Comments on: Unnatural Links: What is the Purpose of the Google FUD Campaign?

By: Tadeusz Szewczyk

Tadeusz Szewczyk — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 21:20:35 +0000

Michael: Yes, Google applies its random rules without even telling you clearly what they are.
Sadly Bing is not an alternative where I live. In Germany it has a miniscule market share, Google owns 95%+ of search.

Mike: Yes, that’s what Google wants. They want to replace the open hypertext protocol with propriety +1′s.
Bounce rate is not a good example for a better metric as its significance varies depending on the context.
For example a great site like Drudge Report which is only one page of size has a bounce rate of 100%.

By: Mike Allan

Mike Allan — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 19:35:59 +0000

I’ll paraphrase a comment from your post that sums up how IMHO Google should handle this.

“Google could easily end this insanity by simply discounting all … links” Not just unnatural but all links. Isn’t it time we moved to a better system than who links to who? With the advances in analytics why not use Bounce Rate as the all important metric. If a searcher doesn’t like your site they will leave ASAP. Isn’t that a huge indicator your content doesn’t match their intent?

By: Michael Ehline

Michael Ehline — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 19:54:21 +0000

The rules are so vague, ambiguous and unintelligible, with respect to Places, for example, that EVERYONE is always in violation. Eventually, you get suspended, and an e mail telling you how to sign up for PPC. Bing is looking more and more attractive to lawyers I speak with who are giving up on Google. There is a law of diminishing returns on these bids that the FUD campaign is running up. We can’t afford to pay $20 or $30 bucks to get a call from an SEO guys asking us if we want to rank higher in Adwords. Just crazy.

By: Tadeusz Szewczyk

Tadeusz Szewczyk — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 20:50:09 +0000

Tom: So you approve of Google replacing organic results with Adwords/paid Google services and links with proprietary +1′s?

Mike: Sadly Google is making organic results marginal at an alarming pace. Mostly informational queries have real organic results left. When it comes to money making keywords most SERP real estate is occupied by ads and paid listings.
So SEO will only deal with a small percentage of all Google traffic.

By: Mike Glover

Mike Glover — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 19:06:00 +0000

Google is is definetly running a large and scary FUD campaign. And yes I believe if they had it their way, SEO would be non-existent. But as long as they are trying to return relevant results, there will always be SEO.

By: Tom Andrews

Tom Andrews — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 15:16:53 +0000

Google does need to get it’s own house in order to a certain extent, however on the whole only sites I have seen suffer in organic results so far, have deserved to, due to either on page errors or outdated link building methods.