10 ms·

After Google bought Nest, it removed company’s biggest competitors from results

179 points by webhat 12y ago

nivla 12y ago
If there is any truth to this article, then things are going to get really bad for Google. This with other recent complaints may prove that Google may be stepping beyond the gray areas of a monopoly. A good lobbying may delay the process but it is inevitable. OT: I don't usually complain about votes but the amount of downvotes in this thread is appalling. Anything critical of Google has been downvoted. Ironically, if asked, most people here would be against censorship of any kind, however for many that is valid as long as the opinion stays within their perception. Under the same argument, I can "predict" that this post like other similar ones before is going to flagged off the frontpage. Its starting to get repetitive enough to be no longer ignored. Not sure how the situation can be improved because in reality its very hard to built a community with diverse opinions.
- skj 12y ago
  I guess fortunately for Google, it appears there's no merit to the accusation?
  - donbmarks 12y ago
    To piggyback on the conversation, coming from a small business that has seen a reconsideration request wait in hibernation without a reply for over 40 days, the bigger issue that I would hope more journalists would start to shine the light onto is the lack of transparency and need for regulation of Google search by an independent entity. The reality is that Google generates 60 Billion in revenue and close to 20 Billion in profits, but more importantly they single handily control the fate of millions of companies and influence probably a trillion dollars of commerce on a global level every year. They create a set of rules that they apply on a very subjective basis. Just one example, ever get hit with a thin content penalty? Google has a video out that creating pages to market cities in every state appears against guidelines, I guess they forgot to tell that to Zillow (dominates google search for mortgage rates/city search) without real content and simply a rate widget advertisement feed, and there are hundreds of these examples out there. Yet in a statement made over the porn model lawsuit, here was googles reply: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2346899/Model-Battles-Google-Yahoo-in-Court-Over-Images-Linking-Her-to-Porn-Sites http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2346899/Model-Battles-G... "Search engines are neutral platforms that do not create nor control content on the web,” Google said in a statement to CNN. One of the interviewees in the CNN video argued that the creators of content should be held responsible, not the search engines. The rap genius penalty has already been highly publicized, but here is a good recap of how quickly the penalty was lifted. http://searchengineland.com/rap-genius-back-in-google-181125 http://searchengineland.com/rap-genius-back-in-google-181125 This is beyond frustrating for small businesses to see this quick turnaround, when most small business owners are sent to the google webmaster forum, where they have to try to get problems solved by volunteers and not actual employees. What small business owners need is a real voice and oversight to provide a tangible path back into the index, as opposed to the vague answers and rules that apply differently. Google should be required to provide real employees supporting their web forums Google should be required to provide clear examples of why a website was removed Google should be required to provide clear timelines if a penalty has been placed on a website Small business are pushed out of business when they are removed from Google, it’s time for some real change and forced transparency
- danso 12y ago
  OK, I don't like doing this, but I'll admit that I downvoted you. Not because I'm in Google's pocket, though I'll admit that I use some of their products, but because your phrasing is on the rhetorical level of asking "have you stopped beating your mother yet?" The OP does not provide a shred of independent proof that Google unfairly penalized Vivint, and yet you're already rushing to what you apparently think is an inevitable conclusion (e.g. Who knows if this thing is at all true, but Google has been pretty fishy lately). Come on, do a little research. Have you ever heard of Vivint before? I hadn't. So I (yes, I'll admit) Googled it and was surprised to find that Vivint bills itself as an "Affordable Home Security Systems" seller. OK, granted, I don't own a Nest device, so I googled "Nest" to see how they describe themselves...and Nest advertises itself as the "World's first Learning Thermostat. Programs itself. Saves Energy" So help me out here, and I'll ask the mods to remove my downvote: what about a thermostat is directly competitive with a home security system? What about something that "programs itself" is at all analogous to an ADT-like system that seems to require human check-in, or at least a $50 a month service fee to have remote access? AFAIK, Nest's monitoring service is free, presumably because the thermostat is supposed to, well, "program itself" and thus requires less hands-on-touch by Nest. And as someone already stated...at least a few of us HNers know of ADT...hell, I see their stickers everywhere...and has ADT complained about being wiped out of Google? I'd be willing to accept the possibility that ADT has paid its own "protection" fee to Google...but Jesus, there should be a level of evidence we accept to get to that accusation, and that level should exist beyond "website is tipped by competitor of Google believes that Google is out to kill competitors". edit: to be fair, the OP has quotes (but no actual data, just claims) from a small company named FoxtailMarketing.com. That's also a place I've never heard of, but I have done the diligence of visiting their website to see what the company does...Here's the very first non-motto copy that shows up on the homepage: > We guarantee that you will never be devalued or penalized by Google when you use our digital marketing strategy to build your brand online. At Foxtail Marketing, you can make your business more relevant online without fear of becoming obsolete. A company that is built around telling people that they (Foxtail) can guarantee SEO-optimization without fear of penalty of the Google-banhammer...Call me skeptical, but unless the person behind FoxtailMarketing is Matt Cutts's best friend, then that kind of claim strikes me as the kind of thing a less-than-trustworthy firm might say, and that such a firm would benefit by being the "voice of expertise" in an otherwise one-sided story (the OP itself states that the story idea came from a "PR-organized dinner in San Francisco last night" in which Vivint's founder happened to be hanging out at). But maybe someone here has used Foxtail and can vouch for their SEO-magic?
- wutbrodo 12y ago
  > the amount of downvotes in this thread is appalling. Anything critical of Google has been downvoted. This isn't nefarious, nor is it a coincidence. There's an article that any reasonable person can quickly recognize as complete garbage (look at other people's responses to your comment for more detailed explanations of why). The people that are convinced by this drivel are probably going to be the ones with an axe to grind for whatever reason, and almost by definition, most of the comments "critical of Google" in this thread specifically are going to be the same sort of idiotic fact-free drivel that you find in the article.
hallzi 12y ago
"one of the"
jamesjyu 12y ago
Highly doubt that this was anything but a coincidence. Even if you don't think it was, the Nest deal most likely took more than 2 weeks to close, and it'd be crazy for Google to take such deliberate and egregious actions before then.
Matt_Cutts 12y ago
It's a shame that Pando's inquiry didn't make it to me, because the suggestion that Google took action on vivint.com because it was somehow related to Nest is silly. As part of a crackdown on a spammy blog posting network, we took action on vivint.com--along with hundreds of other sites at the same time that were attempting to spam search results. We took action on vivint.com because it was spamming with low-quality or spam articles like - https://web.archive.org/web/20130919184930/http://anadesign.info/small-attract-home-buyers.html https://web.archive.org/web/20130919184930/http://anadesign.... for "Alburquerque NM home security system" - http://www.womenspk.com/5-ideas-for-keeping-your-elderly-relatives-better-protected/ http://www.womenspk.com/5-ideas-for-keeping-your-elderly-rel... - http://www.frugalful.com/2013/12/five-surprising-ways-to-save-money-on-your-homes-expenses.html http://www.frugalful.com/2013/12/five-surprising-ways-to-sav... - http://doyoulovewhereyoulive.com/archives/top-10-benefits-of-automating-your-home http://doyoulovewhereyoulive.com/archives/top-10-benefits-of... - http://arch.itect.us/2013/01/17/top-10-benefits-of-automating-your-home/ http://arch.itect.us/2013/01/17/top-10-benefits-of-automatin... and a bunch more links, not to mention 25,000+ links from a site with a paid relationship where the links should have been nofollowed. When we took webspam action, we alerted Vivint via a notice in Webmaster Tools about unnatural links to their site. And when Vivint had done sufficient work to clean up the spammy links, we granted their reconsideration request. This had nothing whatsoever to do with Nest. The webspam team caught Vivint spamming. We held them (along with many other sites using the same spammy guest post network) accountable until they cleaned the spam up. That's all.
- BorisMelnik 12y ago
  Thank you Matt. Agree, even a quick look from a not-so savvy SEO at their backlink anchor text you can see that they were intentionally building a ton of links. I think the only thing that made it a tad fishy was the timing. It just seemed like the acquisition happened, then the penalty tight after.
  - danso 12y ago
    In defense of the OP, the Google spam-punishing procedure is not purely objective or run as an unsupervised automation...it seems that Rap Genius would not have even been discovered had a blogger not made a relatively innocuous inquiry about RG's very public solicitations...which was then upvoted to the top of HN and presumably to Cutts' attention. And then after RG was reinstated, there were complaints that had it not been such a high-profile startup, the Google team would not have reinstated it so quickly (but in the defense of RG, they described and released the source code to the program they used to hunt down the bad links, which made it clear that RG handled the process in a way more efficiently than most other companies might have). So Google's banhammer is wielded by humans with biases...that much is clear...but do we really know the order of cause-and-effect here? Perhaps this suspicious timing was an inadvertent screwup of Vivint's...that is, right after Google's acquisition of Nest, someone on Vivint's marketing team thought, "Oh shit, better step up our back-link game"...and then took it to a level that triggered a Google investigation. That chain of events could also explain the coincidental timing...and also could mean that both Cutts and Vivint's CEO are both telling the honest truth, as far as they know (not all CEOs are privy to the actual workings and details of their marketing teams)
hellbreakslose 12y ago
Hmm sorry to say so but Vivint does have several court orders for missleading information. I also don't see how vivint makes the same products as nest or even making em a competitor... Nest is something that is coming from the future and I can assure you that vivint is not even close in that. Also I don't get how Google is supposed to contact every website that puts on a banlist for innapropriate or missleading content...
anigbrowl 12y ago
There's a potentially nasty lawsuit waiting to happen there if Vivint has solid tracking/referral records, since the standard in civil trials is only 'preponderance of the evidence.'
outside1234 12y ago
This is what happens when we let one company get too much power on the web.
- McDiesel 12y ago
  Or you could read the article...
- ricardonunez 12y ago
  Or any other industry for that matter.
- melling 12y ago
  Yes, Microsoft has had a desktop and document format monopoly for about 2 decades. It's not about any company being "evil" or bad, it's just with that much control, you can really leverage that monopoly and hinder innovation... What should we do about it? As for the search engine problem, just use a different search engine. It's such a trivial problem to solve.
DiabloD3 12y ago
I'm sorry, but I wasn't aware Nest HAD competitors. Not only that, Vivint was violating the rules and got punished accordingly for it. “And, as they say, there’s no greater place to hide a dead body than on the second page of Google’s search results.” is a massively inflammatory statement.
- brighteyes 12y ago
  There isn't any evidence that Vivint did anything against the "rules". You're jumping to defend google pretty quickly, almost automatically. Just because you like them, doesn't mean they are always in the right. They might or might not be in this case, we don't know enough to tell.
  - jusben1369 12y ago
    From the article it appears there was a clear transgression. It's just that it appears to be from ignorance vs deliberate.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
      - jusben1369 12y ago
        I don't understand your point here sorry.
        deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
- jusben1369 12y ago
  Why is that inflammatory? I thought it funny and a macabre but helpful statement to highlight the importance of being on page 1 of any result.
robryan 12y ago
Say what you want about how Google handles penalties but I think it is silly to suggest that Google has acted any differently in this case than to the vast majority of sites out there who receive penalties, but don't have friends in high places to expedite the process of having the penalty lifted.
- vidarh 12y ago
  The more interesting thing to me is the rapidly escalating list of conflicts of interest. Even if Google tries to remain squeaky clean for all eternity, they'll have a harder time of ensuring that they are, with staff tweaking a growing number of signals to their ranking algorithm while being to various extents aware of what is part of Google. I too, don't think Google is in the wrong in this case. But the wider issue of having what is likely the largest gatekeeper of internet traffic own a growing list of other properties is likely to sooner or later become a major problem.
- deleted 12y ago
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- deleted 12y ago
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flyinglizard 12y ago
And this, children, is how you get an antitrust probe started.
- jusben1369 12y ago
  Very true. Google is to search what MSFT was to OS/PC's. As they expand into new areas they are heading for a brick wall. Unless search is disrupted.
  - jusben1369 12y ago
    Not sure why I went negative 4 on the downvotes. Google is to search what MSFT was to desktops and they control a super critical entry point to the Internet. As they do more and more non search things they'll be tempted to and overly scrutinized with how they utilize their search business to help those other businesses. Unless search is disrupted and they lose that stranglehold.
- nivla 12y ago
  Not if you are good at lobbying... [1] http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323874204578219592520327884 http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142412788732387420...
absherwin 12y ago
This is misleading. The article cites a single company that inadvertently violated Google's rules by failing to mark paid links. This seems to be part of the ongoing saga of companies making errors, sometimes honest, and being penalized. Is the company even a major player in the smart thermostat space? It's not even listed in this market analysis from last fall: http://cleantechnica.com/2013/11/14/honeywell-leads-smart-thermostat-leaderboard/ http://cleantechnica.com/2013/11/14/honeywell-leads-smart-th.... It looks more like a competitor in the home automation systems space that sells smart thermostats mainly as part of a more comprehensive system. Given the absence of action against any of their more major competitors, this seems like a coincidence.
- lallysingh 12y ago
  It's Pando. What did you expect? I don't know why Pando links so show up on HN.
  - ansimionescu 12y ago
    As someone who knows nothing about Pando, I'd love some more insight into why they supposedly suck. (Speaking of shitty high-profile news site, my favourite pick is ReadWrie. 80% of what I've read on their site is utter garbage.)
    - wutbrodo 12y ago
      Wow, I was actually about to comment the exact same thing as lallysingh until I saw his comment. > As someone who knows nothing about Pando, I'd love some more insight into why they supposedly suck. This may not be a satisfying answer but it's the same reason as the one behind your opinion of ReadWrite: when you read enough of their articles (or at least enough of the ones that make it onto HN) and they're almost _all_ crap, it's a simple matter of numbers. As far as _how_ they got this way, just take a look at their pedigree; the founding members include the boot-scrapings of the tech-press: Sarah Lacy, Michael Arrington, M.G. Siegler, Farhad Manjoo, etc
      - 12y ago
danso 12y ago
Here's another thing that Google's alleged dirty-tricks obscured: Vivint's Wikipedia entry including its fairly lengthy "Legal Issues" section: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivint http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivint According to that section, Vivint has made settlement/voluntary compliance agreements with, or been penalized by the states of Kansas, Ohio, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Arkansas, Washington, Louisiana, South Carolina, Minnesota, Tennessee, California, and Oregon upon accusations of fraud and deceptive practices. Holy shit...Google has even more power than we had yet imagined! Talk about Pando burying the lede here. Edit: Holy, holy shit: it appears that even Wikipedia itself is on the scam. At the very top of Vivint's Wikipedia entry, some Wikipedian/Nest-boardmember has placed a banner warning stating: > This article appears to be written like an advertisement. Please help improve it by rewriting promotional content from a neutral point of view and removing any inappropriate external links. (March 2014) So a company that Google has wiped out from the search results also, within a few months later, has its Wikipedia entry vandalized by the Wikipedia Cabal to make it look like an advertisement for Vivint, as if Vivint or someone friendly to the company would ever break the rules on Wikipedia. Surely this is a conspiracy to end all conspiracies.
- jusben1369 12y ago
  FYI. Google "Google settles" and see what happens.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- lucaspiller 12y ago
  Take off your tinfoil hat, you are reading into this a bit too much. The basis of the "Legal Issues" section has been there since the beginning of 2012: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vivint&oldid=476243376 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vivint&oldid=47624... In terms of why it's marked as an advertisement, compare Vivint's wikipedia page to Nest Labs or Sonos and see what you think: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nest_Labs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nest_Labs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonos http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonos The historical versions are written in the same way too. They are advertisements, some PR guy at Vivint has written them to try and make the company sound good and added loads of backlinks.
bhouston 12y ago
I think that these manual actions are likely never to happen to Google properties, but they can easily happen to everyone else. They are opaque and have severe consequences on those that are affected. How are websites selected for manual actions? Does someone get handed a list of sites to check out? Are they selected algorithmically? How are manual actions decided upon (when it is up to humans, it can be very inconsistently applied)? How are the results communicated to those affected (I hear that it is communicated in very vague and unhelpful ways via Webmaster tools)? If one isn't friends with Matt Cutts or have deep SV connections (i.e. if I am not RapGenius), how does one get a manual action removed quickly? Apparently it is really really hard if you are not RapGenius. Seriously, these manual actions are scary as hell for those relying on Google to send them traffic. If MF can be seriously harmed by a manual action, no one is safe.
- modeless 12y ago
  http://www.webmonkey.com/2012/01/google-deranks-chrome-download-page-due-to-spam-links/ http://www.webmonkey.com/2012/01/google-deranks-chrome-downl...
- proexploit 12y ago
  5 Times Google Penalized Itself For Breaking Its Own SEO Rules: http://searchengineland.com/google-penalized-breaking-seo-rules-184098 http://searchengineland.com/google-penalized-breaking-seo-ru...
sivetic 12y ago
No real comment on the issue at hand, but I've been targeted by Vivint's door to door sales team on one occasion. It was a very pushy salesman that started to ask security related questions despite my insitence for him to leave. Once I managed to gen rid of him I found a dozen plus other similar accounts of pushy and deceitful selling practices in my area. Serves them well I would say.
- camillomiller 12y ago
  So, Google is the ultimate police against companies with pesky marketing practices? Do you even realize how bad is this mindset?
  - McDiesel 12y ago
    In their house, they are... Google isn't a democracy or a charity. They will list you if you follow their rules, the same rules everyone else has to follow to be listed... its their right and prerogative to set and enforce those rules, because its their service.
    - camillomiller 12y ago
      Is that true even if you are a gigantic monopoly in the search business?
apricot 12y ago
Remember when the standard Google excuse was "it's not our fault, it's the algorithm"? Now it's "what are you gonna do about it?"
swinnipeg 12y ago
Vivint is more of an ADT competitor. They are a security/automation company with monthly fee model. It is clear they have spent alot of money buying links from their profile, but so has ADT. A more fitting question would be why ADT hasn't also been penalized.
- rtpg 12y ago
  A likely explanation is that ADT has also been penalised, but the organic references to ADT counterbalance it enough to not affect them as much.
  - aaronwall 12y ago
    Manual removal from the results supersedes the core relevancy algorithms.
- dba7dba 12y ago
  > A more fitting question would be why ADT hasn't also been penalized. Because Google is not competing with ADT, YET? I wonder if we will ever see ATT style, govt forced, split up of Google sometime within this generation...
jchimney 12y ago
I hate government intervention in these matters, I really do. But in the case of Google I feel that their search results should be walled off from any other business interests. They have so much influence over the discovered internet that maybe its time to separate search from their other business interests. Page and Brin were geniuses in realizing early that search was the golden ring to reach for. They deserve their billions for bringing this amazing service to us; but now with shareholders muddying the waters I don't think this should be leveraged for other business efforts.
nepalidude 12y ago
This actually makes sense. Does it matter when they started dissecting links? What matters is when they de indexed. Why rapgenius was given break so early? Does Google think people will not know just because they don't have billion dollar in their pocket? lol. Here is my version of story: Board decided to purchase nest and naturally they looked at competitors. They send the message down to webspam team and asked them to check their linking profile and if anything is against the guidelines, take their ass down. You know there are laws but prosecutors decide whether to file charges or not or a police decide whether to pull over or not if the car is driving 8-9mph more than the speed limit. Be polite to them, you can get away or get less penalty. Show aggression to them, you will get charged for much more things than you were initially approached for. Sometimes you dont even know what that means. Once I got a traffic citation after making a wrong U-turn and since I was "showing attitude", I got citation for having foreign materials on my liscense plate?? LOL Of course attitude= money in this context

179 points by webhat 12y ago

nivla 12y ago

If there is any truth to this article, then things are going to get really bad for Google. This with other recent complaints may prove that Google may be stepping beyond the gray areas of a monopoly. A good lobbying may delay the process but it is inevitable. OT: I don't usually complain about votes but the amount of downvotes in this thread is appalling. Anything critical of Google has been downvoted. Ironically, if asked, most people here would be against censorship of any kind, however for many that is valid as long as the opinion stays within their perception. Under the same argument, I can "predict" that this post like other similar ones before is going to flagged off the frontpage. Its starting to get repetitive enough to be no longer ignored. Not sure how the situation can be improved because in reality its very hard to built a community with diverse opinions.

skj 12y ago
I guess fortunately for Google, it appears there's no merit to the accusation?
- donbmarks 12y ago
  To piggyback on the conversation, coming from a small business that has seen a reconsideration request wait in hibernation without a reply for over 40 days, the bigger issue that I would hope more journalists would start to shine the light onto is the lack of transparency and need for regulation of Google search by an independent entity. The reality is that Google generates 60 Billion in revenue and close to 20 Billion in profits, but more importantly they single handily control the fate of millions of companies and influence probably a trillion dollars of commerce on a global level every year. They create a set of rules that they apply on a very subjective basis. Just one example, ever get hit with a thin content penalty? Google has a video out that creating pages to market cities in every state appears against guidelines, I guess they forgot to tell that to Zillow (dominates google search for mortgage rates/city search) without real content and simply a rate widget advertisement feed, and there are hundreds of these examples out there. Yet in a statement made over the porn model lawsuit, here was googles reply: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2346899/Model-Battles-Google-Yahoo-in-Court-Over-Images-Linking-Her-to-Porn-Sites http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2346899/Model-Battles-G... "Search engines are neutral platforms that do not create nor control content on the web,” Google said in a statement to CNN. One of the interviewees in the CNN video argued that the creators of content should be held responsible, not the search engines. The rap genius penalty has already been highly publicized, but here is a good recap of how quickly the penalty was lifted. http://searchengineland.com/rap-genius-back-in-google-181125 http://searchengineland.com/rap-genius-back-in-google-181125 This is beyond frustrating for small businesses to see this quick turnaround, when most small business owners are sent to the google webmaster forum, where they have to try to get problems solved by volunteers and not actual employees. What small business owners need is a real voice and oversight to provide a tangible path back into the index, as opposed to the vague answers and rules that apply differently. Google should be required to provide real employees supporting their web forums Google should be required to provide clear examples of why a website was removed Google should be required to provide clear timelines if a penalty has been placed on a website Small business are pushed out of business when they are removed from Google, it’s time for some real change and forced transparency
danso 12y ago
OK, I don't like doing this, but I'll admit that I downvoted you. Not because I'm in Google's pocket, though I'll admit that I use some of their products, but because your phrasing is on the rhetorical level of asking "have you stopped beating your mother yet?" The OP does not provide a shred of independent proof that Google unfairly penalized Vivint, and yet you're already rushing to what you apparently think is an inevitable conclusion (e.g. Who knows if this thing is at all true, but Google has been pretty fishy lately). Come on, do a little research. Have you ever heard of Vivint before? I hadn't. So I (yes, I'll admit) Googled it and was surprised to find that Vivint bills itself as an "Affordable Home Security Systems" seller. OK, granted, I don't own a Nest device, so I googled "Nest" to see how they describe themselves...and Nest advertises itself as the "World's first Learning Thermostat. Programs itself. Saves Energy" So help me out here, and I'll ask the mods to remove my downvote: what about a thermostat is directly competitive with a home security system? What about something that "programs itself" is at all analogous to an ADT-like system that seems to require human check-in, or at least a $50 a month service fee to have remote access? AFAIK, Nest's monitoring service is free, presumably because the thermostat is supposed to, well, "program itself" and thus requires less hands-on-touch by Nest. And as someone already stated...at least a few of us HNers know of ADT...hell, I see their stickers everywhere...and has ADT complained about being wiped out of Google? I'd be willing to accept the possibility that ADT has paid its own "protection" fee to Google...but Jesus, there should be a level of evidence we accept to get to that accusation, and that level should exist beyond "website is tipped by competitor of Google believes that Google is out to kill competitors". edit: to be fair, the OP has quotes (but no actual data, just claims) from a small company named FoxtailMarketing.com. That's also a place I've never heard of, but I have done the diligence of visiting their website to see what the company does...Here's the very first non-motto copy that shows up on the homepage: > We guarantee that you will never be devalued or penalized by Google when you use our digital marketing strategy to build your brand online. At Foxtail Marketing, you can make your business more relevant online without fear of becoming obsolete. A company that is built around telling people that they (Foxtail) can guarantee SEO-optimization without fear of penalty of the Google-banhammer...Call me skeptical, but unless the person behind FoxtailMarketing is Matt Cutts's best friend, then that kind of claim strikes me as the kind of thing a less-than-trustworthy firm might say, and that such a firm would benefit by being the "voice of expertise" in an otherwise one-sided story (the OP itself states that the story idea came from a "PR-organized dinner in San Francisco last night" in which Vivint's founder happened to be hanging out at). But maybe someone here has used Foxtail and can vouch for their SEO-magic?
wutbrodo 12y ago
> the amount of downvotes in this thread is appalling. Anything critical of Google has been downvoted. This isn't nefarious, nor is it a coincidence. There's an article that any reasonable person can quickly recognize as complete garbage (look at other people's responses to your comment for more detailed explanations of why). The people that are convinced by this drivel are probably going to be the ones with an axe to grind for whatever reason, and almost by definition, most of the comments "critical of Google" in this thread specifically are going to be the same sort of idiotic fact-free drivel that you find in the article.

hallzi 12y ago

"one of the"

jamesjyu 12y ago

Highly doubt that this was anything but a coincidence. Even if you don't think it was, the Nest deal most likely took more than 2 weeks to close, and it'd be crazy for Google to take such deliberate and egregious actions before then.

Matt_Cutts 12y ago

It's a shame that Pando's inquiry didn't make it to me, because the suggestion that Google took action on vivint.com because it was somehow related to Nest is silly. As part of a crackdown on a spammy blog posting network, we took action on vivint.com--along with hundreds of other sites at the same time that were attempting to spam search results. We took action on vivint.com because it was spamming with low-quality or spam articles like - https://web.archive.org/web/20130919184930/http://anadesign.info/small-attract-home-buyers.html https://web.archive.org/web/20130919184930/http://anadesign.... for "Alburquerque NM home security system" - http://www.womenspk.com/5-ideas-for-keeping-your-elderly-relatives-better-protected/ http://www.womenspk.com/5-ideas-for-keeping-your-elderly-rel... - http://www.frugalful.com/2013/12/five-surprising-ways-to-save-money-on-your-homes-expenses.html http://www.frugalful.com/2013/12/five-surprising-ways-to-sav... - http://doyoulovewhereyoulive.com/archives/top-10-benefits-of-automating-your-home http://doyoulovewhereyoulive.com/archives/top-10-benefits-of... - http://arch.itect.us/2013/01/17/top-10-benefits-of-automating-your-home/ http://arch.itect.us/2013/01/17/top-10-benefits-of-automatin... and a bunch more links, not to mention 25,000+ links from a site with a paid relationship where the links should have been nofollowed. When we took webspam action, we alerted Vivint via a notice in Webmaster Tools about unnatural links to their site. And when Vivint had done sufficient work to clean up the spammy links, we granted their reconsideration request. This had nothing whatsoever to do with Nest. The webspam team caught Vivint spamming. We held them (along with many other sites using the same spammy guest post network) accountable until they cleaned the spam up. That's all.

BorisMelnik 12y ago
Thank you Matt. Agree, even a quick look from a not-so savvy SEO at their backlink anchor text you can see that they were intentionally building a ton of links. I think the only thing that made it a tad fishy was the timing. It just seemed like the acquisition happened, then the penalty tight after.
- danso 12y ago
  In defense of the OP, the Google spam-punishing procedure is not purely objective or run as an unsupervised automation...it seems that Rap Genius would not have even been discovered had a blogger not made a relatively innocuous inquiry about RG's very public solicitations...which was then upvoted to the top of HN and presumably to Cutts' attention. And then after RG was reinstated, there were complaints that had it not been such a high-profile startup, the Google team would not have reinstated it so quickly (but in the defense of RG, they described and released the source code to the program they used to hunt down the bad links, which made it clear that RG handled the process in a way more efficiently than most other companies might have). So Google's banhammer is wielded by humans with biases...that much is clear...but do we really know the order of cause-and-effect here? Perhaps this suspicious timing was an inadvertent screwup of Vivint's...that is, right after Google's acquisition of Nest, someone on Vivint's marketing team thought, "Oh shit, better step up our back-link game"...and then took it to a level that triggered a Google investigation. That chain of events could also explain the coincidental timing...and also could mean that both Cutts and Vivint's CEO are both telling the honest truth, as far as they know (not all CEOs are privy to the actual workings and details of their marketing teams)

hellbreakslose 12y ago

Hmm sorry to say so but Vivint does have several court orders for missleading information. I also don't see how vivint makes the same products as nest or even making em a competitor... Nest is something that is coming from the future and I can assure you that vivint is not even close in that. Also I don't get how Google is supposed to contact every website that puts on a banlist for innapropriate or missleading content...

anigbrowl 12y ago

There's a potentially nasty lawsuit waiting to happen there if Vivint has solid tracking/referral records, since the standard in civil trials is only 'preponderance of the evidence.'

outside1234 12y ago

This is what happens when we let one company get too much power on the web.

McDiesel 12y ago
Or you could read the article...
ricardonunez 12y ago
Or any other industry for that matter.
melling 12y ago
Yes, Microsoft has had a desktop and document format monopoly for about 2 decades. It's not about any company being "evil" or bad, it's just with that much control, you can really leverage that monopoly and hinder innovation... What should we do about it? As for the search engine problem, just use a different search engine. It's such a trivial problem to solve.

DiabloD3 12y ago

I'm sorry, but I wasn't aware Nest HAD competitors. Not only that, Vivint was violating the rules and got punished accordingly for it. “And, as they say, there’s no greater place to hide a dead body than on the second page of Google’s search results.” is a massively inflammatory statement.

brighteyes 12y ago
There isn't any evidence that Vivint did anything against the "rules". You're jumping to defend google pretty quickly, almost automatically. Just because you like them, doesn't mean they are always in the right. They might or might not be in this case, we don't know enough to tell.
- jusben1369 12y ago
  From the article it appears there was a clear transgression. It's just that it appears to be from ignorance vs deliberate.
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    - jusben1369 12y ago
      I don't understand your point here sorry.
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jusben1369 12y ago
Why is that inflammatory? I thought it funny and a macabre but helpful statement to highlight the importance of being on page 1 of any result.

robryan 12y ago

Say what you want about how Google handles penalties but I think it is silly to suggest that Google has acted any differently in this case than to the vast majority of sites out there who receive penalties, but don't have friends in high places to expedite the process of having the penalty lifted.

vidarh 12y ago
The more interesting thing to me is the rapidly escalating list of conflicts of interest. Even if Google tries to remain squeaky clean for all eternity, they'll have a harder time of ensuring that they are, with staff tweaking a growing number of signals to their ranking algorithm while being to various extents aware of what is part of Google. I too, don't think Google is in the wrong in this case. But the wider issue of having what is likely the largest gatekeeper of internet traffic own a growing list of other properties is likely to sooner or later become a major problem.
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flyinglizard 12y ago

And this, children, is how you get an antitrust probe started.

jusben1369 12y ago
Very true. Google is to search what MSFT was to OS/PC's. As they expand into new areas they are heading for a brick wall. Unless search is disrupted.
- jusben1369 12y ago
  Not sure why I went negative 4 on the downvotes. Google is to search what MSFT was to desktops and they control a super critical entry point to the Internet. As they do more and more non search things they'll be tempted to and overly scrutinized with how they utilize their search business to help those other businesses. Unless search is disrupted and they lose that stranglehold.
nivla 12y ago
Not if you are good at lobbying... [1] http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323874204578219592520327884 http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142412788732387420...

absherwin 12y ago

This is misleading. The article cites a single company that inadvertently violated Google's rules by failing to mark paid links. This seems to be part of the ongoing saga of companies making errors, sometimes honest, and being penalized. Is the company even a major player in the smart thermostat space? It's not even listed in this market analysis from last fall: http://cleantechnica.com/2013/11/14/honeywell-leads-smart-thermostat-leaderboard/ http://cleantechnica.com/2013/11/14/honeywell-leads-smart-th.... It looks more like a competitor in the home automation systems space that sells smart thermostats mainly as part of a more comprehensive system. Given the absence of action against any of their more major competitors, this seems like a coincidence.

lallysingh 12y ago
It's Pando. What did you expect? I don't know why Pando links so show up on HN.
- ansimionescu 12y ago
  As someone who knows nothing about Pando, I'd love some more insight into why they supposedly suck. (Speaking of shitty high-profile news site, my favourite pick is ReadWrie. 80% of what I've read on their site is utter garbage.)
  - wutbrodo 12y ago
    Wow, I was actually about to comment the exact same thing as lallysingh until I saw his comment. > As someone who knows nothing about Pando, I'd love some more insight into why they supposedly suck. This may not be a satisfying answer but it's the same reason as the one behind your opinion of ReadWrite: when you read enough of their articles (or at least enough of the ones that make it onto HN) and they're almost _all_ crap, it's a simple matter of numbers. As far as _how_ they got this way, just take a look at their pedigree; the founding members include the boot-scrapings of the tech-press: Sarah Lacy, Michael Arrington, M.G. Siegler, Farhad Manjoo, etc
    - 12y ago

danso 12y ago

Here's another thing that Google's alleged dirty-tricks obscured: Vivint's Wikipedia entry including its fairly lengthy "Legal Issues" section: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivint http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivint According to that section, Vivint has made settlement/voluntary compliance agreements with, or been penalized by the states of Kansas, Ohio, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Arkansas, Washington, Louisiana, South Carolina, Minnesota, Tennessee, California, and Oregon upon accusations of fraud and deceptive practices. Holy shit...Google has even more power than we had yet imagined! Talk about Pando burying the lede here. Edit: Holy, holy shit: it appears that even Wikipedia itself is on the scam. At the very top of Vivint's Wikipedia entry, some Wikipedian/Nest-boardmember has placed a banner warning stating: > This article appears to be written like an advertisement. Please help improve it by rewriting promotional content from a neutral point of view and removing any inappropriate external links. (March 2014) So a company that Google has wiped out from the search results also, within a few months later, has its Wikipedia entry vandalized by the Wikipedia Cabal to make it look like an advertisement for Vivint, as if Vivint or someone friendly to the company would ever break the rules on Wikipedia. Surely this is a conspiracy to end all conspiracies.

jusben1369 12y ago
FYI. Google "Google settles" and see what happens.
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lucaspiller 12y ago
Take off your tinfoil hat, you are reading into this a bit too much. The basis of the "Legal Issues" section has been there since the beginning of 2012: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vivint&oldid=476243376 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vivint&oldid=47624... In terms of why it's marked as an advertisement, compare Vivint's wikipedia page to Nest Labs or Sonos and see what you think: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nest_Labs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nest_Labs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonos http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonos The historical versions are written in the same way too. They are advertisements, some PR guy at Vivint has written them to try and make the company sound good and added loads of backlinks.

bhouston 12y ago

I think that these manual actions are likely never to happen to Google properties, but they can easily happen to everyone else. They are opaque and have severe consequences on those that are affected. How are websites selected for manual actions? Does someone get handed a list of sites to check out? Are they selected algorithmically? How are manual actions decided upon (when it is up to humans, it can be very inconsistently applied)? How are the results communicated to those affected (I hear that it is communicated in very vague and unhelpful ways via Webmaster tools)? If one isn't friends with Matt Cutts or have deep SV connections (i.e. if I am not RapGenius), how does one get a manual action removed quickly? Apparently it is really really hard if you are not RapGenius. Seriously, these manual actions are scary as hell for those relying on Google to send them traffic. If MF can be seriously harmed by a manual action, no one is safe.

modeless 12y ago
http://www.webmonkey.com/2012/01/google-deranks-chrome-download-page-due-to-spam-links/ http://www.webmonkey.com/2012/01/google-deranks-chrome-downl...
proexploit 12y ago
5 Times Google Penalized Itself For Breaking Its Own SEO Rules: http://searchengineland.com/google-penalized-breaking-seo-rules-184098 http://searchengineland.com/google-penalized-breaking-seo-ru...

sivetic 12y ago

No real comment on the issue at hand, but I've been targeted by Vivint's door to door sales team on one occasion. It was a very pushy salesman that started to ask security related questions despite my insitence for him to leave. Once I managed to gen rid of him I found a dozen plus other similar accounts of pushy and deceitful selling practices in my area. Serves them well I would say.

camillomiller 12y ago
So, Google is the ultimate police against companies with pesky marketing practices? Do you even realize how bad is this mindset?
- McDiesel 12y ago
  In their house, they are... Google isn't a democracy or a charity. They will list you if you follow their rules, the same rules everyone else has to follow to be listed... its their right and prerogative to set and enforce those rules, because its their service.
  - camillomiller 12y ago
    Is that true even if you are a gigantic monopoly in the search business?

apricot 12y ago

Remember when the standard Google excuse was "it's not our fault, it's the algorithm"? Now it's "what are you gonna do about it?"

swinnipeg 12y ago

Vivint is more of an ADT competitor. They are a security/automation company with monthly fee model. It is clear they have spent alot of money buying links from their profile, but so has ADT. A more fitting question would be why ADT hasn't also been penalized.

rtpg 12y ago
A likely explanation is that ADT has also been penalised, but the organic references to ADT counterbalance it enough to not affect them as much.
- aaronwall 12y ago
  Manual removal from the results supersedes the core relevancy algorithms.
dba7dba 12y ago
> A more fitting question would be why ADT hasn't also been penalized. Because Google is not competing with ADT, YET? I wonder if we will ever see ATT style, govt forced, split up of Google sometime within this generation...

jchimney 12y ago

I hate government intervention in these matters, I really do. But in the case of Google I feel that their search results should be walled off from any other business interests. They have so much influence over the discovered internet that maybe its time to separate search from their other business interests. Page and Brin were geniuses in realizing early that search was the golden ring to reach for. They deserve their billions for bringing this amazing service to us; but now with shareholders muddying the waters I don't think this should be leveraged for other business efforts.

nepalidude 12y ago

This actually makes sense. Does it matter when they started dissecting links? What matters is when they de indexed. Why rapgenius was given break so early? Does Google think people will not know just because they don't have billion dollar in their pocket? lol. Here is my version of story: Board decided to purchase nest and naturally they looked at competitors. They send the message down to webspam team and asked them to check their linking profile and if anything is against the guidelines, take their ass down. You know there are laws but prosecutors decide whether to file charges or not or a police decide whether to pull over or not if the car is driving 8-9mph more than the speed limit. Be polite to them, you can get away or get less penalty. Show aggression to them, you will get charged for much more things than you were initially approached for. Sometimes you dont even know what that means. Once I got a traffic citation after making a wrong U-turn and since I was "showing attitude", I got citation for having foreign materials on my liscense plate?? LOL Of course attitude= money in this context