15 ms·

Google is Breaking the Internet

503 points by kposehn 12y ago

mcv 12y ago
I feel the article misrepresents the content of the email: "We have discovered that a company we hired to help promote our website have used a variety of questionable techniques to secure links to our website. These links were placed purely for SEO purposes, with the intention of manipulating search rankings." So basically the company hired people who spam links in order to game search results. Google is totally right in fighting that. The "natural" links on the author's site are not made by the SEO company, so those links are fine. The probem is not linking to content you want to link to, the problem is hiring people to artificially boost your search ranking by spamming links in places they don't belong.
spindritf 12y ago
Nofollow link to a human user is just as good as a regular, do-follow link. From reader's perspective this changes nothing so who cares? Game the link attributes as best as you think you can and let robots figure it out. They're only breaking their own ranking algo.
sbierwagen 12y ago
Jeremy Palmer is a SEO marketer, who also appears to be doing some scammy affiliate thing. Google considers his links low quality because they are low quality.
- jqm 12y ago
  Yep. http://www.newspapergrl.com/affiliate-marketing-training-with-jeremy-palmer-starts-tomorrow http://www.newspapergrl.com/affiliate-marketing-training-wit... It's hard to cry when justice is served.
  - icebraining 12y ago
    Justice? The people who were afraid of Google's reaction where the ones he linked to, not Jeremy Palmer himself. Even if he is a spammer, how is this justice?
    - jqm 12y ago
      Good point. Maybe Jeremy can get a new gig doing reverse SEO. On peoples competitors. Apparently he already has the cred.
  - notsosmart 12y ago
    It is really sad that instead of discussing the merit of his argument, we are debating the quality of OP's site. It is ridiculous that I have to police my site for low quality inbound links or risk getting banned (even more so for mom and pop webmasters who are more susceptible to link penalties). Lastly, if you are penalized, try recovering unless you are big brand like Overstock or JCPenney with millions per year in Adwords spend.
    - rmrfrmrf 12y ago
      > It is really sad that instead of discussing the merit of his argument, we are debating the quality of OP's site. No it's not, because his argument is making the assumption that his content is high-quality.
- anon1385 12y ago
  > Google considers his links low quality because they are. So what? Why should I have to care that Jeremy Palmer (or any other person) is linking to my site? The point of the article is that webmasters are going around trying to get links to their sites removed because it might get them penalised by Google. That is not natural or desirable behaviour. Site owners shouldn't have to care about that. Many have resorted to adding 'nofollow' to all of their own outbound links for fear of being punished by Google for linking to 'spammy' sites and appearing to be part of a paid/circular links scheme. It all sounds very broken to me. Note: I have no interest in SEO whatsoever, and I only have a single low traffic web site.
  - sbierwagen 12y ago
    If you've got bad links, just disavow them. Wikipedia has to nofollow links because anybody in the world can add a spammy link to an article. NYT nofollows links because they're old media, and don't understand the web.
    - anon1385 12y ago
      People use nofollow because they believe (rightly or wrongly, none of us know for sure since it's a secret) that if you link to a site that later turns out to be a link farm you can be punished for it because it appears to Google that you are part of the paid links scheme. 'Turns out' meaning either it was a link farm all along and you didn't notice, or didn't think it mattered, or because the site got bought/hacked and now is just a link farm. (I'm using 'link farm' in the broadest possible sense here since I'm not familiar with all the various ways a site can be deemed to be engaging in paid links and I believe there are quite a few and it's intentionally vague). Even if Google isn't penalising you for that today, they may well tomorrow. So using nofollow seems like quite a rational thing to do for any individual site as there isn't any downside as far as I know, only potential benefits. Additionally, manually disavowing links hardly seems like a scalable solution. As somebody with a small website that I spend very little time maintaining, I don't want to have to regularly be checking some Google console for 'bad links'that I have to manually disavow to prevent getting delisted.
- nubela 12y ago
  He might have low quality links, but his points are still valid. it's not our perogative to link the way Google us to. We should link however we want, and it is up to Google to figure which is link is good, and which are bad.
  - jonknee 12y ago
    > it's not our perogative to link the way Google us to. Who said it was? Google didn't ask him to do anything. A random person on the internet did. I frequently get emails from random people on the internet who ask all sorts of insanely idiotic things that have little basis in reality.
    - PavlovsCat 12y ago
      Did you even read the article? > Apparently Google convinced them, via their Webmaster Tools portal, that the link looked “unnatural”, and that they should use the Link Disavow Tool to discredit the link.
      - jonknee 12y ago
        Yes and that's exactly my point. The email doesn't mention anything about Google, it just says they are cleaning up their links and if it's not a big deal please delete the links on your site. This isn't uncommon, just like it's not uncommon to get emails soliciting links. The OP has come up with a theory about the backstory and then used that theory to blame Google for ruining the internet (ignoring the fact that the entire "credit" he wants is Google's invention in the first place).
        PavlovsCat 12y ago
        Unless you have a better theory, I would call it an educated guess. "They're just being random" is not a better theory, IMHO.
        moultano 12y ago
- guiambros 12y ago
  The letter from the company asking to remove the links reveal they used a shady SEO company to generate artificial inbound links. Not a surprise that Google got some false positives -- particularly coming from a SEO blog. Not really "breaking the internet".
  - ZenPro 12y ago
    It pretty much is if organic hyperlinks become feared entities. No hyperlinks = no internet.
    - 205guy 12y ago
      Really? It often seems like the original PageRank algorithm was using links as a measure of content quality and relevance, and now everyone claims they are. But thanks to SEO, we saw that was false (homework question: would it still be true in an Internet where all actors are committed to creating "good" content?). I think links are independent of content quality (or rather search result ranking, because quality is subjective), and we need better AI based solely on page content.
- praptak 12y ago
  This alone doesn't mean there is no problem here. A spammer has power, or at least perception thereof, to lower legit site's ranking? Not nice.
- DenisM 12y ago
  Consider the argument the author is making, rather than addressing his person. The argument is: The tail named Google is wagging the dog named Internet by sending thousands of web masters on a wild goose chase of policing sites outside their direct control, essentially the entire internet. It's a giant waste of human capital, and it only exists due to Google's dominant market position and their willingness to solve problems of their search algorithm at the expense of the third parties.
- kposehn 12y ago
  I've known Jeremy for years and he's one of the few I consider quite white-hat from my dealings with him. Please do research before you judge :)
jqm 12y ago
I understand the point. But you could be friendly and agree to remove the links in questions since they seem to believe it will harm their business. Not doing so "out of principal" may effect others as Google believes your links are low quality.(although it sounds like their SEO company is mostly to blame for their problems).
- discardorama 12y ago
  Why? Why should anyone remove outbound links simply because the destination _thinks_ they are harmful? And even worse, if the destination is in fear of some other _third_ party which _might_ think they are harmful? In the bad old days of the Internet, web sites would complain if you linked to them, because they though they had some sort of a right to determine who linked to them. After court cases, etc. the issue was resolved. And now this. If Google really thinks that a link is illegitimate, then it should just ignore it in its algorithm. Please don't reply to this if you don't fully agree with my points.
  - nfoz 12y ago
    > Please don't reply to this if you don't fully agree with my points. I agreed up until this, but I think it's meant as irony?
    - discardorama 12y ago
      Heh... that was the idea. :-)
  - jqm 12y ago
    I explained why in the first post. To be friendly and a generally good person. Legality was not a reason given so I'm not sure why you feel that's an argument. In this case, the guy posting the link does have a bad reputation, which is no doubt the reason for the search ranking hit. His deliberate posting and refusal to remove it makes him a bit of an ass. And "Why" one should not behave as an ass is self evident in my mind. But we may not agree on this as evidenced by your last sentence.
Matt_Cutts 12y ago
I talked about this phenomenon recently on This Week in Google with Leo Laporte and Gina Trapani: http://twit.tv/show/this-week-in-google/248 http://twit.tv/show/this-week-in-google/248 Skip to 4:15 in to listen to the discussion. Note that there are two different things to keep in mind when someone writes in and says "Hey, can you remove this link from your site?" Situation #1 is by far the most common. If a site gets dinged for linkspam and works to clean up their links, a lot of them send out a bunch of link removal requests on their own prerogative. Situation #2 is when Google actually sends a notice to a site for spamming links and gives a concrete link that we believe is part of the problem. For example, we might say "we believe site-a.com has a problem with spam or inorganic links. An example link is site-b.com/spammy-link.html." The vast majority of the link removal requests that a typical site gets are for the first type, where a site got tagged for spamming links and now it's trying hard to clean up any links that could be considered spammy. If you read the original post closely, it's clear that this is a site asking for a link to be removed--the quoted email isn't from Google.
- ForHackernews 12y ago
  > If you read the original post closely, it's clear that this is a site asking for a link to be removed--the quoted email isn't from Google. Did you read the article? The reason that site is asking for the links to be taken down is that they believe (apparently based on feedback from the Webmaster Tools) that it will please the Google Gods. Spammy links and irrational fear of spammy links are both unnatural linking behaviors that result when sites are more concerned with pleasing search engine algorithms than with pleasing human users. That's what the article is talking about.
  - Matt_Cutts 12y ago
    "Spammy links ... are both unnatural linking behaviors that result when sites are more concerned with pleasing search engine algorithms" ForHackernews, we say in our quality guidelines to "Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines." If the SEO whose email was quoted in the article had followed that advice, they wouldn't be in the position of trying to clean up spammy links after getting caught spamming.
deleted 12y ago
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based2 12y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_farm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_farm
d0ugie 12y ago
Jeremy: Sing it sister! But do you know what I like even less than occasionally not seeing eye-to-eye with Webmaster Tools? Link farming. While I'm not sure I understand your objection to nofollows as a compromise, have you any alternative methods in mind to improve the web without "breaking" the internet?
andybak 12y ago
From my understanding Wikipedia adds nofollow to stop incentivising people from constantly trying to sneak links into Wikipedia to boost SEO. Any ranking system that gave any value to links would suffer this problem. nofollow is a necessary evil if you allow untrusted sources to publish content on your site that contains links. It's a way of saying "I don't vouch for these links in the same way I vouch for other links on my site". Sounds pretty reasonable to me.
- avar 12y ago
  That's correct, I came here to make that comment, whereas he's implying that Wikipedia did it to preserve their own ranking, which is not true.
- ronaldx 12y ago
  The issue here is that a link is not supposed to say "I vouch for this site". A link is supposed to be a hyperlink. Google creates a false incentive to link/not link, and then complains when people link in a way that they don't approve of. This is a problem of Google's making.
ronnier 12y ago
I own http://ihackernews.com http://ihackernews.com which reformats HackerNews for mobile phones. I had a DMCA takedown notice sent to me on behalf of a website owner who didn't want me linking to their site. My hosting provider gave me 24 hours to remove the link or else they'd cancel my account. The owner of the link claimed that their Google rankings were dropping because my site, iHackernews, linked to their site. With this, they were able to force me to remove it via a DMCA takedown notice.
- jqm 12y ago
  Interesting. Good to know how to deal with this problem should it arise. In your case obviously it was unjust though.
- greenyoda 12y ago
  Why didn't you challenge the takedown notice as being fraudulent? As far as I know, DMCA does not prohibit linking to web pages; it's only about hosting someone else's copyrighted content on your site (or maybe posting links to pirated content).
  - ronnier 12y ago
    I just don't have time to deal with it. Removing it was the quickest way possible for me to resolve the issue and not have my account closed.
    - simon_vetter 12y ago
      and, if they're abusing the DMCA like others have said, you're giving in to FUD, which is exactly what they want.
  - WildUtah 12y ago
    Challenging a DMCA takedown requires you to accept that your whole site will be taken down for ten days while you wait to have a right to challenge the takedown. Businesses or projects that have to keep functioning have to comply with any takedown regardless of its validity because they can't just go out of business for ten days in order to challenge it.
jawns 12y ago
"As a publisher I refuse to nofollow any links, outside of banners and advertisements. I compel you to do the same." I believe you mean "implore."
- MikeTaylor 12y ago
  Maybe he's just really powerful?
- btown 12y ago
  Be warned, if you refuse to comply, he might link to you without "nofollow" as punishment!
- jeremypalmer 12y ago
  Fixed.
deleted 12y ago
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jonknee 12y ago
> Site owners and publishers are now afraid to link to each other because they don’t know how Google might respond to that link. For example, Wikipedia and the New York Times have added the “nofollow" attribute to most of the links outside of their editorial control. I'm a little confused why he cares about nofollow links--if Google doesn't "own" the internet, what does nofollow matter? It's certainly better than not having a link at all. Furthermore, the "credit" he so desperately wants publishers to receive is only a thing because of Google Page Rank in the first place.
- Silhouette 12y ago
  Furthermore, the "credit" he so desperately wants publishers to receive is only a thing because of Google Page Rank in the first place. That makes no sense. Citing an original source, such as an article that inspired your own work or with relevant background for ideas you're building on, is common courtesy in any field, and it's directly useful to your readers in the Web case. Amazing as some people apparently find it, it is still quite possible to "surf" the web, following links from site to site without relying on a search engine like Google to find anything interesting or useful. The fact that Google appear to be promoting policies that could threaten to this alternative is rather the point here.
  - jonknee 12y ago
    > That makes no sense. Citing an original source, such as an article that inspired your own work or with relevant background for ideas you're building on, is common courtesy in any field, and it's directly useful to your readers in the Web case. The OP is against "nofollow" links which only affect search engines. The links work just fine in a browser and visitors won't know the difference. Publishers aren't scared to link, they're just wary of vouching for a site by not using nofollow.
willu 12y ago
In some regards I agree. The rules are constantly shifting and they are unevenly enforced in a way that favors large, established sites which is frustrating for smaller players. Good examples here: http://nenadseo.com/big-dogs/ http://nenadseo.com/big-dogs/ At least the person mentioned in this article received an unnatural link notice. In other cases Google will just sink your site into oblivion overnight with no explanation or recourse. At the same time, they have to deal with an entire industry that exists to exploit the very metrics they rely on to rank results so I don't blame them for just saying screw it, let's just float up our own content and well-known brands for every search and call it a day.
toddh 12y ago
This has happened to me too. A client who bought ads on my site wanted the links pulled so as not to make Google mad. That Google would think me a spammer is very very broken.
- jonknee 12y ago
  If you were selling links Google isn't that far off...
  - anon1385 12y ago
    So you're saying all ads are 'paid links', except I presume Adsense ads. That sounds fair and reasonable.
    - jonknee 12y ago
      No, but if you're selling something that transfers PageRank you are (in the eyes of Google) selling links. It's that simple. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2013/02/a-reminder-about-selling-links.html http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2013/02/a-reminde... > Selling links (or entire advertorial pages with embedded links) that pass PageRank violates our quality guidelines, and Google does take action on such violations. It's an easy test: if the advertiser isn't OK with you not transferring PageRank you are selling a link and not advertising. It doesn't matter that it's good content or that it's not spammy (that just makes you the publisher feel OK about it), you're selling links.
      - lugg 12y ago
        This whole thing seems bizarre. Pagerank smells broken to me. You can't buy links, but you can if you do it from us. What a scam. If pagerank can't differentiate "blackhat" seo links from organic links it probably needs fixing. In regards to this article its a bit strange. Reading the email its pretty obvious how it went down: Company hires dodgy seo company who sets up a bunch of links Google detects it, sends out warning listing all links to their site Company mass emails every site owner with links pointing back at them I don't think they were really asking the links to be removed from the authors site at all, it was aimed at someone completely different. All they had to go by was the referrer and the link.
nso 12y ago
I run a decent sized discussion forum. I literally get 3 of these emails a day. I have an auto-reply that goes something along the lines of "Unless you previously have hired shady companies to do shady SEO for you on the forums, these links are organic. Do not contact me again regarding this subject."
wmkn 12y ago
There is this omnipotent master somewhere in the cloud. His power is large, but his ways are unknown. To please the Lord of cloud, strict rules have to be followed. Rules, that, when not followed, will cause the cloud Lord to strike you down with vengeance. Unfortunately, the cloud Lord is intentionally vague about these rules. Some people have taken upon themselves the task to discover the rules that please the cloud Lord. In the process these priests have found a large number of arbitrary rules that have to be followed strictly. Breaking any of these rules is a reason for the cloud Lord to banish you to the dark corners of his empire - or so the priests say. For only a small fee the priests will give you a glimpse of the rule list that might you good standing with the cloud Lord. It may work, or it may not, because the cloud Lord works in mysterious ways.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  The funny thing is that the Cloud Lord wants to set his rules so that if you do what's right and honest, what is valuable to the world, you will prosper, yet people constantly try to game the rules, so that the Lord's intentions cannot be fulfilled.
milesf 12y ago
My solution has been to recommend friend and family to switch to http://DuckDuckGo.com http://DuckDuckGo.com (or just http://ddg.gg http://ddg.gg) This may seem to be an impossible task, but in days not too long ago people switched search providers often. I went from the curated links of Yahoo, to Lycos, to AltaVista, to Webcrawler, to Google, and now DDG. Google got a lot of mileage out of my in my mind with their motto "Don't be Evil", because I had some trust for them. I don't trust them anymore, and I regularly explain to others why they should no longer trust them either.
- gcb0 12y ago
  what is the love this crowd has with duckduck?! it is nothing more than bing with EXTRA ads! also, it display a retarded "this page uses javascript. click here for the content" or something, every time i use it from my HTPC with firefox+noscript.
  - freehunter 12y ago
    It's about not being tracked while you're searching.
  - anonbanker 12y ago
    https://duckduckgo.com/html/ https://duckduckgo.com/html/ should solve your htpc's problem.
- vezzy-fnord 12y ago
  https://startpage.com https://startpage.com and https://ixquick.com https://ixquick.com are the alternatives I use. The former only proxies queries from Google, whereas the latter works on multiple engines.
  - dublinben 12y ago
    Using a proxy for Google does absolutely nothing to avoid their judgements of websites. Startpage will not provide you with URLs that Google has banished. As an example compare the following results for "Game of Thrones S04E06" on each site: https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=game%20of%20thrones%20S04E06 https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=game%20of%20thro... https://startpage.com/do/search?q=game+of+thrones+s04e06 https://startpage.com/do/search?q=game+of+thrones+s04e06 https://duckduckgo.com/?q=game+of+thrones+s04e06 https://duckduckgo.com/?q=game+of+thrones+s04e06 The first two provide mostly spammy results or subtitles. The DDG results are mostly real sites with torrent or streaming copies of the show available. Which search engine do you think is more useful?
the_watcher 12y ago
>> webmasters are going out of their way to control the flow of page rank from their site to other sites. I agree with 90% of this piece. But this particular comment isn't new. Webmasters have been looking to control flow of PageRank since they learned what it was.
franze 12y ago
is google breaking the internet? naah (well at least not with google search - G+, google local and the new horrible google maps is a complete other story) are webmasters breaking the net because they follow SEO worst practices? definitely. i wrote this article for techcrunch in 2010 http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/07/startups-linking-to-your-competition-will-help-you-no-really/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/07/startups-linking-to-your-co... the tl;dr: pagerank is thoughtcancer, if you start thinking of links as some flow of mystical pagerankjuice you will make bad decisions, decissions that will hurt your business, your users and in the end the internet. the stupid "remove link emails" are just the newest iteration of this thoughtcancer. my recommendation stays the same: link to whatever you like and link to whatever your users like, want or need, oh, and also link to your competition. but for gods, your sanities and the internets sake: don't do it for any kind of page/trust/magic-rank or any kind of link/penguin/panda-juices.... my name is franz enzenhofer / i'm the most successful SEO in europe / i do not care about links
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  > the tl;dr: pagerank is thoughtcancer, if you start thinking of links as some flow of mystical pagerankjuice you will make bad decisions, decissions that will hurt your business, your users and in the end the internet. Golden. It's not Google who's breaking the Internet; it's the people who try to game the search engines.
thu 12y ago
Do I understand correctly that Google will try to punish you (or the other party) if you host links in exchange of money but that Google is doing it in its search results ? (And I receive from time to time unsolicited regular paper mail from Google so that I advertise my enterprise through them.) Page Rank is a neat idea, but making everyone listening to Google so that Page Rank remains meaningful is stupid. What do you do if suddenly Google thinks Twitter or Facebook are to be considered spammy link farms (which would be true) ? Do you ask everyon to delete their tweets linking to you ?
- Matt_Cutts 12y ago
  Google's ads don't flow PageRank and thus don't affect search engines.
  - aaronwall 12y ago
    Do they (along with the personalization aspects of the relevancy algorithms) boost aggregate awareness & CTR - which in turn further drive rank? A look at Ask.com's history on a tool like SEMrush makes this line of thinking rather compelling.
peterhunt 12y ago
false positives happen. let's move on with our lives. - a facebooker, working at a google competitor :P
- Istof 12y ago
  the rate of false positives is very important
javajosh 12y ago
Are there any documented cases of a black hat attacking a site by linking to it too much? This would seem to be a difficult attack to thwart.
- newaccountfool 12y ago
  Have a look at http://blackhatworld.com http://blackhatworld.com its one of the biggest internet marketing forums, and in between and the guff posts there is some good ones. Basically you can do all the things the pros advise you not to do to yourself to your competitor.
- walshemj 12y ago
  Yep spoke to some one (major banded publisher) last year that accentually did it to themselves. You can also get a site dinged by doing UGC spamm against you - again I have seen that an helped a major publisher get the penalty lifted
gordaco 12y ago
This is a distorted variation on Goodhart's law [1], although in a non-economical environment. In other words, poorly thought incentives generate poor behaviour (this is not the core of Goodhart's law, but rather a common consequence). I'm not sure if all the blame for those incentives is on Google, or SEOs are culprits in some way. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_Law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_Law
kevin_bauer 12y ago
Maybe we should change <a href="..."> to <google="...">. or insert a google-search into the href-url!
eddie_catflap 12y ago
I get a regular drip feed of these requests. Depending on my mood I check the outgoing link. Usually it's from someone recommending the service or product that the site asking me to remove the link offers. I've mailed quite a few of the requestors back. I explain that I've set all links to be nofollow and that it was a real person that created the link. Only 1 person has ever understood this. The rest all demanded the link still be removed with varying degrees of politeness. I just don't think site owners get it and to echo several comments here perhaps Google could make some clearer instructions about what they want.
richdougherty 12y ago
The nofollow attribute is a way for site owners to say "I don't endorse this link". nofollow is very handy for site owners because it removes the incentive for users to include spam links in user contributed content. However—and I think this is the point of the article—use of nofollow doesn't just disincentivise spam links, it also means that many valid and useful links no longer contribute to PageRank. It would be great if we could have a way to allow all to links contribute to PageRank, but still protect ourself from spam. Which got me thinking… At the moment the only options for site owners are to say "yes, I endorse this link" or "no, I don't endorse this link" (by adding nofollow). Instead I could imagine something more fine grained, a system where site owners could tag specific content within their site as coming from specific users. Content tagged like this is neither endorsed nor disavowed, instead responsibility is pushed to the user who wrote the content. In other words site owners would be able to say something like this to search engines: "this content is created by user X, don't blame me if it's spammy!". Smart search engines could use this more fine-grained content ownership information in their search algorithms. That means they wouldn't need to throw out all user contributed information on the internet just to protect the internet from spam. There are a few challenges, of course. :) * How to identify users? (Anonymously?) * How to have users endorse content on different sites? * How to work out which users are trustworthy? * Building a PageRank algorithm that incorporates fine-grained trust information. But it's fun to think about technical solutions.
mixedbit 12y ago
To support the point from the article. StackOverflow had to put significant effort to figure out a policy that would allow some links to have a 'nofollow' attribute but wouldn't impede organic traffic from Google (see a discussion around this questions: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/51156 http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/51156). Such things should be handled automatically by the ranking algorithm. High quality sites shouldn't need to research what are the ranking algorithm internals. Today most sites prefer to stay on the safe side and put 'nofollow' on everything, which is detrimental for original content creators.
neurobro 12y ago
I can't help but wonder why Google thinks links from OP's site are "unnatural" (assuming they're all natural). E.g. is this a consequence of allowing do-follow links in comments - and if so, does vigilant moderation make a difference? Or perhaps an indication that the site was compromised and there are pages of spam hidden off in a corner somewhere?
- singhabhishek25 12y ago
  I have one Suggestion for Matt Cutts, that instead of penalizing and killing everyone, why not you are neglecting the bad links automatically and do not add value to the website for that particular link, which I believe that would be your step after disavow request. Here everyone is going into trouble and has to suffer a lot, so it would be better to neglect that link if it looks unnatural instead of penalizing for the same. Like this there would be no risk of penalizing wrong website. Website can continue getting traffic from the link and no one will fear from linking with anyone.
deleted 12y ago
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pgrote 12y ago
Matt ...it is clear Google has no way of dealing with search past the no follow attribute. Is there anything cooking to make search good again without no follow?
znowi 12y ago
Reading the comments from Matt Cutts here, I see the worst is ahead of us.
- hitchhiker999 12y ago
  They have taken an environment of sharing, and turned it into a paranoid world of fear-based strategies. It's not all their fault - people are responsible too, crappy marketing works - so it has to be stripped out. They way they did it was to throw out all the babies with all the bathwater. I think some inside Google get this already, but there's not much they can do short of AI. I'm sure they're working on it. Disclaimer: I most likely have the most traffic of everyone here (give or take) - Have lived off Google publisher cheques for 10+ years. I realise what they are doing is damn near impossible, and that they are not 'evil' but probably a bit overwhelmed.
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al2o3cr 12y ago
"linking with nofollow set" != "not linking". Repeatedly equivalencing the two does not lend the author much authority.
userbinator 12y ago
What really needs to be changed is Google's algorithms. The number of links to a site may be correlated with content quality and relevance but shouldn't be taken as an indicator of such, since it basically promotes large sites with lots of links - but not too many - while penalising the "less developed" (in terms of linkage) parts of the Internet, the parts that in my experience also tend to have the most interesting and valuable content. Basing ranking on characteristics of the page content is also going to pose its own problems, since instead of linkfarming, the SEOs will just focus on generating useless content (they are quite good at that already.) Without very strong AI, it's difficult to tell whether the content was there just to spamdex or if it's something that may be equally low-entropy (for example) like tables of useful information. In my mind, even a totally random ranking (not one that changes every search, but maybe ~monthly) would be better than one based on links or page content. At the very least, it would expose many users to more parts of the Internet that they might not otherwise experience if they stayed within the first 1-2 pages of search results (if I'm looking for something that happens to be relatively obscure, I routinely go into the 100th or more page of results, since there is often good content there too!) I haven't received any such link removal requests (the sites I have a relatively small), but I do not care about SEO that much and if I did receive any my response would basically be "go complain to the search engines, not me."
humain2 12y ago
I have website since 2007 and 90% of my visitors is Google visitors. 2 months back i lose 85% of my traffic without any reason. I don't have any message in Google webmaster. Google is applying filters to reduice my traffic on search results. Sometime it go to normal so i receive all my visitors and 2 days after penality comeback. I don't undertand how google works and i am not using any spammy links or other. So google is kelling the web ....
bryan_rasmussen 12y ago
If sites can make spammy links to another site and google would then hurt the linked to sites ranking it follows that a profit model would soon arise -> Make spammy links and charge to have links removed. Has this been seen? Can anyone show a case?
drivingmenuts 12y ago
>As a publisher I refuse to nofollow any links, outside of banners and advertisements. I compel you to do the same. No. No, you don't. You implore. If you compel, I rebel. Also, if someone doesn't want you linking to their site, shouldn't it be more a case of "Whatever. Your loss."? It's one thing if you're pointing out fraud, abuse, illegal acts or unethical behavior (in which case, you'd probably be posting the evidence on your own site), but if it's a friendly link and they don't want it, don't give it to them.
- jeremypalmer 12y ago
  Fixed. Updated to "implore".
cromwellian 12y ago
Why are being saying 'nofollow' "breaks the internet". First, it's the wrong terminology, nofollow is an aspect of the Web, not the internet. Secondly, nofollow applies to crawlers, not human beings. It doesn't even "break the Web", it has zero impact on an end-user's experience of navigating links. What you could say is that excessive "nofollow" breaks PageRank and other search engines. Less melodramatic and link-baity, but more accurate. What you could claim is that search algorithms are opinionated and 'mold' content and link structure across the Web. That would be true, but unavoidable. It's impossible to have a search engine that would not editorialize in some respect, and any engine that gained prominence for sending lots of traffic would quickly be descended upon by people like Jeremy trying to figure out how to mold content to game the algorithm. Even if we had some sort of incredible AI based search engine that could understand meaning and nuance like spam, it might still have an editorial opinion that people would optimize around.
soheil 12y ago
That email is perfectly legitimate. I can see why now someone doesn't want their website linked from a shady website, that maybe at some point wasn't as shady. To say Google is "breaking"the Internet is easy to proclaim maybe only if to get enough attention on HN. He's using the same exact tactic as the one he is accusing Google of using, namely FUD. How is removing links and placing nofollow attr on links breaking the Internet exactly? If anything this will make the Internet more relevant. The opposite doesn't even make sense from the point of view of Google. They're making money by showing you the most relevant search results so if the Internet is broken and less relevant no one will be using their search anymore and they'll lose too.
alexandros 12y ago
Interesting that this is coming up again. I'd written an essay on the fundamental pattern behind what is at play here, it was well received on HN at the time: http://lesswrong.com/lw/28r/is_google_paperclipping_the_web_the_perils_of/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/28r/is_google_paperclipping_the_web_...
judk 12y ago
Mods please fix flame bait title.
TerraHertz 12y ago
It appears to me that Google has a long term ambition to become the sole means of navigating the Internet. Inter-site links are fundamental to topic-related navigation, as the Internet was originally intended. It appears that Google is trying to depreciate inter-site linking in general, and skilled PR misdirection on the topic by a Google employee doesn't reassure. One has to wonder to what extent the entire phenomenon of link spamming sites might be a Hegelian Dialectic tactic by Google - ie a manufactured problem, intended to prompt a 'solution' that is in fact more beneficial to Google's unstated intent. Are we really to believe that there's no algorithmic solution to mitigating the link-spamming nuisance? Another dimension of this same ambition, is the movement to obfuscate URLs in browser address bars. Traditionally, Web users could copy, save and manipulate links directly as another means of navigating the Internet and maintaining their own records of Web places. As browsers progress further in the direction of eliminating direct user visibility of true URLs, this navigational method becomes less available. The Google-promoted alternative? Just search via Google! As for why Google would want to do this, the obvious answer would be the usual 'money and power'. If Google succeeds in virtually eliminating all navigational alternatives to Google-searching, they then own the Net. For instance, if they wanted to make any given web site disappear, they could simply de-index it. That's a politically very dangerous power. Even if Google has no political agenda now (a debatable point), given such power they'd be guaranteed to become political. Power corrupts, etc. We've been through this before, with a gold ring and a volcano. It's generally a bad idea to create 'one thing to rule them all', and Google is no exception.
hrjet 12y ago
Kudos to the OP for standing their ground and not complying with the request. Apart from the principles, there is also a practical problem with complying with such a request. How can one verify that the request is genuine? It could be a hacked email account from that domain. Or a rogue employee. Or someone who doesn't have sufficient authority within that company. How is the recipient of the request going to verify it?
justinngc 12y ago
Google and Matt will get things right. We have to acknowledge that Google has been performing up and down the perfect margin (but not getting it perfectly right), but it is because, presumably, they are in the last part of the equation to make it all perfect. The only thing is they can't simply solve it relying only to technology because search engines deal with people. People are emotional beings, search engine robots, are, not bring funny, just robots. Consider this as equation Neo (of the Matrix).
crististm 12y ago
This post convinced me to replace google.com as my default search engine. It's better to do that at my own convenience, than to be forced later when the switch costs become too large. It's incredible how google shaped my expectation of looks of a search page results. I was like - WTF is that page? - oh... I've changed my search engine... Go figure.
pompano 12y ago
What I have never understood is why google has put so much concentration on punishing the Websites that receive web spam. Why not balance it and punish the sites that don't prevent it. Punishing them sites will firstly de-value the link + push webmasters to actually do something on the other end. Sometimes it is out of the site owners control because they cannot prevent that link from being created. The google updates right now encourage negative SEO because that webmaster has no control of that link creation. If you start punishing the people who have control and are able to prevent spam then it makes them focus on being better at moderating that and allowing more relevant links from blog comments and such.
davidgerard 12y ago
IME, this is pretty much always a spammer trying to get their past comment spam removed. So although I acknowledge the general message, the specifics really don't help the poster's case.
caseya 12y ago
And the Panda 4.0 update rolls out today to shift the topic of conversation. Well played, Matt. Well played. https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/468891756982185985 https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/468891756982185985

503 points by kposehn 12y ago

mcv 12y ago

I feel the article misrepresents the content of the email: "We have discovered that a company we hired to help promote our website have used a variety of questionable techniques to secure links to our website. These links were placed purely for SEO purposes, with the intention of manipulating search rankings." So basically the company hired people who spam links in order to game search results. Google is totally right in fighting that. The "natural" links on the author's site are not made by the SEO company, so those links are fine. The probem is not linking to content you want to link to, the problem is hiring people to artificially boost your search ranking by spamming links in places they don't belong.

spindritf 12y ago

Nofollow link to a human user is just as good as a regular, do-follow link. From reader's perspective this changes nothing so who cares? Game the link attributes as best as you think you can and let robots figure it out. They're only breaking their own ranking algo.

sbierwagen 12y ago

Jeremy Palmer is a SEO marketer, who also appears to be doing some scammy affiliate thing. Google considers his links low quality because they are low quality.

jqm 12y ago
Yep. http://www.newspapergrl.com/affiliate-marketing-training-with-jeremy-palmer-starts-tomorrow http://www.newspapergrl.com/affiliate-marketing-training-wit... It's hard to cry when justice is served.
- icebraining 12y ago
  Justice? The people who were afraid of Google's reaction where the ones he linked to, not Jeremy Palmer himself. Even if he is a spammer, how is this justice?
  - jqm 12y ago
    Good point. Maybe Jeremy can get a new gig doing reverse SEO. On peoples competitors. Apparently he already has the cred.
- notsosmart 12y ago
  It is really sad that instead of discussing the merit of his argument, we are debating the quality of OP's site. It is ridiculous that I have to police my site for low quality inbound links or risk getting banned (even more so for mom and pop webmasters who are more susceptible to link penalties). Lastly, if you are penalized, try recovering unless you are big brand like Overstock or JCPenney with millions per year in Adwords spend.
  - rmrfrmrf 12y ago
    > It is really sad that instead of discussing the merit of his argument, we are debating the quality of OP's site. No it's not, because his argument is making the assumption that his content is high-quality.
anon1385 12y ago
> Google considers his links low quality because they are. So what? Why should I have to care that Jeremy Palmer (or any other person) is linking to my site? The point of the article is that webmasters are going around trying to get links to their sites removed because it might get them penalised by Google. That is not natural or desirable behaviour. Site owners shouldn't have to care about that. Many have resorted to adding 'nofollow' to all of their own outbound links for fear of being punished by Google for linking to 'spammy' sites and appearing to be part of a paid/circular links scheme. It all sounds very broken to me. Note: I have no interest in SEO whatsoever, and I only have a single low traffic web site.
- sbierwagen 12y ago
  If you've got bad links, just disavow them. Wikipedia has to nofollow links because anybody in the world can add a spammy link to an article. NYT nofollows links because they're old media, and don't understand the web.
  - anon1385 12y ago
    People use nofollow because they believe (rightly or wrongly, none of us know for sure since it's a secret) that if you link to a site that later turns out to be a link farm you can be punished for it because it appears to Google that you are part of the paid links scheme. 'Turns out' meaning either it was a link farm all along and you didn't notice, or didn't think it mattered, or because the site got bought/hacked and now is just a link farm. (I'm using 'link farm' in the broadest possible sense here since I'm not familiar with all the various ways a site can be deemed to be engaging in paid links and I believe there are quite a few and it's intentionally vague). Even if Google isn't penalising you for that today, they may well tomorrow. So using nofollow seems like quite a rational thing to do for any individual site as there isn't any downside as far as I know, only potential benefits. Additionally, manually disavowing links hardly seems like a scalable solution. As somebody with a small website that I spend very little time maintaining, I don't want to have to regularly be checking some Google console for 'bad links'that I have to manually disavow to prevent getting delisted.
nubela 12y ago
He might have low quality links, but his points are still valid. it's not our perogative to link the way Google us to. We should link however we want, and it is up to Google to figure which is link is good, and which are bad.
- jonknee 12y ago
  > it's not our perogative to link the way Google us to. Who said it was? Google didn't ask him to do anything. A random person on the internet did. I frequently get emails from random people on the internet who ask all sorts of insanely idiotic things that have little basis in reality.
  - PavlovsCat 12y ago
    Did you even read the article? > Apparently Google convinced them, via their Webmaster Tools portal, that the link looked “unnatural”, and that they should use the Link Disavow Tool to discredit the link.
    - jonknee 12y ago
      Yes and that's exactly my point. The email doesn't mention anything about Google, it just says they are cleaning up their links and if it's not a big deal please delete the links on your site. This isn't uncommon, just like it's not uncommon to get emails soliciting links. The OP has come up with a theory about the backstory and then used that theory to blame Google for ruining the internet (ignoring the fact that the entire "credit" he wants is Google's invention in the first place).
      - PavlovsCat 12y ago
        Unless you have a better theory, I would call it an educated guess. "They're just being random" is not a better theory, IMHO.
        moultano 12y ago
guiambros 12y ago
The letter from the company asking to remove the links reveal they used a shady SEO company to generate artificial inbound links. Not a surprise that Google got some false positives -- particularly coming from a SEO blog. Not really "breaking the internet".
- ZenPro 12y ago
  It pretty much is if organic hyperlinks become feared entities. No hyperlinks = no internet.
  - 205guy 12y ago
    Really? It often seems like the original PageRank algorithm was using links as a measure of content quality and relevance, and now everyone claims they are. But thanks to SEO, we saw that was false (homework question: would it still be true in an Internet where all actors are committed to creating "good" content?). I think links are independent of content quality (or rather search result ranking, because quality is subjective), and we need better AI based solely on page content.
praptak 12y ago
This alone doesn't mean there is no problem here. A spammer has power, or at least perception thereof, to lower legit site's ranking? Not nice.
DenisM 12y ago
Consider the argument the author is making, rather than addressing his person. The argument is: The tail named Google is wagging the dog named Internet by sending thousands of web masters on a wild goose chase of policing sites outside their direct control, essentially the entire internet. It's a giant waste of human capital, and it only exists due to Google's dominant market position and their willingness to solve problems of their search algorithm at the expense of the third parties.
kposehn 12y ago
I've known Jeremy for years and he's one of the few I consider quite white-hat from my dealings with him. Please do research before you judge :)

jqm 12y ago

I understand the point. But you could be friendly and agree to remove the links in questions since they seem to believe it will harm their business. Not doing so "out of principal" may effect others as Google believes your links are low quality.(although it sounds like their SEO company is mostly to blame for their problems).

discardorama 12y ago
Why? Why should anyone remove outbound links simply because the destination _thinks_ they are harmful? And even worse, if the destination is in fear of some other _third_ party which _might_ think they are harmful? In the bad old days of the Internet, web sites would complain if you linked to them, because they though they had some sort of a right to determine who linked to them. After court cases, etc. the issue was resolved. And now this. If Google really thinks that a link is illegitimate, then it should just ignore it in its algorithm. Please don't reply to this if you don't fully agree with my points.
- nfoz 12y ago
  > Please don't reply to this if you don't fully agree with my points. I agreed up until this, but I think it's meant as irony?
  - discardorama 12y ago
    Heh... that was the idea. :-)
- jqm 12y ago
  I explained why in the first post. To be friendly and a generally good person. Legality was not a reason given so I'm not sure why you feel that's an argument. In this case, the guy posting the link does have a bad reputation, which is no doubt the reason for the search ranking hit. His deliberate posting and refusal to remove it makes him a bit of an ass. And "Why" one should not behave as an ass is self evident in my mind. But we may not agree on this as evidenced by your last sentence.

Matt_Cutts 12y ago

I talked about this phenomenon recently on This Week in Google with Leo Laporte and Gina Trapani: http://twit.tv/show/this-week-in-google/248 http://twit.tv/show/this-week-in-google/248 Skip to 4:15 in to listen to the discussion. Note that there are two different things to keep in mind when someone writes in and says "Hey, can you remove this link from your site?" Situation #1 is by far the most common. If a site gets dinged for linkspam and works to clean up their links, a lot of them send out a bunch of link removal requests on their own prerogative. Situation #2 is when Google actually sends a notice to a site for spamming links and gives a concrete link that we believe is part of the problem. For example, we might say "we believe site-a.com has a problem with spam or inorganic links. An example link is site-b.com/spammy-link.html." The vast majority of the link removal requests that a typical site gets are for the first type, where a site got tagged for spamming links and now it's trying hard to clean up any links that could be considered spammy. If you read the original post closely, it's clear that this is a site asking for a link to be removed--the quoted email isn't from Google.

ForHackernews 12y ago
> If you read the original post closely, it's clear that this is a site asking for a link to be removed--the quoted email isn't from Google. Did you read the article? The reason that site is asking for the links to be taken down is that they believe (apparently based on feedback from the Webmaster Tools) that it will please the Google Gods. Spammy links and irrational fear of spammy links are both unnatural linking behaviors that result when sites are more concerned with pleasing search engine algorithms than with pleasing human users. That's what the article is talking about.
- Matt_Cutts 12y ago
  "Spammy links ... are both unnatural linking behaviors that result when sites are more concerned with pleasing search engine algorithms" ForHackernews, we say in our quality guidelines to "Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines." If the SEO whose email was quoted in the article had followed that advice, they wouldn't be in the position of trying to clean up spammy links after getting caught spamming.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

based2 12y ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_farm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_farm

d0ugie 12y ago

Jeremy: Sing it sister! But do you know what I like even less than occasionally not seeing eye-to-eye with Webmaster Tools? Link farming. While I'm not sure I understand your objection to nofollows as a compromise, have you any alternative methods in mind to improve the web without "breaking" the internet?

andybak 12y ago

From my understanding Wikipedia adds nofollow to stop incentivising people from constantly trying to sneak links into Wikipedia to boost SEO. Any ranking system that gave any value to links would suffer this problem. nofollow is a necessary evil if you allow untrusted sources to publish content on your site that contains links. It's a way of saying "I don't vouch for these links in the same way I vouch for other links on my site". Sounds pretty reasonable to me.

avar 12y ago
That's correct, I came here to make that comment, whereas he's implying that Wikipedia did it to preserve their own ranking, which is not true.
ronaldx 12y ago
The issue here is that a link is not supposed to say "I vouch for this site". A link is supposed to be a hyperlink. Google creates a false incentive to link/not link, and then complains when people link in a way that they don't approve of. This is a problem of Google's making.

ronnier 12y ago

I own http://ihackernews.com http://ihackernews.com which reformats HackerNews for mobile phones. I had a DMCA takedown notice sent to me on behalf of a website owner who didn't want me linking to their site. My hosting provider gave me 24 hours to remove the link or else they'd cancel my account. The owner of the link claimed that their Google rankings were dropping because my site, iHackernews, linked to their site. With this, they were able to force me to remove it via a DMCA takedown notice.

jqm 12y ago
Interesting. Good to know how to deal with this problem should it arise. In your case obviously it was unjust though.
greenyoda 12y ago
Why didn't you challenge the takedown notice as being fraudulent? As far as I know, DMCA does not prohibit linking to web pages; it's only about hosting someone else's copyrighted content on your site (or maybe posting links to pirated content).
- ronnier 12y ago
  I just don't have time to deal with it. Removing it was the quickest way possible for me to resolve the issue and not have my account closed.
  - simon_vetter 12y ago
    and, if they're abusing the DMCA like others have said, you're giving in to FUD, which is exactly what they want.
- WildUtah 12y ago
  Challenging a DMCA takedown requires you to accept that your whole site will be taken down for ten days while you wait to have a right to challenge the takedown. Businesses or projects that have to keep functioning have to comply with any takedown regardless of its validity because they can't just go out of business for ten days in order to challenge it.

jawns 12y ago

"As a publisher I refuse to nofollow any links, outside of banners and advertisements. I compel you to do the same." I believe you mean "implore."

MikeTaylor 12y ago
Maybe he's just really powerful?
btown 12y ago
Be warned, if you refuse to comply, he might link to you without "nofollow" as punishment!
jeremypalmer 12y ago
Fixed.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

jonknee 12y ago

> Site owners and publishers are now afraid to link to each other because they don’t know how Google might respond to that link. For example, Wikipedia and the New York Times have added the “nofollow" attribute to most of the links outside of their editorial control. I'm a little confused why he cares about nofollow links--if Google doesn't "own" the internet, what does nofollow matter? It's certainly better than not having a link at all. Furthermore, the "credit" he so desperately wants publishers to receive is only a thing because of Google Page Rank in the first place.

Silhouette 12y ago
Furthermore, the "credit" he so desperately wants publishers to receive is only a thing because of Google Page Rank in the first place. That makes no sense. Citing an original source, such as an article that inspired your own work or with relevant background for ideas you're building on, is common courtesy in any field, and it's directly useful to your readers in the Web case. Amazing as some people apparently find it, it is still quite possible to "surf" the web, following links from site to site without relying on a search engine like Google to find anything interesting or useful. The fact that Google appear to be promoting policies that could threaten to this alternative is rather the point here.
- jonknee 12y ago
  > That makes no sense. Citing an original source, such as an article that inspired your own work or with relevant background for ideas you're building on, is common courtesy in any field, and it's directly useful to your readers in the Web case. The OP is against "nofollow" links which only affect search engines. The links work just fine in a browser and visitors won't know the difference. Publishers aren't scared to link, they're just wary of vouching for a site by not using nofollow.

willu 12y ago

In some regards I agree. The rules are constantly shifting and they are unevenly enforced in a way that favors large, established sites which is frustrating for smaller players. Good examples here: http://nenadseo.com/big-dogs/ http://nenadseo.com/big-dogs/ At least the person mentioned in this article received an unnatural link notice. In other cases Google will just sink your site into oblivion overnight with no explanation or recourse. At the same time, they have to deal with an entire industry that exists to exploit the very metrics they rely on to rank results so I don't blame them for just saying screw it, let's just float up our own content and well-known brands for every search and call it a day.

toddh 12y ago

This has happened to me too. A client who bought ads on my site wanted the links pulled so as not to make Google mad. That Google would think me a spammer is very very broken.

jonknee 12y ago
If you were selling links Google isn't that far off...
- anon1385 12y ago
  So you're saying all ads are 'paid links', except I presume Adsense ads. That sounds fair and reasonable.
  - jonknee 12y ago
    No, but if you're selling something that transfers PageRank you are (in the eyes of Google) selling links. It's that simple. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2013/02/a-reminder-about-selling-links.html http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2013/02/a-reminde... > Selling links (or entire advertorial pages with embedded links) that pass PageRank violates our quality guidelines, and Google does take action on such violations. It's an easy test: if the advertiser isn't OK with you not transferring PageRank you are selling a link and not advertising. It doesn't matter that it's good content or that it's not spammy (that just makes you the publisher feel OK about it), you're selling links.
    - lugg 12y ago
      This whole thing seems bizarre. Pagerank smells broken to me. You can't buy links, but you can if you do it from us. What a scam. If pagerank can't differentiate "blackhat" seo links from organic links it probably needs fixing. In regards to this article its a bit strange. Reading the email its pretty obvious how it went down: Company hires dodgy seo company who sets up a bunch of links Google detects it, sends out warning listing all links to their site Company mass emails every site owner with links pointing back at them I don't think they were really asking the links to be removed from the authors site at all, it was aimed at someone completely different. All they had to go by was the referrer and the link.

nso 12y ago

I run a decent sized discussion forum. I literally get 3 of these emails a day. I have an auto-reply that goes something along the lines of "Unless you previously have hired shady companies to do shady SEO for you on the forums, these links are organic. Do not contact me again regarding this subject."

wmkn 12y ago

There is this omnipotent master somewhere in the cloud. His power is large, but his ways are unknown. To please the Lord of cloud, strict rules have to be followed. Rules, that, when not followed, will cause the cloud Lord to strike you down with vengeance. Unfortunately, the cloud Lord is intentionally vague about these rules. Some people have taken upon themselves the task to discover the rules that please the cloud Lord. In the process these priests have found a large number of arbitrary rules that have to be followed strictly. Breaking any of these rules is a reason for the cloud Lord to banish you to the dark corners of his empire - or so the priests say. For only a small fee the priests will give you a glimpse of the rule list that might you good standing with the cloud Lord. It may work, or it may not, because the cloud Lord works in mysterious ways.

TeMPOraL 12y ago
The funny thing is that the Cloud Lord wants to set his rules so that if you do what's right and honest, what is valuable to the world, you will prosper, yet people constantly try to game the rules, so that the Lord's intentions cannot be fulfilled.

milesf 12y ago

My solution has been to recommend friend and family to switch to http://DuckDuckGo.com http://DuckDuckGo.com (or just http://ddg.gg http://ddg.gg) This may seem to be an impossible task, but in days not too long ago people switched search providers often. I went from the curated links of Yahoo, to Lycos, to AltaVista, to Webcrawler, to Google, and now DDG. Google got a lot of mileage out of my in my mind with their motto "Don't be Evil", because I had some trust for them. I don't trust them anymore, and I regularly explain to others why they should no longer trust them either.

gcb0 12y ago
what is the love this crowd has with duckduck?! it is nothing more than bing with EXTRA ads! also, it display a retarded "this page uses javascript. click here for the content" or something, every time i use it from my HTPC with firefox+noscript.
- freehunter 12y ago
  It's about not being tracked while you're searching.
- anonbanker 12y ago
  https://duckduckgo.com/html/ https://duckduckgo.com/html/ should solve your htpc's problem.
vezzy-fnord 12y ago
https://startpage.com https://startpage.com and https://ixquick.com https://ixquick.com are the alternatives I use. The former only proxies queries from Google, whereas the latter works on multiple engines.
- dublinben 12y ago
  Using a proxy for Google does absolutely nothing to avoid their judgements of websites. Startpage will not provide you with URLs that Google has banished. As an example compare the following results for "Game of Thrones S04E06" on each site: https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=game%20of%20thrones%20S04E06 https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=game%20of%20thro... https://startpage.com/do/search?q=game+of+thrones+s04e06 https://startpage.com/do/search?q=game+of+thrones+s04e06 https://duckduckgo.com/?q=game+of+thrones+s04e06 https://duckduckgo.com/?q=game+of+thrones+s04e06 The first two provide mostly spammy results or subtitles. The DDG results are mostly real sites with torrent or streaming copies of the show available. Which search engine do you think is more useful?

the_watcher 12y ago

>> webmasters are going out of their way to control the flow of page rank from their site to other sites. I agree with 90% of this piece. But this particular comment isn't new. Webmasters have been looking to control flow of PageRank since they learned what it was.

franze 12y ago

is google breaking the internet? naah (well at least not with google search - G+, google local and the new horrible google maps is a complete other story) are webmasters breaking the net because they follow SEO worst practices? definitely. i wrote this article for techcrunch in 2010 http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/07/startups-linking-to-your-competition-will-help-you-no-really/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/07/startups-linking-to-your-co... the tl;dr: pagerank is thoughtcancer, if you start thinking of links as some flow of mystical pagerankjuice you will make bad decisions, decissions that will hurt your business, your users and in the end the internet. the stupid "remove link emails" are just the newest iteration of this thoughtcancer. my recommendation stays the same: link to whatever you like and link to whatever your users like, want or need, oh, and also link to your competition. but for gods, your sanities and the internets sake: don't do it for any kind of page/trust/magic-rank or any kind of link/penguin/panda-juices.... my name is franz enzenhofer / i'm the most successful SEO in europe / i do not care about links

TeMPOraL 12y ago
> the tl;dr: pagerank is thoughtcancer, if you start thinking of links as some flow of mystical pagerankjuice you will make bad decisions, decissions that will hurt your business, your users and in the end the internet. Golden. It's not Google who's breaking the Internet; it's the people who try to game the search engines.

thu 12y ago

Do I understand correctly that Google will try to punish you (or the other party) if you host links in exchange of money but that Google is doing it in its search results ? (And I receive from time to time unsolicited regular paper mail from Google so that I advertise my enterprise through them.) Page Rank is a neat idea, but making everyone listening to Google so that Page Rank remains meaningful is stupid. What do you do if suddenly Google thinks Twitter or Facebook are to be considered spammy link farms (which would be true) ? Do you ask everyon to delete their tweets linking to you ?

Matt_Cutts 12y ago
Google's ads don't flow PageRank and thus don't affect search engines.
- aaronwall 12y ago
  Do they (along with the personalization aspects of the relevancy algorithms) boost aggregate awareness & CTR - which in turn further drive rank? A look at Ask.com's history on a tool like SEMrush makes this line of thinking rather compelling.

peterhunt 12y ago

false positives happen. let's move on with our lives. - a facebooker, working at a google competitor :P

Istof 12y ago
the rate of false positives is very important

javajosh 12y ago

Are there any documented cases of a black hat attacking a site by linking to it too much? This would seem to be a difficult attack to thwart.

newaccountfool 12y ago
Have a look at http://blackhatworld.com http://blackhatworld.com its one of the biggest internet marketing forums, and in between and the guff posts there is some good ones. Basically you can do all the things the pros advise you not to do to yourself to your competitor.
walshemj 12y ago
Yep spoke to some one (major banded publisher) last year that accentually did it to themselves. You can also get a site dinged by doing UGC spamm against you - again I have seen that an helped a major publisher get the penalty lifted

gordaco 12y ago

This is a distorted variation on Goodhart's law [1], although in a non-economical environment. In other words, poorly thought incentives generate poor behaviour (this is not the core of Goodhart's law, but rather a common consequence). I'm not sure if all the blame for those incentives is on Google, or SEOs are culprits in some way. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_Law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_Law

kevin_bauer 12y ago

Maybe we should change <a href="..."> to <google="...">. or insert a google-search into the href-url!

eddie_catflap 12y ago

I get a regular drip feed of these requests. Depending on my mood I check the outgoing link. Usually it's from someone recommending the service or product that the site asking me to remove the link offers. I've mailed quite a few of the requestors back. I explain that I've set all links to be nofollow and that it was a real person that created the link. Only 1 person has ever understood this. The rest all demanded the link still be removed with varying degrees of politeness. I just don't think site owners get it and to echo several comments here perhaps Google could make some clearer instructions about what they want.

richdougherty 12y ago

The nofollow attribute is a way for site owners to say "I don't endorse this link". nofollow is very handy for site owners because it removes the incentive for users to include spam links in user contributed content. However—and I think this is the point of the article—use of nofollow doesn't just disincentivise spam links, it also means that many valid and useful links no longer contribute to PageRank. It would be great if we could have a way to allow all to links contribute to PageRank, but still protect ourself from spam. Which got me thinking… At the moment the only options for site owners are to say "yes, I endorse this link" or "no, I don't endorse this link" (by adding nofollow). Instead I could imagine something more fine grained, a system where site owners could tag specific content within their site as coming from specific users. Content tagged like this is neither endorsed nor disavowed, instead responsibility is pushed to the user who wrote the content. In other words site owners would be able to say something like this to search engines: "this content is created by user X, don't blame me if it's spammy!". Smart search engines could use this more fine-grained content ownership information in their search algorithms. That means they wouldn't need to throw out all user contributed information on the internet just to protect the internet from spam. There are a few challenges, of course. :) * How to identify users? (Anonymously?) * How to have users endorse content on different sites? * How to work out which users are trustworthy? * Building a PageRank algorithm that incorporates fine-grained trust information. But it's fun to think about technical solutions.

mixedbit 12y ago

To support the point from the article. StackOverflow had to put significant effort to figure out a policy that would allow some links to have a 'nofollow' attribute but wouldn't impede organic traffic from Google (see a discussion around this questions: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/51156 http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/51156). Such things should be handled automatically by the ranking algorithm. High quality sites shouldn't need to research what are the ranking algorithm internals. Today most sites prefer to stay on the safe side and put 'nofollow' on everything, which is detrimental for original content creators.

neurobro 12y ago

I can't help but wonder why Google thinks links from OP's site are "unnatural" (assuming they're all natural). E.g. is this a consequence of allowing do-follow links in comments - and if so, does vigilant moderation make a difference? Or perhaps an indication that the site was compromised and there are pages of spam hidden off in a corner somewhere?

singhabhishek25 12y ago
I have one Suggestion for Matt Cutts, that instead of penalizing and killing everyone, why not you are neglecting the bad links automatically and do not add value to the website for that particular link, which I believe that would be your step after disavow request. Here everyone is going into trouble and has to suffer a lot, so it would be better to neglect that link if it looks unnatural instead of penalizing for the same. Like this there would be no risk of penalizing wrong website. Website can continue getting traffic from the link and no one will fear from linking with anyone.

deleted 12y ago

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pgrote 12y ago

Matt ...it is clear Google has no way of dealing with search past the no follow attribute. Is there anything cooking to make search good again without no follow?

znowi 12y ago

Reading the comments from Matt Cutts here, I see the worst is ahead of us.

hitchhiker999 12y ago
They have taken an environment of sharing, and turned it into a paranoid world of fear-based strategies. It's not all their fault - people are responsible too, crappy marketing works - so it has to be stripped out. They way they did it was to throw out all the babies with all the bathwater. I think some inside Google get this already, but there's not much they can do short of AI. I'm sure they're working on it. Disclaimer: I most likely have the most traffic of everyone here (give or take) - Have lived off Google publisher cheques for 10+ years. I realise what they are doing is damn near impossible, and that they are not 'evil' but probably a bit overwhelmed.

deleted 12y ago

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al2o3cr 12y ago

"linking with nofollow set" != "not linking". Repeatedly equivalencing the two does not lend the author much authority.

userbinator 12y ago

What really needs to be changed is Google's algorithms. The number of links to a site may be correlated with content quality and relevance but shouldn't be taken as an indicator of such, since it basically promotes large sites with lots of links - but not too many - while penalising the "less developed" (in terms of linkage) parts of the Internet, the parts that in my experience also tend to have the most interesting and valuable content. Basing ranking on characteristics of the page content is also going to pose its own problems, since instead of linkfarming, the SEOs will just focus on generating useless content (they are quite good at that already.) Without very strong AI, it's difficult to tell whether the content was there just to spamdex or if it's something that may be equally low-entropy (for example) like tables of useful information. In my mind, even a totally random ranking (not one that changes every search, but maybe ~monthly) would be better than one based on links or page content. At the very least, it would expose many users to more parts of the Internet that they might not otherwise experience if they stayed within the first 1-2 pages of search results (if I'm looking for something that happens to be relatively obscure, I routinely go into the 100th or more page of results, since there is often good content there too!) I haven't received any such link removal requests (the sites I have a relatively small), but I do not care about SEO that much and if I did receive any my response would basically be "go complain to the search engines, not me."

humain2 12y ago

I have website since 2007 and 90% of my visitors is Google visitors. 2 months back i lose 85% of my traffic without any reason. I don't have any message in Google webmaster. Google is applying filters to reduice my traffic on search results. Sometime it go to normal so i receive all my visitors and 2 days after penality comeback. I don't undertand how google works and i am not using any spammy links or other. So google is kelling the web ....

bryan_rasmussen 12y ago

If sites can make spammy links to another site and google would then hurt the linked to sites ranking it follows that a profit model would soon arise -> Make spammy links and charge to have links removed. Has this been seen? Can anyone show a case?

drivingmenuts 12y ago

>As a publisher I refuse to nofollow any links, outside of banners and advertisements. I compel you to do the same. No. No, you don't. You implore. If you compel, I rebel. Also, if someone doesn't want you linking to their site, shouldn't it be more a case of "Whatever. Your loss."? It's one thing if you're pointing out fraud, abuse, illegal acts or unethical behavior (in which case, you'd probably be posting the evidence on your own site), but if it's a friendly link and they don't want it, don't give it to them.

jeremypalmer 12y ago
Fixed. Updated to "implore".

cromwellian 12y ago

Why are being saying 'nofollow' "breaks the internet". First, it's the wrong terminology, nofollow is an aspect of the Web, not the internet. Secondly, nofollow applies to crawlers, not human beings. It doesn't even "break the Web", it has zero impact on an end-user's experience of navigating links. What you could say is that excessive "nofollow" breaks PageRank and other search engines. Less melodramatic and link-baity, but more accurate. What you could claim is that search algorithms are opinionated and 'mold' content and link structure across the Web. That would be true, but unavoidable. It's impossible to have a search engine that would not editorialize in some respect, and any engine that gained prominence for sending lots of traffic would quickly be descended upon by people like Jeremy trying to figure out how to mold content to game the algorithm. Even if we had some sort of incredible AI based search engine that could understand meaning and nuance like spam, it might still have an editorial opinion that people would optimize around.

soheil 12y ago

That email is perfectly legitimate. I can see why now someone doesn't want their website linked from a shady website, that maybe at some point wasn't as shady. To say Google is "breaking"the Internet is easy to proclaim maybe only if to get enough attention on HN. He's using the same exact tactic as the one he is accusing Google of using, namely FUD. How is removing links and placing nofollow attr on links breaking the Internet exactly? If anything this will make the Internet more relevant. The opposite doesn't even make sense from the point of view of Google. They're making money by showing you the most relevant search results so if the Internet is broken and less relevant no one will be using their search anymore and they'll lose too.

alexandros 12y ago

Interesting that this is coming up again. I'd written an essay on the fundamental pattern behind what is at play here, it was well received on HN at the time: http://lesswrong.com/lw/28r/is_google_paperclipping_the_web_the_perils_of/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/28r/is_google_paperclipping_the_web_...

judk 12y ago

Mods please fix flame bait title.

TerraHertz 12y ago

It appears to me that Google has a long term ambition to become the sole means of navigating the Internet. Inter-site links are fundamental to topic-related navigation, as the Internet was originally intended. It appears that Google is trying to depreciate inter-site linking in general, and skilled PR misdirection on the topic by a Google employee doesn't reassure. One has to wonder to what extent the entire phenomenon of link spamming sites might be a Hegelian Dialectic tactic by Google - ie a manufactured problem, intended to prompt a 'solution' that is in fact more beneficial to Google's unstated intent. Are we really to believe that there's no algorithmic solution to mitigating the link-spamming nuisance? Another dimension of this same ambition, is the movement to obfuscate URLs in browser address bars. Traditionally, Web users could copy, save and manipulate links directly as another means of navigating the Internet and maintaining their own records of Web places. As browsers progress further in the direction of eliminating direct user visibility of true URLs, this navigational method becomes less available. The Google-promoted alternative? Just search via Google! As for why Google would want to do this, the obvious answer would be the usual 'money and power'. If Google succeeds in virtually eliminating all navigational alternatives to Google-searching, they then own the Net. For instance, if they wanted to make any given web site disappear, they could simply de-index it. That's a politically very dangerous power. Even if Google has no political agenda now (a debatable point), given such power they'd be guaranteed to become political. Power corrupts, etc. We've been through this before, with a gold ring and a volcano. It's generally a bad idea to create 'one thing to rule them all', and Google is no exception.

hrjet 12y ago

Kudos to the OP for standing their ground and not complying with the request. Apart from the principles, there is also a practical problem with complying with such a request. How can one verify that the request is genuine? It could be a hacked email account from that domain. Or a rogue employee. Or someone who doesn't have sufficient authority within that company. How is the recipient of the request going to verify it?

justinngc 12y ago

Google and Matt will get things right. We have to acknowledge that Google has been performing up and down the perfect margin (but not getting it perfectly right), but it is because, presumably, they are in the last part of the equation to make it all perfect. The only thing is they can't simply solve it relying only to technology because search engines deal with people. People are emotional beings, search engine robots, are, not bring funny, just robots. Consider this as equation Neo (of the Matrix).

crististm 12y ago

This post convinced me to replace google.com as my default search engine. It's better to do that at my own convenience, than to be forced later when the switch costs become too large. It's incredible how google shaped my expectation of looks of a search page results. I was like - WTF is that page? - oh... I've changed my search engine... Go figure.

pompano 12y ago

What I have never understood is why google has put so much concentration on punishing the Websites that receive web spam. Why not balance it and punish the sites that don't prevent it. Punishing them sites will firstly de-value the link + push webmasters to actually do something on the other end. Sometimes it is out of the site owners control because they cannot prevent that link from being created. The google updates right now encourage negative SEO because that webmaster has no control of that link creation. If you start punishing the people who have control and are able to prevent spam then it makes them focus on being better at moderating that and allowing more relevant links from blog comments and such.

davidgerard 12y ago

IME, this is pretty much always a spammer trying to get their past comment spam removed. So although I acknowledge the general message, the specifics really don't help the poster's case.

caseya 12y ago

And the Panda 4.0 update rolls out today to shift the topic of conversation. Well played, Matt. Well played. https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/468891756982185985 https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/468891756982185985