17 ms·

Matt, this does not address whatsoever the point being brought up. And in case you missed it, I will try to cite it as clearly as possible here: This is a case

by lingben 12y ago

Matt, this does not address whatsoever the point being brought up. And in case you missed it, I will try to cite it as clearly as possible here: This is a case where google wants people to mold the internet according to what their current incarnation of their algorithm says the way it should be. Rather than google trying to mold its algorithm to understand the internet, natural links vs. spams, and their respective authority and value. Google here is saying that all links from this site are suspect, even when the link in question is 100% valid, quality and relevant. Instead of going back to the drawing board and trying to fix the algorithm, google has discovered that since they are so big now, it is easier to play the "benevolent" dictator and dictate to the whole internet, how and what they should be doing. And to mete out knuckle raps when they get out of line. Do you see the point now? The model (google's algo) should fit reality. Rather than forcing reality to fit the model. I believe this is what the author is trying to communicate by saying "google is breaking the internet" - what he means is that the internet is becoming a 'google' version of itself, rather than what it would naturally be.

jonknee 12y ago
> Google here is saying that all links from this site are suspect, even when the link in question is 100% valid, quality and relevant. I read the article and didn't see any mention of what site the link was on or even what site it was linking to. It's impossible to say if it was legitimately spammy or not, but either way Google never asked him to do anything. Someone who didn't know about the Link Disavow Tool decided on their own to email him about taking the link down. You would have a good point prior to the Link Disavow Tool, but it has solved this (very tricky) problem.
- jamesbritt 12y ago
  Someone who didn't know about the Link Disavow Tool decided on their own to email him about taking the link down. FTFA: "In short, the email was a request to remove links from our site to their site. We linked to this company on our own accord, with no prior solicitation, because we felt it would be useful to our site visitors, which is generally why people link to things on the Internet." "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. Furthermore, they thought it necessary to contact us to manually remove the link, which is something I’m not going to do (out of principle)."
  - jonknee 12y ago
    ... Exactly. Someone took it upon themselves to hassle the OP to remove a link. Google has made a tool to allow you to have links that you don't vouch for to be not counted, but the webmaster in question decided to try and do it "manually". It used to be you would get sketchy emails asking you to link XYZ and now a few years in the future the sketchy emails are asking you to unlink XYZ.
    - davemel37 12y ago
      I think you missed the point of the disavow tool. If Google hit you with a penalty, they still expect you to put in a good faith effort to remove the link naturally first. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en
      - ithkuil 12y ago
        the doc says it's your responsibility to remove spammy back links that you (or a SEO you've hired) have introduced to improve your ranking. it cannot possibly be your responsibility to remove links that other unrelated entities have towards you! (unless it's an obvious link scheme)
        guebster 12y ago
        I think Matt and Google are getting an unfair rap on this. Google provided a search engine that worked better than any other so people started using it. People are still using it because it's still better than the others. It's not a monopoly. You can use another search engine if you want to. The site that emailed to get a link taken down employed an SEO agency to improve their rankings and they created a bunch of spammy links to try to manipulate Google into ranking that site higher than others that probably deserve to rank higher due to their content. If Google did nothing about it we would get some crappy search results. Also, if you read what Matt Cutts is saying, it implies that if they only had a few unnatural links then they wouldn't have received a webmaster tools warning telling them they had spammy links. They got the warning because their link profile suggested that it was obvious they had been trying to manipulate rankings, not because they had one or two iffy ones. It's likely that the site then blanket emailed anything and everything that they weren't sure about to get the links taken down. Is it Google's fault that this is how the site decided to deal with the warning? Should Google just make it really easy for them by saying, "OK you disavowed those crappy links, you're off the hook now"? If the consequences are so weak and short-lived, where is the deterrent effect? No, Google doesn't own the internet but they own Google and the site is just trying to provide users with the most relevant results to their searches. Re, the nofollow aspect. Google didn't "force" sites into using the nofollow attribute by scaring them into thinking that their rankings would drop. Nofollow was in place before there was any notion that who you linked to could harm you. Sites like Wikipedia and others were only too happy to add nofollow to links because it put spammers off from crapifying their sites.
- pygy_ 12y ago
  A spammy link is a link created on behalf of the target site. In this case the author says he created the link independently, because he thought it would be useful to his users. That's, by definition, a genuine, organic link. I wonder if a link flagged by the disavow tool and confirmed by the user weaken the Google juice of the source site. @MattCutts (or another Googler), is it the case?
  - magicalist 12y ago
    It seems like it would be odd to not incorporate a "spamminess" measure into the strength of the link, so hopefully you'd be losing very little.
  - Matt_Cutts 12y ago
    "I wonder if a link flagged by the disavow tool and confirmed by the user weaken the Google juice of the source site." We haven't been using disavowed links as a reason not to trust a source site. So it wouldn't weaken the Google juice of the author's/source site if the company that sent the email had just disavowed the link.
    - pygy_ 12y ago
      Good to know, and thanks for the answer.
    - davemel37 12y ago
      This in no way implies Google won't use the disavow data to not trust source sites in the future.
  - jonknee 12y ago
    > In this case the author says he created the link independently, because he thought it would be useful to his users. That's, by definition, a genuine, organic link. Genuine organic links can still be spammy. The OP seems to be a genuine affiliate marketer/spammer, it's not inconceivable that his links aren't treated with a ton of respect.
    - 12y ago
Matt_Cutts 12y ago
It's not just Google that recommends to avoid link spamming. For example, at http://www.seroundtable.com/bing-links-knowledge-18535.html http://www.seroundtable.com/bing-links-knowledge-18535.html you can read where Bing said "You should never know in advance a link is coming, or where it’s coming from. If you do, that’s the wrong path." When SEOs break the quality guidelines of all major search engines (not just Google), then they might need to do some work to clean things up if they get caught. One of the reasons that Google is such a popular search engine is that we do take spam seriously and we take action to counter spam.
- Terretta 12y ago
  They're not talking to you about link spamming.
  - karpodiem 12y ago
    agreed, matt is talking in generalities at this point
    - justincormack 12y ago
      Matt is not reading what the discussion is about at this point.
      - kordless 12y ago
        More specifically, I believe people feel they aren't being heard at this point. Rationalizations are the tell.
- jamesbritt 12y ago
  When SEOs break the quality guidelines of all major search engines (not just Google), then they might need to do some work to clean things up if they get caught. This still seems to be missing the point. As I understand it, sites that are not doing anything in the realm of SEO can get penalized because of the actions of people outside of their control. If the wrong sorts of sites (however defined), sites outside my control, are linking to my site, why am I penalized, and why should the burden be placed on me to go fix it?
lifeisstillgood 12y ago
The Internet would naturally be a tragedy of the commons - and entropy fighting is something Google seems to be doing well.
mixologic 12y ago
"This is a case where google wants people to mold the internet according to what their current incarnation of their algorithm says the way it should be" You do realize, of course, that Google is part and parcel of the internet, and that much of the way the internet works "in reality" is in response to external perceptions of how googles algorithms work? Google's early dominance in search was a result of their algorithm's ability to surface relevance. If they had never staked out that Site A linking to Site B means site B has more relevance, then the internet would be an entirely different beast, and SEO would take entirely other forms that do not amount to linkstuffing. The internet hasn't existed 'naturally' since search engines first came around.
lazyjones 12y ago
It's both Google trying to force web sites to help their algorithm and spammy sites trying to exploit the current algorithm that are causing these annoyances. I suspect neither would be a major issue if Google modernized their algorithm to take into account (mostly/only) which links people actually clicked on rather than what is linked from where. They'd only have to be able to distinguish people from click-bots, which might be easier to do with some confidence than recognizing the intent behind a particular link (spam/SEO or real information for visitors) - I hope they are already able to do this, for the sake of AdWords customers ...
zenbowman 12y ago
> The model (google's algo) should fit reality. Rather than forcing reality to fit the model. It is impossible for Google to exist at its current scale and not influence the Internet. The tiger is born out of adaptation to the jungle, but in time, the jungle too will adapt to the tiger.
Isofarro 12y ago
> The model (google's algo) should fit reality. Rather than forcing reality to fit the model. Google's algorithms should reward behaviour that's best for Web users, and penalise behaviour that is worse for Web users. That way, for people who want to game search engine rankings, they are pushed more towards techniques that benefit web users in the course of trying to benefit themselves. The problem with models is that they are not accurate simulations of the real world. They have flaws and simplifications, and those give rise to people taking advantages of those flaws. All models and representations have flaws.

by lingben 12y ago

jonknee 12y ago

> Google here is saying that all links from this site are suspect, even when the link in question is 100% valid, quality and relevant. I read the article and didn't see any mention of what site the link was on or even what site it was linking to. It's impossible to say if it was legitimately spammy or not, but either way Google never asked him to do anything. Someone who didn't know about the Link Disavow Tool decided on their own to email him about taking the link down. You would have a good point prior to the Link Disavow Tool, but it has solved this (very tricky) problem.

jamesbritt 12y ago
Someone who didn't know about the Link Disavow Tool decided on their own to email him about taking the link down. FTFA: "In short, the email was a request to remove links from our site to their site. We linked to this company on our own accord, with no prior solicitation, because we felt it would be useful to our site visitors, which is generally why people link to things on the Internet." "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. Furthermore, they thought it necessary to contact us to manually remove the link, which is something I’m not going to do (out of principle)."
- jonknee 12y ago
  ... Exactly. Someone took it upon themselves to hassle the OP to remove a link. Google has made a tool to allow you to have links that you don't vouch for to be not counted, but the webmaster in question decided to try and do it "manually". It used to be you would get sketchy emails asking you to link XYZ and now a few years in the future the sketchy emails are asking you to unlink XYZ.
  - davemel37 12y ago
    I think you missed the point of the disavow tool. If Google hit you with a penalty, they still expect you to put in a good faith effort to remove the link naturally first. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en
    - ithkuil 12y ago
      the doc says it's your responsibility to remove spammy back links that you (or a SEO you've hired) have introduced to improve your ranking. it cannot possibly be your responsibility to remove links that other unrelated entities have towards you! (unless it's an obvious link scheme)
      - guebster 12y ago
        I think Matt and Google are getting an unfair rap on this. Google provided a search engine that worked better than any other so people started using it. People are still using it because it's still better than the others. It's not a monopoly. You can use another search engine if you want to. The site that emailed to get a link taken down employed an SEO agency to improve their rankings and they created a bunch of spammy links to try to manipulate Google into ranking that site higher than others that probably deserve to rank higher due to their content. If Google did nothing about it we would get some crappy search results. Also, if you read what Matt Cutts is saying, it implies that if they only had a few unnatural links then they wouldn't have received a webmaster tools warning telling them they had spammy links. They got the warning because their link profile suggested that it was obvious they had been trying to manipulate rankings, not because they had one or two iffy ones. It's likely that the site then blanket emailed anything and everything that they weren't sure about to get the links taken down. Is it Google's fault that this is how the site decided to deal with the warning? Should Google just make it really easy for them by saying, "OK you disavowed those crappy links, you're off the hook now"? If the consequences are so weak and short-lived, where is the deterrent effect? No, Google doesn't own the internet but they own Google and the site is just trying to provide users with the most relevant results to their searches. Re, the nofollow aspect. Google didn't "force" sites into using the nofollow attribute by scaring them into thinking that their rankings would drop. Nofollow was in place before there was any notion that who you linked to could harm you. Sites like Wikipedia and others were only too happy to add nofollow to links because it put spammers off from crapifying their sites.
pygy_ 12y ago
A spammy link is a link created on behalf of the target site. In this case the author says he created the link independently, because he thought it would be useful to his users. That's, by definition, a genuine, organic link. I wonder if a link flagged by the disavow tool and confirmed by the user weaken the Google juice of the source site. @MattCutts (or another Googler), is it the case?
- magicalist 12y ago
  It seems like it would be odd to not incorporate a "spamminess" measure into the strength of the link, so hopefully you'd be losing very little.
- Matt_Cutts 12y ago
  "I wonder if a link flagged by the disavow tool and confirmed by the user weaken the Google juice of the source site." We haven't been using disavowed links as a reason not to trust a source site. So it wouldn't weaken the Google juice of the author's/source site if the company that sent the email had just disavowed the link.
  - pygy_ 12y ago
    Good to know, and thanks for the answer.
  - davemel37 12y ago
    This in no way implies Google won't use the disavow data to not trust source sites in the future.
- jonknee 12y ago
  > In this case the author says he created the link independently, because he thought it would be useful to his users. That's, by definition, a genuine, organic link. Genuine organic links can still be spammy. The OP seems to be a genuine affiliate marketer/spammer, it's not inconceivable that his links aren't treated with a ton of respect.
  - 12y ago

Matt_Cutts 12y ago

It's not just Google that recommends to avoid link spamming. For example, at http://www.seroundtable.com/bing-links-knowledge-18535.html http://www.seroundtable.com/bing-links-knowledge-18535.html you can read where Bing said "You should never know in advance a link is coming, or where it’s coming from. If you do, that’s the wrong path." When SEOs break the quality guidelines of all major search engines (not just Google), then they might need to do some work to clean things up if they get caught. One of the reasons that Google is such a popular search engine is that we do take spam seriously and we take action to counter spam.

Terretta 12y ago
They're not talking to you about link spamming.
- karpodiem 12y ago
  agreed, matt is talking in generalities at this point
  - justincormack 12y ago
    Matt is not reading what the discussion is about at this point.
    - kordless 12y ago
      More specifically, I believe people feel they aren't being heard at this point. Rationalizations are the tell.
jamesbritt 12y ago
When SEOs break the quality guidelines of all major search engines (not just Google), then they might need to do some work to clean things up if they get caught. This still seems to be missing the point. As I understand it, sites that are not doing anything in the realm of SEO can get penalized because of the actions of people outside of their control. If the wrong sorts of sites (however defined), sites outside my control, are linking to my site, why am I penalized, and why should the burden be placed on me to go fix it?

lifeisstillgood 12y ago

The Internet would naturally be a tragedy of the commons - and entropy fighting is something Google seems to be doing well.

mixologic 12y ago

"This is a case where google wants people to mold the internet according to what their current incarnation of their algorithm says the way it should be" You do realize, of course, that Google is part and parcel of the internet, and that much of the way the internet works "in reality" is in response to external perceptions of how googles algorithms work? Google's early dominance in search was a result of their algorithm's ability to surface relevance. If they had never staked out that Site A linking to Site B means site B has more relevance, then the internet would be an entirely different beast, and SEO would take entirely other forms that do not amount to linkstuffing. The internet hasn't existed 'naturally' since search engines first came around.

lazyjones 12y ago

It's both Google trying to force web sites to help their algorithm and spammy sites trying to exploit the current algorithm that are causing these annoyances. I suspect neither would be a major issue if Google modernized their algorithm to take into account (mostly/only) which links people actually clicked on rather than what is linked from where. They'd only have to be able to distinguish people from click-bots, which might be easier to do with some confidence than recognizing the intent behind a particular link (spam/SEO or real information for visitors) - I hope they are already able to do this, for the sake of AdWords customers ...

zenbowman 12y ago

> The model (google's algo) should fit reality. Rather than forcing reality to fit the model. It is impossible for Google to exist at its current scale and not influence the Internet. The tiger is born out of adaptation to the jungle, but in time, the jungle too will adapt to the tiger.

Isofarro 12y ago

> The model (google's algo) should fit reality. Rather than forcing reality to fit the model. Google's algorithms should reward behaviour that's best for Web users, and penalise behaviour that is worse for Web users. That way, for people who want to game search engine rankings, they are pushed more towards techniques that benefit web users in the course of trying to benefit themselves. The problem with models is that they are not accurate simulations of the real world. They have flaws and simplifications, and those give rise to people taking advantages of those flaws. All models and representations have flaws.