices it actually enforces against are two very different things. I realized that when I noticed that a niche site ranking highest for a particular query was involved in link exchange as well as operating a network of sites that despite being unrelated, pointed toward that one site. Looking into it further, Google has made link exchange sound bad (just like this post makes guest blogging sound bad), but stopped short of ever claiming to penalize it or ruling it out.

josefresco 13y ago
The issue is that competing marketers can use "negative" signals as a weapon to hurt competitors. Google is handcuffed somewhat (less so as time goes on) when penalizing for bad SEO.

jayjay1010 13y ago

I posted and predicted this today at the same time cutts was writing his post. https://linkaudit.co.uk/blog/predicting-the-beast/ https://linkaudit.co.uk/blog/predicting-the-beast/

trololololo 13y ago

What's your BlackHatWorld.com username?

IloveSEO 13y ago

Whats your Username On BHW ?

AlexIncdeo 13y ago

There are black hat groups owning high PR 6, 7, 8 websites and they're using the sites for SERP manipulation. The high PR websites are legit too. What would be a solution to this? I just hope it can be stopped.

fkmattcutts 13y ago
i hope google can be stopped first
Matt_Cutts 13y ago
Hey Alex, I'm always happy to hear about specific link schemes or websites that spammers are using.
- josefresco 13y ago
  The implied solution appears to be manual discovery/detection? Google has this https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?pli=1 https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?pli=1 Not sure there is an automated system that could detect "legit" sites selling links unless you have a larger body of evidence.

fkmattcutts 13y ago

we need to end the google era ASAP as they should not be running the web they should not be telling whoever where or not to link to or anything else. matt cutts is a hypocrit because his serps are filled with their own spam all their ads all the google spam is there but he goes around telling everyone what to do. alright we don't pay for google but they have a monopoly. the www should be free of google asap, their spying is imoral their influence on the web has been positive in the past now it is indecent google is one of the greatest threats to a free and open www

fkmattcutts 13y ago

matt cutts should not be determening what is and what is not quality on the www period. the world needs to get rid of googles influence on the web.

testrun 13y ago
So don't use Google. Use Bing or DucDuckGo.
- mastersat 13y ago
  Google is loosing his trust more and more !! there is too many sites using this method and they rank pretty good in your search engine , even more they have stolen content from other website . i can give many examples about those sites if u want . others are using paid link from high pagerank sites in footer and they have now pr 5 within 6-8 month with last Google update , example can u please check this sites backlink strategies a9d2.com , girls-ly.com , almastba.com ( i have too many urls also ) , this site in using this code <div style="display:none"> <a href="http://www.a9d2.com/" http://www.a9d2.com/" title="شبكة اصداء"> شبكة اصداء </div> in too many high pr site let me know , please regards

KingKurtz 13y ago

Hey Matt, just wondering what your Username on BHW is?

avighnay 13y ago

If a blog owner wants to place a small ad (say via guest post) in their blog why should they be penalized when the same blog is not penalized when they place an ad via Google ad network? (Referring to near spam text ad placements in between content that you see in many sites).

alextingle 13y ago
Because Google makes money from one form of advertising, and makes no money from the other.
prawn 13y ago
Because Google can easily tell that one is paid for, but not easily tell with the other. The method of ranking by incoming links is very flawed and prone to abuse.

joelrunyon 13y ago

> Okay, I’m calling it: if you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop. Matt, are you saying guest posting is penalty-worthy or simply "not useful"? It sort of sounds like you're threatening to penalize anyone who is, plans on or has done guest posting. If so, it seems strange that google would retroactively penalize people for a practice that it previously endorsed. Can you clarify that at all?

pgrote 13y ago

Once again, Google has no method for weeding things out, so everything gets tossed out. It would be funny if everyone used nofollow for every link. Google would find itself in a pickle.

isbadawi 13y ago
Could you explain what you're referring to ("once again")?
- alextingle 13y ago
  Google's ranking algorithm is getting less and less able to discriminate between "good" and "bad" content. Their response is just to whinge at people who won't play by their rules.

205guy 13y ago

Wow, just wow. SEO as if it were good for the people who are on the web. Google as if it were a shadowy govt agency run by a secret cabal to rule the world. Frankly, I am surprised at so many SEO spammers participating on HN in this thread and not getting called out for it. For the regular folks who want to use the Internet, let me put it this way: Okay, I’m calling it: if you’ve ever advocated, used, bought, or benefitted from guest blogging, you're part of the problem on the Internet. It has always been and will always be a scummy and spammy SEO technique that devalues and dilutes the value of information on the Internet. It is pure entropy. And no, I'm not talking about Charlie Stross taking a vacation and having relevant people write on his blog for his fans. I'm talking about the brokers, the people who buy and sell content and links, the people who see their online content as a means (way to make money by selling ads), not an end (way to give value or entertainment to people).

d4nt 13y ago

This article kind of reminded me if this comic strip: http://xkcd.com/810/ http://xkcd.com/810/ What we're saying here is that someone offered to let the blog owner post some well written and original content on their blog, that would be relevant to their readership and mutually benefiting to both parties. But that's bad because Google says so. Now, if the content is bad, or not relevant to the readership, or overly spammy, then the blog's readership will presumably react. So it's up to the blog owner to protect their reputation and vet all content that they publish. But assuming the content is good, haven't we just got to a nice place? With marketers realising that the best way to promote their product is to persuade respected content publishers to endorse their products and by making content that people want to read?

cromwellian 13y ago

Human beings can't even always tell what is faked or paid shilling, should we really expect Google to do better than human beings? Gaming the system seems to be a constant in nature. Species all over the animal kingdom develop mimicry, camouflage, and other techniques to fool predators, prey, and mates. Black hat SEOs are just the digital equivalent of the mimic octopus (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-LTWFnGmeg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-LTWFnGmeg) The Web is an ecosystem. You can expect Google to evolve overtime to respond to cheaters, but you can also expect the cheaters to constantly involve new ways to game the system. There's no foolproof algorithm.

James_Duval 13y ago

Great to see this confirmed. ~ an SEO

josefresco 13y ago

The Boing Boing reference irked me more than I though it would. Guest posting is bad unless you're a brand we've heard of? Sorry but the line between spammy guest post on some anonymous blog isn't far from the trash that gets posted on legitimate blogs. The rules should apply evenly to all, no matter how well we know the brand. Google seems to violate this when it comes to respected business models. If you toe the line and Google hasn't heard of you? You're done.

SEOBSDetector 13y ago

Will Google be doing something about spammy guest posts that cite a bunch of so called experts who are part of a link scheme network like Young Entrepreneurs Council? Or do they get a pass because they post on big name sites like these: http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/ask-the-entrepreneurs-15-affordable-resources-for-learning-new-business-skills.html http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/ask-the-entrep... http://www.smallbiztechnology.com/archive/2013/05/10-ppc-marketing-tips-for-newbies.html/ http://www.smallbiztechnology.com/archive/2013/05/10-ppc-mar... http://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/8-tips-designing-unique-call-action-0718658#!sMpQF http://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/8-tips-de... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/young-entrepreneur-council/9-sites-to-check-out-when_b_3398357.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/young-entrepreneur-council/9-s... http://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2013/09/25/six-tips-to-enhance-your-online-brand/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2013/09/25/six-tips-to-en...

ysekand 13y ago

Google's definition of 'good' and 'bad' is the criterion...

ommunist 13y ago

My 5-pence is how on Earth can you rehabilitate your position in SERP once you have been mistakenly penalised for "spammy guest blogging"? Punishment will be done automatically, right? Any guidelines for making things the right way?