“Don’t be Evil”. It is fairly well known that Don’t be evil is Google’s informal corporate motto. It looks great and gives everyone that sees it a warm and fuzzy feeling that this huge corporation that essentially tracks everything you do online is like a friendly neighbor. Google still has a pretty good reputation as far as corporations go. Unlike Microsoft, the general public still seems to trust Google and truly believe that they are a force for good in the world. Those who have had direct experience with the Google borg, like online marketers, SEOs, AdSense, publishers, etc. have a much different view of Google than do most people. In my experience Google is no different than every other for profit corporation. They are neither good nor evil but they are solely focused on increasing their revenue and profits. That’s why they went to China and agreed to censor search results. They saw the opportunity that was available in China and felt that the free speech wasn’t as important as that extra money that the China market could add to their bottom line.

Intellectual Property Trumps Free Speech

Google happily censored their results and cashed those checks from China until they found out that their IP was compromised. Apparently the Gmail accounts of prominent Chinese human rights proponents were hacked and in the process some of Google’s IP was accessed as well. All of the sudden Google was vehemently against censoring their results in China and they became huge proponents of free speech. Blogs and news sites all across the Internet celebrated Google’s righteousness and spoke glowingly about their defense of free speech across the world. Chinese citizens even jumped on the bandwagon and began laying flowers at the Google China offices like one would do at a funeral. Lost in the celebration of Google’s refusal to censor results was the fact that they had no problem doing it until their intellectual property was compromised. It was only then that they became the “don’t be evil” defender of free speech and civil rights. I don’t hate Google, although I feel they have too much power and control, but I have a hard time heaping praise on an entity that profits from censorship and defends free speech only when they have been harmed.

Google not evil but they are not free speech heroes either

Google is just another monopoly for profit corporation. They are focused on improving their bottom line. If censoring the results in China or anywhere else adds to that they will gladly do it. Just like many other organizations they are beholden to their stockholders and they need to continue to grow and increase revenue. Google may imply that they are different but the fact is that they saw a huge opportunity in China and willingly compromised their results in order to increase their profitability. It wasn’t until their IP was compromised that they became “free speech” activists and “martyrs”. I have a feeling that many other “evil” corporations would do the same thing. So in the end Google gets to come out looking like they care about the rights of the Chinese people but the fact is they are just upset because their rights had been violated and they didn’t like it. Now maybe they know how we all feel sometimes?

©2010 piloSEO. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Big Brother Google Knows Best Matt Cutts recent video on why pages disallowed by Robots.txt still appear in Google’s index is the latest display of Google’s arrogance. When you break...
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Matt Cutts recent video on why pages disallowed by Robots.txt still appear in Google’s index is the latest display of Google’s arrogance. When you break it down he is saying that Google doesn’t care what you tell them, they are going to do what they want with your site. To get them to follow your Robots.txt directives you will have to jump through some additional hoops.

Rationalizing with Technicalities

I know that he is technically correct in that Robots.txt only tells crawlers what not to crawl and Google is not actually crawling the blocked pages. Matt explains that they are not actually “crawling” the blocked pages but instead are simply indexing them without actually seeing them. This brings up another issue related to search quality but I digress. The problem is that most webmasters place pages in their Robots.txt because they don’t want them crawled or indexed. By indexing blocked pages Google is violating the webmaster’s trust and intentions for the site. Google can essentially destroy a business for violating its guidelines but they have no issues violating the guidelines set by webmasters on how robots interact with their site.

Adhering to Google’s Whims

Obviously if you want Google traffic you have to play the game. Some may be willing to go the cat and mouse blackhat route while most will simply try to follow Google’s ever changing rules and whims. That also means that you have to watch out for Google deciding to ignore how you want your site to be accessed. So if you have your Robots.txt set to block certain pages make sure you add the Robots Meta Tag and set it to Noindex so Google does not violate your wishes by indexing blocked pages. Who knows how long they will actually follow the Robots Meta Tag directives but they claim to do it now. That could change tomorrow or even be patently false right now as Mr. Cutts has been known to say one thing when the reality is completely different. And always remember, Google knows better than you and if you just do what they tell you to do everything will be OK.

©2010 piloSEO. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Google SearchWiki…Benign or Nefarious? As many are probably aware Google launched SearchWiki, which allows Google account holders to alter their search results. For those who are not yet aware...
2. Google Interest-Based Advertising & SEO Google just announced that they will be serving “interest-based advertising” to users by placing a cookie in your browser when you visit a Google partner...
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I am well aware of the fact that Google is always experimenting with their SERPs. I have seen many different formats and types of results show up for different search queries but I have never seen a SERP with everything at the bottom of the page. Has anyone else seen this before. This SERP has Local Search in the middle of the page, which is not uncommon, but it also has News Search, Shopping Search, Book Search , and Blog Search Results all stuffed into the bottom of the page. Check it out, click on the picture to see the full screen version.

Google Kitchen Sink

Google Results Getting Uglier

I’m wondering if this is something that others have seen (maybe it is old news) or if Google is looking to make their SERPs even more cluttered and messy going forward? With the Sponsored Listings showing up closer to organic and the inclusion of every type of result Google has available this page is looking cluttered and really trending toward the problems with older search engines. Let’s hope this is just a test and that they avoid cluttering the SERPs with text blobs like this going forward.

©2010 piloSEO. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Google SearchWiki…Benign or Nefarious? As many are probably aware Google launched SearchWiki, which allows Google account holders to alter their search results. For those who are not yet aware...
2. China v Google Not About Free Speech “Don’t be Evil”. It is fairly well known that Don’t be evil is Google’s informal corporate motto. It looks great and gives everyone that sees...
3. Google Interest-Based Advertising & SEO Google just announced that they will be serving “interest-based advertising” to users by placing a cookie in your browser when you visit a Google partner...

Google just announced that they will be serving “interest-based advertising” to users by placing a cookie in your browser when you visit a Google partner or a Google site YouTube. This cookie will track the type of sites you visit and then use this data to determine what your interests are. With this data they believe they will be able to serve you content network ads that are more targeted and aligned with your interests. They also allow users to choose their interests as well as opt-out of the service. I will leave the privacy issues to others and I am sure it will be a hot topic in some circles. Instead I want to explore the potential SEO implications of interest based advertising.

Could Google Incorporate Interest Based Advertising Data Into Organic Search Results?

I am not sure how difficult it would be to incorporate the data into the organic SERPs but I am fairly certain that it is possible to do so. Google has provided personalized results to users logged into a Google account by tracking the sites they visit and attempting to provide search results that are similar to those sites. The fairly recent roll out of SearchWiki, which allows users to alter their own results and comment on sites in the SERPs, has furthered their personalization efforts. Interest based advertising data has the potential to create even more personalized results to all users even those who don’t have a Google account. This could be done by gathering data from the browser cookies and serving results based on the users interests. I have not seen many people talking about this but the potential to so is there and it aligns with their effort to provide personalized results perfectly.

Twisting the Knife Into the Barely Breathing Ranking Report

If Google were to begin incorporating the data gathered through the interest-based cookies it would strike another blow against the ranking report. We eschewed ranking reports as an SEO metric a while ago and instead report on meaningful metrics like relevant traffic, conversions, and real ROI metrics. Some SEOs still rely on ranking reports as a way to show that they are providing a useful service but with the rise of personalized results ranking reports are less useful and in many cases totally misleading. What I see as number 1 can be vastly different than what Web Position Gold sees and the client could be seeing yet another result. Personalized results are still somewhat limited because they tend to rely on users to be signed into their Google account. But if Google brings interest-based advertising cookie data into organic search they could provide personalized results to a much larger audience (those who don’t opt out). In fact since they allow user input they could provide results that align with exactly what the user tells them they like. IMO this would put the final nail in the ranking report coffin and it can’t come soon enough.

Just Conjecture…Right Now

At this point the idea that Google would incorporate interest-based data into the organic SERPs is just conjecture on my part. Nothing they have released has even hinted that they would do this but Google is not always totally forthcoming about what they are doing in the organic results. Will they do it? Who knows but I believe they have the potential to and if they believe that it would be useful to their users or their bottom line they will find a way to make it happen.

©2010 piloSEO. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Google SearchWiki…Benign or Nefarious? As many are probably aware Google launched SearchWiki, which allows Google account holders to alter their search results. For those who are not yet aware...
2. Big Brother Google Knows Best Matt Cutts recent video on why pages disallowed by Robots.txt still appear in Google’s index is the latest display of Google’s arrogance. When you break...
3. Google Provides Insights into the Presidential Debate The Googleblog is offering some great insights into what Americans were searching on during and after the last presidential debate. This information provides great insights...

As many are probably aware Google launched SearchWiki, which allows Google account holders to alter their search results. For those who are not yet aware it basically works like a social news site like Digg in that you can vote up certain results, remove others, and add comments. If you vote a listing up or remove a listing from the results the SERPs change when you are logged into your Google account. These new SERPs are only visible to you BUT if you comment by leaving a note other Google account members will be able to view what you and others have written. Seems fairly innocuous and really just another step towards personalization of the search results. Of course, it also gives Google another access point into your personal data but I will leave that discussion alone for now. To learn more about how Google SearchWIki works take a look at the video.

Is this just a fun tool which allows users to personalize their search results?

On the surface it seems that way and I would venture to guess that it probably is benign right now. My concern is what Google is going to do with the data they collect going forward. The Google Webmaster Help Groups have already had some discussion about the possible implications of SearchWiki. The two things that concern me are 1. Google will compile the data they receive and attempt to include it in their ranking algorithm and 2. Shady SEOs will do exactly what John Honeck mentioned and use the results to trick clients.

Would Google actually incorporate SearchWiki into their algorithm?

Would Google incorporate SearchWiki into their algorithm? My initial guess would be no BUT they have made some questionable decisions and I am not sure that they would not test the results. That would certainly leave this open to abuse by some shady individuals who could easily employ an army of spammers to carpet bomb the results to push their results up (or push the competition down). Obviously, Google engineers have already considered this which is why the votes will only show up for each users Google account. But if they believe they can develop a way to incorporate this data without the spam (which is of course going to be impossible) they may give it a shot. Another issue would be that they would manually review certain results that tend to see a lot of activity. This might be good or bad depending on whether the votes are legitimate or a negative SEO attempt.

Shady SEOs duping clients IS a big concern

Now the second issue of shady SEOs using this to show their clients performance improvements is more of concern in the near term. When this went live we actually had a discussion about this and then I saw John talking about it too so it is something that should be considered. This is a realistic concern and provides yet another opportunity for the spam brigade to make SEOs look bad. I can see some of the shadier SEO firms taking the steps to create a Google account for their clients and show them “improved” results by voting the sites up in the results. Knowledgeable clients won’t fall for it but there are still far too many businesses whose representatives don’t know a thing about SEO and they could easily be duped. This is something that Google needs to consider and address. It is also another reason for those who are hiring SEOs to eschew ranking reports and measure traffic and conversion improvements instead.

I am on the fence

Right now I am not really concerned or excited about SearchWiki. It does not really affect our SEO service and I see it as fairly innocuous. I do have some concerns about the implications going forward if it ends up catching on. I am also even more concerned about the amount of data that Google is able to track as they add more features like this. At this point I am going to keep an eye on SearchWiki and see if it is being abused or included in the algorithm. Until they I will probably just ignore it.

©2010 piloSEO. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Google Interest-Based Advertising & SEO Google just announced that they will be serving “interest-based advertising” to users by placing a cookie in your browser when you visit a Google partner...
2. Big Brother Google Knows Best Matt Cutts recent video on why pages disallowed by Robots.txt still appear in Google’s index is the latest display of Google’s arrogance. When you break...
3. Google Kitchen Sink Results I am well aware of the fact that Google is always experimenting with their SERPs. I have seen many different formats and types of results...

The Googleblog is offering some great insights into what Americans were searching on during and after the last presidential debate. This information provides great insights into what issues people are interested. This information would have a greater impact for politicians than any poll or survey that the major media likes to push out to everyone. Polls and surveys require some intrusion and can be much more filtered by user bias. Search data like this is much less biased and it gets to the core issues that the voters care about.

This could be huge if used correctly

Maybe this will lead to a politician who uses this data and actually focuses on the issues instead of the current mess we have. It would be a refreshing change it that were to happen but I imagine it will take a while for them to catch on and start utilizing the great resource that search data provides.

©2010 piloSEO. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Google Interest-Based Advertising & SEO Google just announced that they will be serving “interest-based advertising” to users by placing a cookie in your browser when you visit a Google partner...
2. China v Google Not About Free Speech “Don’t be Evil”. It is fairly well known that Don’t be evil is Google’s informal corporate motto. It looks great and gives everyone that sees...
3. Google SearchWiki…Benign or Nefarious? As many are probably aware Google launched SearchWiki, which allows Google account holders to alter their search results. For those who are not yet aware...