Comments on our webmaster guidelines?
Google recently beefed up our webmaster quality guidelines with more info, examples, etc. Normally I’d start the conversation and highlight important points. Let’s turn it around this time. Check out the additional info in the webmaster guidelines — what do you see that is unclear? Are there places where you think the wording is poor or confusing?
Dave (Original) Said,
June 28, 2007 @ 11:46 pm
I’m so glad you asked Matt
Hidden text and links;
Assume some software is used to create site pages. Part of the page creation includes a hidden link (via css) that only shows if you print the page, or view it in print preview. Would this be considered outside the Google guidelines?
Please note, I’m not asking if this will incur a penalty, ban or even if it will benefit the pages in Google.
Dave (Original) Said,
June 28, 2007 @ 11:48 pm
Oops, forgot to say that, IMO, the updated guidelines are worded less ambiguously than the old. However, nothing is perfect so please keep updating them as need be.
Harith Said,
June 28, 2007 @ 11:49 pm
Matt
I wish to see more info and tips within the webmaster quality guidelines about “Submit a reconsideration request “. Something in the direction of this previous postFiling a reinclusion request
Patrick Altoft Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 12:29 am
Matt, care to comment on why John Chow doesn’t rank for his own name anymore?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=john+chow
His blog is read by a lot of people who try to copy him. Explaining to everyone where he went wrong would be a great help to a lot of bloggers.
If you don’t explain where he went wrong people will just keep doing it (whatever “it” is).
Bruno Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 12:53 am
I still have questions about “Duplicate content”, and especially about blog archives.
Lets take your article ‘The role of humans in Google search’. I can find the full article on multiple pages:
- Homepage (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/)
- Article Permalink (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/the-role-of-humans-in-google-search/)
- June 2007 archive (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/2007/06/)
- Google/SEO category archive (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/type/googleseo/)
i looked at your robots.txt file and i would have thought you would have blocked out the archive pages for indexing, as archives typically just contain ‘duplicate content’.
When i google for ‘The role of humans in Google search’, only the article page shows up (and the comments feed page). Did google choose that page because thats the page lots of other people link to? What would be best practise on handling duplicate content created by blog archive pages?
(there also seems to be a blogspot fan of you and adsense, showing up in those results)
Frank D. Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 1:05 am
Dear Matt,
excuse my bad english..
“Make pages for users, not for search engines” Really? A little example: Years ago I created a second Domain, which pointed directly to the subfolder of another Domain. It was the desire of many users of a Community. Google removed the maindomain from the SERPs and I learned from it: Make pages for users AND for search engines. The Google guidelines are more important than the desires of the users.
JohnMu Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 1:35 am
I always get confused with the names. What is “Webmaster Central” and what is “Webmaster tools”? It’s hard to send people to their “accounts” (for the user, website, verified site?) there without confusing them :-).
The robots.txt entry needs information about the limits of the processed robots.txt file. There’s nothing worse than having the processor stop at
Disallow: /
when the line would be
Disallow: /someextremelylongpath
I realize the initial review at Yahoo costs $299 and it is not a paid listing. However subsequent years also cost that much — without a review. Is the first year ok and the next year bad (as a paid listing)?
What is http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl for?
Why do you continue to explicitly list “Web Position Gold” and none of the others?
And one snarky one which should be a top priority - “If you’d like to discuss this with Google, or have ideas for how we can better communicate with you about it, please post in our webmaster discussion forum.”
This needs to be changed to “please post on one of the many third party blogs and forums” or “on one of our employee’s private blogs” (aka here). Why is this discussion not in the official Google group?
jan Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 1:40 am
i have one question:
why is ebay treated different than any other webmaster in terms of the quality guideline?
i see lots of indexed internal search, keywordspam, subdomain spam…
is ebay getting away with it because of their hugh advertising budget on adwords?
How can Google expect the webmaster to follow your quality guideline if there are always plenty of ebay websites and subdomains in front of the ranking with the stuff that you want to get rid of in your guidelines?
like:
“Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines”
that’s what ebay does all the time.
that’s what almost every webmaster out there thinks right now about your quality of the index.
Pennimus Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 1:43 am
Hidden links (again): Assume you’ve got inaccessible navigation (classic case = HTML element), and are providing an alternative form of navigation for search engines in the form of links that are not visible to users but replicate exactly the contents of the element. Complying or going against guidelines?
Ian M Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 2:01 am
YES! The guidelines, even after all this time, have nothing about how to deal with language-specific content, especially international variants of a particular language. For example, how to specify the contents of a page, in a method that is understood by Google, as either US-English or UK-English.
The lack of internationalisation information there does make it seem like Google is “just another American company” that treats the rest of the world as an afterthought.
A second issue - on the page http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66359 it would be helpful to give examples of non-page-content information (meta and title) that can cause duplicate content, as a reference to point people to.
feedthebot Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 2:11 am
Wow, JohnMu, good point. This discussion is occurring here on the Google webmaster help group after being mentioned on the webmaster central blog,
I think it is great that Matt is getting the word out and requesting more input (as he often does here). By the way, hello Matt, sorry for “third personing” you.
JohnMus note that this isn’t being discussed in the right place has alot of merit though Matt, many of the most actve and loyal Google webmaster help group members semi-recently spoke up about how much it urks them to have Google “stars” posting things like this, or make semi-official statements on third party blogs instead of the community they are working to build.
So from one point of view maybe you could have gone to the Google group thread and made an informative, interesting post and then got the extra desired input in that way, right where it has already begun.
From another point of view, you will likely get more input here than the thread on the group will get, so I see your reasoning to put it up here, but it does seem to fragment the exsisting dialogue and could have been an opportunity to “pimp the group” a bit.
Don’t know, I am tired. I have comments on the webmaster guidelines naturally, and I will post them on the Google webmaster help thread.
René Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 2:27 am
It doesn’t seem to provide guidelines for proper use of rel=”nofollow”.
Where it says “Make sure your web server supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header” you could save 99% of the world’s population the effort of checking, by confirming that modern versions of Apache and IIS support it.
Sebastian Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 2:32 am
Hi Matt,
I’ve a longish comment on the changes here:
http://sebastianx.blogspot.com/2007/06/google-enhances-quality-guidelines.html
In short:
- Hidden text/links
- Cloaking
- Sneaky redirects
- Paid links
- Hallway/doorway pages, thin SERPs
need clarifications here and there.
Thanks
Sebastian
ian Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 2:42 am
I know its minor, but how about a link to the lynx browser where you mention it?
Philipp Lenssen Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 2:46 am
“Make sure that your TITLE and ALT tags are descriptive and accurate.”
There are still no “alt tags” in the W3C specification, only “alt attributes.” On that note, it would be nice if Google would include at least one link to w3.org in their “technical guidelines” section, e.g. to the HTML specification or the W3C’s accessibility guidelines.
“If your company buys a content management system, make sure that the system can export your content so that search engine spiders can crawl your site.”
Perhaps “export/ display” would be more correct.
“When your site is read: Submit it to Google at http://www.google.com/addurl.html.”
Does this really deserve to be on the top page as top tip? I never submit any of my sites these days, I think the tip is confusing as it takes away emphasis from other points.
“Submit a Sitemap as part of our Google webmaster tools”
This tip should emphasize that it’s *optional*. Again, this can be confusing to webmasters new to the topic, who now feel like they *must* offer a Sitemap file, which they simly don’t need to.
“The Google crawler doesn’t recognize text contained in images.”
Unless you use alt texts, I guess, which might be worth clarifying here (I can already see management say that “images are bad for rankings”).
“If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a “?” character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages.”
Might be worth to link to something explaining htaccess files, and how one can rewrite URLs.
“Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).”
I’m curious why exactly 100 links is a “reasonable number.” If you decide to open up the frontpage with a tag cloud, for instance, more than 100 links may be reasonable. I’m not sure a precide number should be included at all, or does Google simply stop parsing link #101?
“Does this help my users?”
Might rephrase “users” to “visitors.”
Vinod Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 3:15 am
Please correct the spelling/word formation.
http://www.vinodlive.com/2007/06/29/gloogle-sepell-cehck-psls/
Ted Z Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 4:28 am
Hey Matt:
Looks good. Don’t do deceptive things and stay out of bad neighborhoods like your Mom told you when you were five. There is a saying that you lean all the important stuff by the time you are six.
Should add “If you are worried that you might be doing something wrong you probably are.”
Cheers,
Ted
Robert Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 4:34 am
“If you’d like to discuss this with Google, or have ideas for how we can better communicate with you about it, please post in our webmaster discussion forum.”
I post the same question 3 times in the “webmaster discussion forum” and never got a helpful answer.
So, here it is again:
How do I get rid of the -950 penalty?
JohnMu Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 5:06 am
Regarding “Use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages that don’t add much value for users coming from search engines.” - would that cover the DMOZ clones? What about the Google directory and the various versions across those domains/subdomains?
Regarding automated queries: how much is “automated”? Is a browser plugin for PR an automated query? is a tool on a server that queries Google (be it ranking, # pages indexed, etc) which the user manually uses automated? Or are only tools which run on a scheduler or which query URLs from a database automated?
SearcHEngineSWeB Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 5:40 am
This is poorly written; it does not take into account that you are NOT telling people how to get good rankings without employing some of the HARMLESS techniques.
It is fine to say ‘dont do this and dont do that’ but what alternatives are there for those small Websites that can not compete successfully with the well-funded websites.
The BASIC guidelines are really poorly written and show no empathy for the desperations of some Webmasters who may have started off pure and good, but finally got so disappointed they began deploying these tactics.
In other words, there is not compassion or empathy in the guidelines.
WHAT RIGHT does anyone have to tell someone to make their pages for Humans and not for Search Engines. That is none of your business!!
That is a business decision that every site owner should make for herself or himself. In many cases you MUST create some pages for Search Engines - unless you can afford tens of thousands of dollars for PPCs or Public Relations. It is one thing to tell a large firm to engage in these guidelines, but since the playing field is NOT equal, you can not hold the small Webmaster to the same standards - they MUST have some ‘real word’ privileges.
Links schemes are an important asset for many sites. It is like a support systems among small sites to help each other. The bottom line is that people who use these schemes many not have any other way of promoting because of extremely low budgets. IT IS A SUPPORT GROUP - be more tolerant. Some link schemes have standards before allowing sites to participate, they should be judged differently than a completely malicious link scheme. Go the extra distance and judge each link scheme on its own merits. People’s livelihoods are at stake.
Doorway pages should be tolerated if there is no other cost effective option to get traffic for misspellings or synonyms. We are not living in an age of CONCEPT SEARCHING, so tactics must be employed that deal with the limitations of search technology as it exists in 2007.
It is not YOUR problem is small sites get NO traffic and large sites dominate the SERPs. It is not YOUR worry that Webmasters are frustrated. You get paid regardless of what concerns they face. YOUR job is not affected because those who have played by the rules get no income from their small sites. And those who get angry and start to react in a manner you disapprove of - GET heartless BANNED (that will show them)
In fact if they give up all hope for buy ADWORDS, you gain.
DerbyMark Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 5:47 am
Hidden Text:
There are some quality sites out there using CSS to offset text so that its not visible in a browser. See http://www.copyblogger.com for an example of a site that does this. The Copyblogger logo at the top of the site is an image that has been absolutley placed using CSS and is directly above a Div that contains a hyperlink to the copyblogger home page. So nice image that is aesthetically pleasing that when hovered over changes the cursor to indicate a hyperlink.
The link text “Copyblogger” has been offset using CSS (text-indent:-9999px;) so that its not visible on the page. Now strictly according to the guidlines this is bad because you can not see this text. The reality is the text is exactly what you see in the browser. So is this a breach of the guidlines or not?
There are other examples such as the RSS icon with hyperlink text that is descriptive “Copyblogger RSS Feed” but again not visible.
Copyblogger
Tom Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 5:47 am
Philipp Lenssen,
Following W3C standards has never seemed to be a requirement, not that I disagree but posting a link to w3c could imply there is one. I have seen over time numerous pages in Google’s index which are missing body tags, will have code outside the html tags and so on. I guess it is more about the message and not the delivery (following the guidelines of course).
graywolf Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 5:54 am
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35291
>No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.
Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a “special relationship” with Google, or advertise a “priority submit” to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is through our Add URL page or through the Google Sitemaps program, and you can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever.
followed by
>Make sure you’re protected legally.
For your own safety, you should insist on a full and unconditional money-back guarantee. Don’t be afraid to request a refund if you’re unsatisfied for any reason, or if your SEO’s actions cause your domain to be removed from a search engine’s index. Make sure you have a contract in writing that includes pricing. The contract should also require the SEO to stay within the guidelines recommended by each search engine for site inclusion.
so none can guarantee anything, but yet people are supposed to get one, so what exactly are they getting a guarantee for?
Deb Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 5:59 am
Matt
I like these informations under the heading “Quality guidelines - specific guidelines” and for more information we can clink on these but it would be better to write in brief within these points, so we can read there without click I think.
Thanks
Deb
Francisco Cheng Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 6:35 am
It would be really good if you can cover the use of rel=”nofollow”.
Ryan Ward Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 6:40 am
I like the updates. I am glad that they are there and more clear. I don’t think that it is necessary for Google to outline any good techniques. Only what will not be tolerated.
I would have benefited from these guidelines myself and would have been able to avoid getting in trouble in the first place.
Thank you for the update to these guidelines. Hopefully they will help keep more people working on best practices instead of gaming the system.
And hopefully my website will be back soon!!!
Nate Klaiber Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 6:52 am
Here is my main complaint. Nothing is timely or working. The Web Developer tools seem to be dated (as in not showing day to day current information like with google analytics). I know GA is embedded in the page, but couldn’t there be an option to join to two to get better snapshots?
Same is true for working with a Spam report. I have submitted a site in the past and no action was taken (while the site is clearly spam and breaks every quality guideline rule you have). You had said in previous posts that spam submissions from webmaster tools takes precedence over anonymous claims. There is no feedback to this process - so I just tend to lose faith in using the tools.
So these guidelines give me the same feel…somewhat dated. Like the ‘alt tag’ example above. I think that they need revisions that answer the questions above - the questions related to image replacement and ajax techniques that use display: none or negative indenting.
Nathan Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 7:04 am
I have a problem with the guidelines as a whole. They’re a nice concept but seeing as Google rarely seems to take notice of them itself then they’re not that useful.
Just take a look at perhaps the most competitive area in search: finance. One can frequently see breaches of the guidelines going completely unpunished. For example: http://www.google.co.uk/search?source=ig&hl=en&q=loans&btnG=Google+Search&meta=
The top result here is a member of the Digital Point Ad Network, an automated link generation scheme. They’re in top position for a competitive term. Yahoo says they have over 6 million inbound links to the homepage alone. Look at the source of one of these and it’s clearly an automated linking scheme, which is also against the Google guidelines/rules. But this site is not penalised for this behaviour, and in fact gets rewarded by being ranked in top position.
So, my point is why should webmasters pay any attention to Google guidelines when blatant breaches of those guidelines result in no punishment and even in favourable postioning? Why even try to follow Google’s rules and create a better product for Google? And therefore why is Google spending time updating guidelines they don’t even enforce? What’s the point? We might as well all sign up to DP ads and enjoy the benefits because Google won’t do anything to you.
scott Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 7:18 am
Seriously, why even ask? You know your guidlines are cryptic and that is how you want it to remain. Besides even if we tell you something you guys do not listen. Google actually encourage dirty SEO, especially if you use Adwords. I tell your folks about sites that employ Black SEO techniques and what do you do? Put them on the first page for competitive keywords…Speaking of adwords BAN all MFA sites already! I know your desperate for revenue to maintain your lofty market cap, but please it does not enhance the internet users experience and is high priced spam.
Barry Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 8:06 am
I’m wondering if there is a time limit between reinclusion requests. Obviously not something you want to do bi-monthly, but I can surmise webmasters getting ancy with no response or change after 3 months.
Nathan Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 8:07 am
SearcHEngineSWeB, with all due respect to you, I disagree that any business, regardless of size or budget, should be given any special graces with doing blackhat SEO. Where do you draw the line? And if a company that is marginally bigger than yours does better than you, do you lower the bar again? The wrong answer is to allow blackhat SEO if your company is below a certain size. The right answer is for no-one to engage in blackhat SEO and for Google to actually penalise anyone that does fairly across the board, thereby levelling the playing field a bit more. This is not happening currently.
Doorway pages - again, completely unnecessary with a good site architecture and site strategy plan. You can use your existing site to cover misspellings if you plan accordingly.
It’s not Google’s responsibility to look out for how your business does online, that’s yours. It is Google’s responsibility, however, to ensure that rules that are created are enforced equally. Again, this isn’t happening. Whilst it’s not happening, it makes a mockery of these guidelines and the useful intentions behind them.
GiveMeaBreak Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 8:08 am
“A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you.”
This is funny. I’m sure Google and Yahoo sit down for lunch every week and discuss what you guys do to gain more market share against one another. Do you think I’m going to my competition to tell them how I’m going to beat them whether its advertising online or on the radio?
Ryan Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 8:26 am
Hey Matt. I know I wasn’t an SEO before, but I just took a new SEO job..
anyway, I’m curious about the “don’t use automated programs like web position gold” part. Out of respect for your TOS I don’t use it. The problem is, we have many clients who like it and want us to do so.
Aside from lots of manual labor involved in gathering the data on my own, is there a Google recommended way of providing the same features without abusing Google resources?
Is there a penalty for using such programs? I know it’d be pretty easy for Google to see what domains they keep querying.
The sitemaps console is a great resource, but I think it could be a little better as far as mimicking the deliverables of the automated programs.
Perhaps Google could expand on this feature and offer alternatives to the masses who are so dependent upon programs like web position gold. I’d like to see that part drilled into in depth a little more.
Ryan Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 8:28 am
Graywolf, I interpreted that to get a guarantee that they won’t do anything blackhat or to harm your domain. On a re-read, perhaps it does need a little clarification.
Nicky Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 8:29 am
I would have to say I found this a little confusing:
“Use text instead of images as spiders to not understand the text in images”
followed by:
“Make sure that your TITLE and ALT tags are descriptive and accurate.”
ALT tags are for images (as we know) but sound’s a bit contradictive. Spiders DON’T understand the text in images?? Does that mean Spiders don’t read ALT tags?
Nicky Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 8:45 am
Sorry - that should have read:
“Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn’t recognize text contained in images.”
JLH Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 8:47 am
Thanks for asking for feedback. Regarding Paid Links, originally I got the impression that the penalties for paid links would be on SELLER of the link, as referenced here by Adam Lasnik:
http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2007/03/googles-lasnik-wishes-nofollow-didnt-exist.html#comment-22729
But then the new guidelines came out with a section on “Why should I report paid links?” :
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66736&topic=8524
In that piece it appears that the burden has been switched from the SELLER to the BUYER, based on statements like this, ” Buying links in order to improve a site’s ranking is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results.”
I realize Google’s stance on buying and selling links, that’s not my confusion, but what I don’t understand is how Adam says that the seller will be penalized and even gives a reason why, so other sites cannot hurt your ranking, “We’re aware of and very strongly tuned against facilitating the “Googlebowling” you’ve expressed concerns about… and, in fact, I’ve never seen an example of that in the wild.” But yet when the official documents come out, they say the exact opposite.
Thanks for your time, and I’ll hang up and listen.
Stan Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 8:52 am
Hey Matt,
I actually very much liked the document, Google policies affect so many businesses around the world it’s nice to see clear guidelines from the source.
Anyways, what I liked best is the relevant links here and there, could you guys append (it’s not in quality section, but in technical, but since you asked…) this “Make sure your web server supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header. ” with a link to an internal or external site how to check for this? Or at least add something like “Apache from version x and IIS from version Y support this feature by default”? Would be cool if I could check it myself without involving our technical guy.
Regarding the content duplication — we run different third-level domains for our different applications and they all have some generic pages (like privacy, terms of use, about the company) available “locally” because we don’t want users to leave the current web-site and our download page is pretty much the same except different order of products on different domains.
Anyways, if you could maybe make a tool available telling us exactly how similar Google finds two particular pages and what the penalty for having them is, that would be great.
Keep up the good job, it’s nice to see even tho you guys are #1, you still care.
Nathan Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 8:56 am
Spiders don’t understand a pictorial representation of text, but can read alt tags associated with images since this live as text in the source code of the page.
lots0 Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 9:19 am
Sneaky Javascript redirects -
This section is vague at best. I have a good long term grasp of the issues involved, but I still had to read this section several times before I thought I understood what google was trying to say. I think what your trying to say is that using javascript to manipulate search rankings is bad…
Doorway pages - ???
IMO, This entire section needs to be rewritten.
Are “Doorway Pages” considered good or bad?
Is a “Door Way Page the same as a “Landing Page”?
Is a site Map going to make all my “Doorway Pages” cool with the Goo?
If I put a Navigation Bar on my “Door Way Pages” for users to navigate the site are those pages still considered “Door Way Pages” by the Goo?
suresh Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 9:21 am
HI Matt.
I have the Same question as Ryan Has.We dont want to use Programs like Web Position Gold, But if we want to Check rankings for a lot of Keywords for a larger site, What would be a better altenative? Personaly I dont use those Softwares to Submit sites or anything. Is it violation even to use those softwares to Check the Position? The Guidelines says dont use the softwares, It would be great if there is a little bit more explanation like why you shouldnt use those softwares and what will happen if someone uses those softwares.
Thank you for asking the question. We are so glad that people like you are trying to solve our poblems.
Suresh
petteri Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 9:28 am
“Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other industry-specific expert sites.”
Who is judge which is relevant directory and which not? Google? Google says: make sure other sites link to you. How? Only reasonable choice is buing links. As long as our competitors do that we do not have another possibilidad. At the moment we are living in world where we cant make a succes without breaking Google guidelines.
SEO Honolulu Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 9:31 am
3 things;
1 - a working example of how to correctly include the url to your XML sitemap in your robots.txt file
2 - suggesting how to test the website for WAI compliance and why this is a good practice to get into. perhaps a link to cynthiasays.com for their online validation tool?
3 - All of the above suggestions that involve W3C Standards being pushed more onto new webmasters.
Michael Martinez Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 9:52 am
Change nothing. You’ll only regret letting the SEO community dictate to you how you should word your guidelines.
Just as the SEO community has come to regret allowing Google to dictate what they can and cannot do on their own pages.
In other words, you and the Naboo form a symbiotic circle. Surely you realize that whatever happens to them will also affect you.
Joel Lesser Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 9:53 am
Thank you for asking Matt.
It would be helpful to webmasters if Google would define “link schemes” and explain the subtle difference between full duplex high volume link programs and editor based low volume link exchange for the end user.
These days, many webmasters and SEOs think any type of link exchange is bad due to rampant mis-interpretation of comments from engineers at major search engines. Google has directly contributed to this issue by providing Page Rank which then gives overzealous webmasters the drive to manipulate search returns by participating in full duplex link exchange programs and services. But what about the good guys who are making link exchange decisions for the end user?
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66736&topic=8524 states:
“Google works hard to ensure that it fully discounts links intended to manipulate search engine results, such link exchanges and purchased links.”
This guideline appears to be targeted towards explaining paid links - so why the subtle reference to link exchange at the very bottom of this guideline? That is sloppy in my opinion and should be further explained or omitted from this guideline.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66736&topic=8524 is the only webmaster guideline that specifically mentions “link exchange” and doing so out of context of the original guideline title/question is misinformative and confusing.
Google also mentioned the term “link scheme” in numerous guidelines without defining the term anywhere. How about a glossary of webmaster terms? I know other webmaster forums publish a glossary but that is useless IMO .. Google should publish a webmaster glossary and link to it from vague terms such as “link schemes” and “bad neighborhoods”.
I will carefully presume that “link scheme” means full duplex fully automated linking whereas a webmaster pays his 50 bucks and then gets auto linked to hundreds of sites overnight. But what about editor based link exchange for the end user conducted in natural/slow volume??
If my site sells motorcycle parts and a site that sells cycle graphics wants to exchange links with me, why can’t I link exchange with this site from my links pages without fear of being penalized in Google??
When Google implies that I may be penalized for link exchange when it benefits my end user, Google is negatively affecting my ability to do business with like minded sites.
Link exchange between relevant like minded sites has existed since the WWW was invented. Webmasters will hopefully continue to link their sites with quality relevant sites when it benefits the end user, in slow natural volume - while avoiding services and software that make linking guarantees overnight.
When Google makes subtle comments regarding “link exchange” thrown into a guideline regarding paid links, it confuses webmasters and adds to the paranoia related to relevant link exchange for the end user.
Once and for all, Google should simply define the difference between full duplex link exchange where links are not obtainined using editorial discretion - and relevant editor based link exchange for the end user.
A Google webmaster glossary would be a great improvement to the webmaster guidelines.
Terry Van Horne AKA Wemaster T Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 10:11 am
Regarding WPG. It is objectionable because it exploits search engines resources and does not adhere to Robots.txt. So, WPG is the SEM equivalent of an email harvester. Think about it, WPG makes millions of $’s and doesn’t spend a cent in support or bandwidth. The cost to SE’s to serve and maintain support for WPG is is likely in the millions.
The Search engines don’t want you to do this but until recently they did little to provide a substitute. Now I believe you can get that info from one of the Google webmaster or anylitics tools. Digital Point also has a Rank checker product but it requires a Soap API key which Google no longer supports or isn’t currently issuing new ones.
Matt Cutts Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 10:39 am
Hey all, I just wanted to let you know that the person on the webmaster central team who pushed the updated guidelines has already dropped me an email to say that they’re reading this thread. I’ll probably get together with them next week to see if there’s ways we can take some of the suggestions and look for rough edges on the additional information and polish them more.
Todd Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 10:56 am
I totally agree with Ryan on the “Don’t send automated queries to Google.” How else is anyone supposed to track and monitor their search rankings? We can all manually type in each query and then browse the results to see our rankings, but thats no different in terms of server processing than automated queries (i.e. Web Position). If Google doesn’t want these types of programs used then there needs to be an alternative solution.
On the topic of hidden text..what about text behind Flash? For accessibility, if a person doesn’t have Flash installed we want them to still see the text contained in the Flash so the text is placed behind the Flash. Would this considered deceptive by Google? If so, what is the suggested best practice?
BTW, why don’t you ask for suggestions before the change is made next time?
canadafred Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 11:00 am
Hey Matt
There still seems to be a lot of confusion in SEO circles regarding whether incoming links can negatively affect SERP rankings, whether it is the webmaster’s fault or not.
I have had a web page drop in ranks and the only thing I see different is that a link spammer has linked to it from an obviously deceptive ( hidden and covered up text ) webpage.
I never ask for links, ever. I go with the precept that quality content will merit links naturally ( as you sorta’ said in an earlier article ) but I can’t control who decides to link to what. I have asked the webmaster to remove his link, to no avail.
Here’s the question : Can this webpage of mine be penalized due to someone else’s SEO strategy of offering an outbound link to my webpage from his spam webpage.
The example page and the one debate about this was held in a forum here : http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread78073.html
Thanks
Theo Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 11:17 am
I’d like to see this sentence explained.
“In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods”"
What’s a bad neighborhood?
Who are web spammers?
Can you tell to what sites you are allowed to link?
Can you cover ‘buying links’?
Brian Ussery Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 11:55 am
Hey Matt,
It seems pretty clear to me but, some folks only want to hear what they want to hear!
Could you clarify how Google feels about DIV tags hidden via external CSS and used to provide “alternative” content for Flash.
There is a debate over at SEW:
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showpost.php?p=110920&postcount=18
Thanks for your time!
Doug Heil Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 12:01 pm
LOL Matt; Too funny.
I’m with Michael Martinez on this issue. You are well aware of spammers and those who don’t follow your guidelines, or those who “interpret” your guidelines a certain way that happen to fit into their biz model, would be truly happy campers if Google did more and more “clarifying” of the guidelines. Some of us actually understand them totally and simply use common sense. “Many” others would love much more detail so they how close to come to that line before being spam. I mean look at the posts in here already from people wanted MORE detail? LOL One even claims “what’s a small site owner to do” if they cannot spam…. or something like that. Sheesh…. my answer? Get a REAL SEO firm to help you.
It’s really not in Google’s best interest to give “more detail” at all. Most whitehats understand the guidelines perfectly.
In a nutshell; if you are doing something for “both” real visitors to your site and a spider, it’s just not spam. That should take care of the “hidden links” issue as well. If you define what a hidden link is and when it’s spam, you would also have to define “everything” that is not seen by a browser window. That would be an impossible task.
Just an IMO post, but an experienced and educated one.
Doug Heil Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 12:22 pm
Lotso wrote:
“Doorway pages - ???
IMO, This entire section needs to be rewritten.
Are “Doorway Pages” considered good or bad?
Is a “Door Way Page the same as a “Landing Page”?
Is a site Map going to make all my “Doorway Pages” cool with the Goo?
If I put a Navigation Bar on my “Door Way Pages” for users to navigate the site are those pages still considered “Door Way Pages” by the Goo?”
This is what I’m talking about. My, oh my. Gee, let’s see; Doorway pages are good things if they are reached by real visitors and are part of the actual site. Doorway pages are bad things if they are created strictly for spiders. doorway, landing, entry, subway, or maylay pages,;;.. what the heck makes the difference what you call them? If you create them for spiders only, it’s darn spam. Easy. I thought you knew all of this already? The rest of the post is more of the same silly stuff. Use your common sense.
S.E.W. … your post is just a “rolling on the floor” with laughter type of thing. How about all your concerns with “small businesses” being given to “other” firms who know what they are doing so that small biz can do better in Google?
Matt expected the types of posts in this thread though. Google expected them as well.
Blue Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 12:44 pm
Looks good. I’d like to see even more information on paid links, in a post a while back you said that reviewed paid links in directories are okay, and I’d just like to see more on that as well as more safe ways to buy and sell advertising. Thanks!
lots0 Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 12:51 pm
Geee Dougie when did you go to work for Google?
Doug as Google’s new spokes person I am glad you have such a grasp of what google is trying to say to webmasters and can explain it so well to all the uneducated masses that frequent Matt’s Blog.
However Doug, I was trying to point out those passages, as written, could be considered rather vague to people that don’t have your genius and over whelming understanding of what Google wants or does not want.
Rahir Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 1:05 pm
You will have to remake properly the center of assistance Administrateur Web “Webmasters Guidelines” © Google France. It is necessary to say to them!
g1smd Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 1:09 pm
Wherever you mention “alt tags” can you change that to read “alt attributes” instead please.
Multi-Worded Adam Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 1:13 pm
Your site statistics. If you’re not seeing referral traffic for the keywords and phrases that you think you should be seeing, you haven’t done enough for those keywords and phrases to be a playa.
Why would a search engine company introduce empathy into what is an objective process, thereby making it subjective? This is just silly.
A guarantee that a site won’t get banned would be a good start. A guarantee that any SEO tactics would not inhibit the user experience in any way whatsoever would be another one, albeit a much trickier one.
There are ways.
Personally, my only issue with the guidelines is clarification. I think it would be worth clarifying specific issues with examples further would be a benefit, even with the possibility of manipulation as the result of transparency as Michael Martinez pointed out. There are too many people out there twisting the guideline wording around to suit whatever purpose they want, and too many unknowing webmasters following the spin doctors, to worry about if a relative few people will find the loopholes.
That, and I wouldn’t mind if they were a lot tougher. Of course, I wouldn’t mind if you guys went all the way to the levels you do in the Accessibility search. Strip it down to the 10% of sites that are well-coded and built for users, and you’d actually be helping webmasters in the long run by forcing them to code to higher standards if they want to get in. Seriously, that thing rocks. You gotta start plugging it more.
Oh…and if you could answer Dave’s question, that’d be great. He won’t stop talking about it.
If you need an example, there’s one at http://www.wikipedia.com/Main_Page (the “printfooter” div/code).
Jordan Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 1:18 pm
I’m tending to agree with those commenting on the Doorway pages section.
It seems that in Google’s attempt to make the internet a better place, they’ve dictated what is and isn’t acceptable in terms of website design (like plain html pages versus pages using flash and javascript).
As of now, the doorway page section says to me that “Yeah, you can have a really cool looking/working site that benefits the internet community but no one will be able to find you because we won’t allow you to create content for search engines to access.” I know several awesome looking and very useful sites that are that way because of the flash and javascript used. Sadly these pages have an extremely hard time ranking because of how Google indexes pages. The only chance they have is to create a page that simply gives Google an idea of what the site’s about, which may or may not be seen as “illegal” in Google’s eyes.
I do strongly disagree with doorway pages used to spam the search engines so perhaps the section could clarify how far is too far and whether or not websites can use anything to inform Google of what the site’s about without spamming.
Aaron Pratt Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 1:20 pm
Doorway pages
Forget doorway pages, how about doorway domains? Domains owned by one person with similar content used to flood top postions in search for “keywords” to sell a product. Example: Say I sell slot machines and have 10 sites ranking in the top 10 positions in organic search? (don’t laugh, someone just sent me an email complaining about this).
Well, how about it? Care to do something about it then update your guidelines to cover greed? If not please tell me because in the area where I sell my product I will be forced to do the same to compete.
Pagerank has many flaws.
Thanks,
Aaron
Lester Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 2:19 pm
LOL - Let me write them for you as I am apparently pretty good at writing stuff without actually saying anything!
Ryan Ward Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 2:19 pm
The bottom line is that the more you add to the guidelines, the more complicated it will be to interpret. Simplicity should be the focus. To that end, a list with the practices that can get a website penalized or banned should be all that is included. Otherwise you might as well higher a team of lawyers run circles with semantics and make it a 20 page document instead of guidelines.
A good method might be to simply state the ultimate goal of what Google is trying to accomplish (provide consumers the most relevant results for their search query) followed by a list of unacceptable practices that inhibit or mislead that process. A seperate section could include tips on how to allow a website to be spidered more easily. Nothing more should need to be explained beyond that.
Nor do I think it should be necessary to explain how websites should be created to benefit consumers other than to say that websites should put the consumer before the spider.
I think this is a case of “keep it simple sT%$^&@” and take the questions and opinion out of it. Here are some examples:
Don’t buy links to increase youe SERPS
Don’t trade links to increase your SERPS
Following any of the above practices could subject your website to a penalty or a ban from the index.
Of course there would be more than 2, but that’s the idea.
The tips section could explain that the spider can’t read images and use alt descriptions to help guide someone just learning or working on their own, but should not be considered part of the “guidelines”. Instead, it would be a FAQ or something.
TomFrog Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 2:23 pm
Matt
Regarding:
“Don’t send automated queries to Google.”
Do you agree that these automated queries retrieve valuable information from a seo perspective? How do webmasters access that information, without these automated queries? Manual queries aren’t so productive?! Look at google bot. It’s not a manual process. It also consumes computing resources.
“Another useful test is to ask: Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”
But the fact is: search engine do exist. And it’s just normal that webmaster try their best to optimize their website for google. They just love google! And they want more google!
Look at the title of this page: Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO » Comments ou our webmaster guidelines?
Would you write this title if search engines didn’t exist? I don’t think you would. (How many visitors read the title?!…) But this title is not written only for google. It’s perfect for visitors. It summarizes perfectly the content of the page. It’s not stuffed with keywords. I think seo is also good copywriting. And that’s a win / win situation. You give google a better idea about the content of your website and you write better content, that will increase your visitor’s experience. How many webmasters are writing better titles because of google? Even better content?!…
And look at the url? You have all these keywords: comments-on-our-webmaster-guidelines. Is that just for google? But isn’t that positive? Aren’t you helping google to better index your website? Or is it a trick?
Don’t get me wrong. I love google bot.
I owe a lot to google and adwords.
SEOhNo! Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 2:37 pm
Why can you give us these guidelines and then for some reason the corporate geniuses above me, refuse to change anything that is specifically stated!! I really don’t understand it sometimes, but that happens so much everywhere it just blows my mind… It’s not that difficult to rank especially with Google being nice enough to give Quality Guidelines. I mean you guys go as far as to break it down nice and simple. If you are doing things that are stated in the Specific, and you are wondering why you aren’t ranking for terms that you probably should…you might be a redneck. I’m sorry Matt for venting here, but I just can’t yell at the higher ups enough and seriously for the past month I have been highlighting a few sections in the specific section that we are doing and passing it around… Nothing has changed!! I can’t understand how thiscompany can own half of America offline, and not translate that into online domination. Thank you for letting me release some anger…and thank you for making those Quality Guidelines, not just because without them people honestly would think it was some crazy Google logic why people get ranked, but because it lets the average guy compete with the soulless corporations. Google is far from soulless because I know when you guys do run the world, and we are all plugged into the GoogleBrain, it will be nothing like the Matrix. Much less humans harvested as energy sources, more neural-interactive massages…
Doug Heil Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 3:16 pm
TomFrog wrote:
“Do you agree that these automated queries retrieve valuable information from a seo perspective? How do webmasters access that information, without these automated queries? Manual queries aren’t so productive?! Look at google bot. It’s not a manual process. It also consumes computing resources.”
Tom; please read multi-worded Adam’s post again, then again and again. Many of us do not use or need something to “auto” ANYthing at all. Why? If your client insists on some kind of “rank” report, your client can go to google.com and do a search on his phrases, right? Why would you have to do that for him/her anyway? It’s easy to do manually for the client. I guess if you are actually charging this client to do this kind of report, then you and your client have much bigger issues. While your client or you are doing searches, if you are not in the first 3 pages on a term, you know you have to work harder on that term. No need for some automated report, right?
I guess I’m stumped about these auto check reports of ANY kind at all. They are very useless and does not “help” your client in any way. You as the “SEO” don’t need them either. Read your log files and stats. They tell you “much” more than a silly rank on a term. They really do.
Tom wrote this:
“Look at the title of this page: Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO » Comments ou our webmaster guidelines?
Would you write this title if search engines didn’t exist? I don’t think you would.”
Why not? It sure does help me when skimming titles in here. Title tags are done for BOTH spiders and real users. Not spam. Meta descriptions are done for BOTH spiders and real users. Not spam.
If you do something strictly for the spiders…. spam. This isn’t hard.
Alex Gousak Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 3:33 pm
Matt, not trying to be picky but here is something from your Design and Content guidelines:
“Make sure that your TITLE and ALT tags are descriptive and accurate.”
Since there is no such thing as an ALT tag, it would probably make more sense to rephrase it to:
“Make sure that your TITLE tags and ALT attributes are descriptive and accurate.”
TomFrog Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 3:48 pm
Doug
We don’t live in a perfect world. And webmasters are writing better titles because of google. Webmasters are using h1 because of google. That doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t look at webdesign standards, acessibility guidelines and quality copywriting. But google and better search results are great incentives.
spam = only for the spiders ? I don’t agree. What about the url? It that for the user? No way! Is it spam? No. Matt’s using a search friendly url. It’s not spam.
Stats? You don’t read raw stats. I look at raw stats everyday on the command line. You read a stats report, that’s subject every day to an automated process, that bites away all that raw information and servers you with yummy and easy to read stats.
I’m not referring to those automated SEO magic scripts. I’m talking about organization and productivity and information gathering for analysis. I referred automated queries. I didn’t mention Web Position Gold.
The same applies to submission programs. It’s not about the automation. I don’t like that. It’s about organization. Have you ever used a CRM software? It’s not going to sell your services and products. And you decide if you’re going to spam everyone with the same sales letter. Or if you’re going to write a personalized email for every sales lead. It’s just an instrument. Some are good software. Others aren’t.
Multi-Worded Adam Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 4:04 pm
Technically, Matt didn’t write the title here, Tom. The WordPress software combined his blog name with the title of the post (which, as you stated, is perfect for visitors). So he probably would have written the same thing if search engines didn’t exist, simply because the software is what really does the work for him.
Not as such. It’s a WordPress setting that autogenerates the permalink based on the title. Whatever Matt puts into his title will be the default permalink. This can be overridden if Matt wants, but he can’t be bothered for the most part, and there’s really no good reason for him to since the titles he creates are pretty good from a permalink standpoint as well.
In other words, most of what Matt appears to be doing for SEO is autogenerated by WordPress, and Matt’s just going with whatever the defaults are. (Sorry Matt…I told them all your dirty little secret.
)
Matthew Anderson Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 4:18 pm
Hi Matt
I’m of the same opinion as others that the section on software tools such as Web Position Gold is a little too vague, it’s not even a section but a short statement with no explanation.
Whilst the use of software such as this and the many others available may go against your recommendation’s, would one actually be penalised and why?
Virtually anyone with a large amount of keywords and rankings to check use some kind of software tool or self coded script. Small webmasters alsofind software such as this extremely useful when first starting their online businesses. SEO is a complex industry now and much and such why we first invented computers (and search engines!!!) to ease up on manual workloads we should also be expected to use tools to lessen the burden of checking and submitting information manually.
Maybe I would not have even had to write the above paragraph if it was explained WHY we should not use these programs, remembering that it’s not just the big boys who read Google’s guidelines, in fact its the millions of small webmasters which will be looking over them and Google will have put “the fear” into them by making such short unexplained statements.
TomFrog Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 4:29 pm
I wonder why wordpress does that?
Doug Heil Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 4:43 pm
Matthew wrote:
“Virtually anyone with a large amount of keywords and rankings to check use some kind of software tool or self coded script”
I’m begging someone to please explain to me WHY you feel and have the need to check ranks using automated software?? NO ONE has told me the exact reasons you are selling your clients this fake stuff and selling your clients something they can do/check themselves? So what if you have many, many terms you are targeting? What makes the diff? Can’t you check your stats or logs to see what terms you are getting referrals from ? If you are not getting referrals on a particular term, that means one of two things.
Either the term is not being searched on so it’s useless to target it. OR:
You are not on the first three pages of search results for the term, as you can clearly see by your stats if you are not getting any referrals from it.
I just don’t get it folks. Are you actually charging clients for this type of “rank check” service? Wouldn’t your time be better spent doing something else? For another thing; don’t you find that if “you” do a search from your puter on a term, and your client does a search from their puter on the same term, that you get different results on that term anyhoo?
Please tell me what the exact reasons are you need to check silly ranks? I stopped doing these type reports that mean “zero” to and for clients about 4 years ago. ALL other types of software that scours search engines like “link monger” type software such as back links, etc, is all totally worthless and not a benefit to your client whatsoever. Do stuff that actually helps a client’s website instead. IE: helps them sell more product or whatever it is the goal is of the particular site. Knowing a “rank” does not do that at all.
Doug Heil Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 4:59 pm
Ya got something there Igor. Auto software crap is BIG time business in this industry. It’s not in their best interests for the majority of site owners to actually get knowledgeable at all. It appears it’s not in the best interests of certain types of SEO’s for owners to get knowledgeable either. All I can figure is that some out there actually “charge” for the privilege of a rank report.
lots0 Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 5:07 pm
Doug Heil Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 3:16 pm
“If you do something strictly for the spiders…. spam. This isn’t hard.”
So Site Maps are now SPAM?
lots0 Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 5:11 pm
Doug Heil Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 3:16 pm
“If you do something strictly for the spiders…. spam. This isn’t hard.”
So having a robots.txt is now SPAM?
Doug Heil Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 5:40 pm
I agreed with your entire post Igor until the very last sentence. I feel there “are” good SEO’s only. Everyone else is not a SEO at all, but something else entirely. They are the one’s who hijack the industry. Good SEO’s actually care about their client’s sales and goals. It’s the “bad’ people who call themselves SEO’s who do not teach clients that a rank is just a rank and nothing more. A rank does not get you sales, nor does a rank help your website convert visitors at doing whatever it is the owner wants them to do. A rank is just a rank and nothing more. It’s toooo bad these so-called “other” types are charging client’s for this instead of charging client’s for things that actually matter. I think it’s a “see what I did for you” thang for this type SEO. It’s this type SEO not teaching clients what’s important. It’s this type SEO who takes the monies even if the client’s website is butt-ugly and could not sell if it ranked number one on the most searched on term. These types of “so-called” seo’s hurt the industry in a big way. Good SEO’s/developers would “never” take money from a bad site unless they actually redesigned/restructured, or in other words, … started from scratch.
Brandon Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 6:31 pm
So does this mean all the link directories that are using many of these tactics will be punished ?
Multi-Worded Adam Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 8:58 pm
Dude, I’m right here. Lasnik should now be referred to as “Secondary Adam”, or “Adam #2″. I got here first.
Eric Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 9:11 pm
Actually I have two questions:
First - I have seen a program that is an RSS Aggregator which generates a page with a news headline with one or two lines from the news article and is automatically added to the site and links to the original news article. It is used soley to generate pages for the site and to provide a link back to the index page. One site that uses this is ranked in the top ten on google for the search “Website Design” and has well over 6,000 pages indexed with the majority being “news” pages generated by this aggregator. Is this type of program ok to use?
Second - If one has done something to cause a problem with being indexed on google and the problem is corrected, is there a way to get the google bot to come back earlier than normal to recrawl the page? Sometimes it takes 2 or 3 weeks to see a return by google to crawl a page. Can we “invite” google back earlier? The site hasn’t been banned nor is it in supplemental….. but it has dropped significantly due to a bad judgement call in a change on the index page.
Thanks for the info and continued communications……… Eric in KY
Dockarl Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 10:05 pm
Eric (the 2nd part of your Q - its a bit off topic) -
I’ve heard it suggested that submitting a sitemap may ‘jolt’ the bot into an earlier crawl - meh - not too sure about that - but something that DOES seem to work is getting some links (pref to a deep page) on the front page of a well crawled site - gbot will find your site from there - so if you’ve got any friends with decent PR websites or blogs, ask them for some help.
doc
me Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 10:11 pm
New guideline:
Do not trade/buy links or advertise with anyone except Google or we will ban and penalize your site.
What is so wrong with buying links or selling links on your site? Why is it that Google can make their money from selling advertising, but they will penalize websites that sell ads or buys ads? Yes, a text link is an ad. Can you say hypocrisy?
Harith Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 10:32 pm
MWA
“Dude, I’m right here. Lasnik should now be referred to as “Secondary Adam”, or “Adam #2″. I got here first.”
Or more correctly:
Adam Lasnik = Adam Jr.
Multi-Worded Adam = Adam Senior
Multi-Worded Adam Said,
June 29, 2007 @ 11:53 pm
That actually works, Harith, since Senior is how my last name is pronounced (although it’s not spelled the same.)
Harith Said,
June 30, 2007 @ 1:17 am
Adam Senior
You may wish to add to your robots.txt the following:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /*/feed/$
Disallow: /*/feed/rss/$
Disallow: /*/trackback/$
Disallow: /comments/feed/
Disallow: /*/2007/$
Disallow: /feed/
Disallow: /index.php
And between and
Just in case
Harith Said,
June 30, 2007 @ 1:20 am
And between (head) and (/head)
(META NAME=”GOOGLEBOT” CONTENT=”NOODP”)
(META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”INDEX, FOLLOW”)
change “(” and “)” to “”
TomFrog Said,
June 30, 2007 @ 5:42 am
Regarding:
“Well frog! This might be something like Matt refers to as a gray area! In actuality Google states in GQG that a Website should not sell links because it tries to manipulate Google search results!”
It’s TomFrog.
Matt did differentiate between directories and link farms. True directories are great tools for google and will help improve search results, part of the human touch Matt was referring to on a previous post. Directories do not sell links.
Selling links is a very complicated issue. Sometimes you visit a blog and you know that it just exists for review me type of posts. And a few SEO sell links and they just have a few blogs and post the same content in each blog and it’s for example 10 links per blog x 10 blogs and that’s 100 hundred backlinks. But you also find quality blogs that get an extra revenue from selling links and that don’t accept low quality websites. Google created an asset: backlinks. And there’s a market for that asset.
Google needs good content. If there’s a decrease of quality content, google revenues will suffer. And some of those quality blogs and other quality websites gain some extra income from selling links. It’s not advertising. It’s link love. And that extra income allows the owner to spend more time researching and writing.
I don’t think google should treat equally those blogs that just do review me posts, with several twin blogs, and those quality blogs, from hard working webmasters, that offer google something it needs: content.
I think marketing and webdesign are more important than just SEO. A website that complies to webdesign and accessibility standards and that has a great marketing campaign can do good in the search results. Having someone that knows SEO will help. But just tweaking. It«s not about SEO. It’s all marketing.
Randy Duermyer Said,
June 30, 2007 @ 7:07 am
Phew! Matt, you really opened up the hornet’s nest on this one. I’m exhausted just reading through the comments and from thoughts that are going through my mind with all of this.
If we follow the guidelines and then end up getting removed from the index anyway, submit a reinclusion request to which there is no response, how the f#$%! are we supposed to know where we went wrong?
“No one can guarantee anything, but make sure you get a guarantee?” Brilliant! So the client should get a full refund for being penalized when I have no idea what caused the penalty in the first place. Some of my clients like to take an active role in promoting their site - how do I know it’s not something the client did and didn’t ask me about first that got him penalized? How do I know that all this extra effort it’s taking to try to get him re-indexed that I’m not charging him for was my fault in the first place?
To those who say rankings are meaningless, how about the small guy SEO who is trying to land new clients who want to know what rankings the SEO has achieved for other sites and for which terms? Then, when you explain “rankings don’t mean squat”, the prospect thinks you’re a scam artist who doesn’t know how to get decent rankings. These clients want to know their rankings and most of them don’t want to sit there doing manual queries and then trying to find their site in the listings, nor do they want to pay me to do that for them. Using an automated rankings checker allows me to provide the information they want without charge. I agree that charging for something that runs in the background and requires virtually no input and no labor is not honest, what about those of us who aren’t charging for these reports and are just trying to spend time on more productive pursuits? I agree that 90% of the automated software that’s out there is pure garbaged intended to spam the SEs, but there are some tools that actually do help improve our productivity that are not used for spamming purposes, and in many ways help keep our costs down. What about those software vendors, aren’t they allowed to sell their products - even those that are useful tools and not spambots?
And there are both TITLE tags (in the HEAD) AND title attributes on links in the BODY of a page. This shouldn’t be too hard to clarify, just avoiding interchanging “tags” with “attributes” since they aren’t the same. And of course, spiders can read alt attributes for an image but they can’t read text that has been rendered (burned) into an image. I can’t imaging that would be too hard to figure out, yet many “webmasters” and web designers out there still insist on using image-based and Flash-based navigation elements.
“There are no good SEOs, only good webmasters”. Some of us act as both SEO and webmaster for our clients. I guess we should feel conflicted by that.
Penalized for link exchange and paid links? Give me a break. Sure there are abuses and they shouldn’t be too tough to spot for links between sites that have no correlation and for massive automated link generators, but what about trying to build traffic from relevant sites, what about online advertising to drive more traffic, what about hosting paid links in order to monetize a site and earn a living, and what about AdWords - aren’t they paid links? Let’s say I forget about rankings and do all these things to get traffic. Will Google differentiate? How?
Maybe get more specific on what Google won’t tolerate, eliminate the vagueries and confusion. Then, if none of those things occurred and our site still drops out of the index altogether, how about letting us know why? I understand why an algorithm needs to be confidential, but if things were more specific on the penalty end, fewer people would do them, fewer prospects would hire clients who engage in those techniques, and more prospects who want to help with their site will know clearly what they can’t do.
How is anyone supposed to make a living in this environment?
Thanks, Matt. It took some guts to throw this out there, but at least you did (he said as he left the room and started banging his head against the wall).
TomFrog Said,
June 30, 2007 @ 8:06 am
I’m glad I don’t drink beer and I don’t have any footer links. I don’t care if link sales is a white, black or grey area. I’m not a SEO.
But, I’m not a YES man.
Each time you search for a keyword and find a website that has adsense all over the place and you have to scroll down to find some useless content, then you have to ask google for accountability. It also affects the search results! And google has an important role to play in this area. What drives those websites is adsense.
Google wants Microsoft products that include search features to allow the user to choose from different search providers, including google. So I also feel that I have the right to ask google to allow small website owners to choose from different revenue sources, including link selling. If google recognizes that a certain website has a certain trust, reflected in it’s pagerank, on what grounds can they allege that a website can’t accept payment to refer a website (meaning link love) to google. It was google that empowered that website with it’s pagerank. Is it fair to say that these websites are causing problems to search results? Well, eliminate spam sites from the search results. Then let’s see. I might change my mind then.
jussipussi Said,
June 30, 2007 @ 8:27 am
I think Google is worried about linkbuing because it is 97% cheaper to get visitors than adwords and clickfraud is not a problem.
Multi-Worded Adam Said,
June 30, 2007 @ 8:30 am
Harith, did that, it did nothing, this works better.
Igor, it’s a Wordpress blog like Matt’s, only I hacked it a bit more than he did (so that’s why I have a bit better understanding of the inner workings, although I still don’t know anywhere near as much about it as I would like to). I don’t know where you get 100k from, but I do plan on tweaking the layout somewhat next weekend. And it was done in Photoshop, and that’s as low as it gets.
Then educate your prospect, rather than leave the prospect misinformed and chasing rainbows. You know. They don’t. Tell them. That’s no excuse, that’s just laziness.
If you’re good enough, you’ll know. Just promoting a site by itself shouldn’t get it banned. It’s usually a stupid pet trick that causes that.
If you’re this upset and angry over something, dude, you’re in the wrong line of work.
Multi-Worded Adam Said,
June 30, 2007 @ 9:09 am
Igor, there’s one, not two, and I did the Save for Web thing (as I did with all the images on my site). That’s the best result.
Doug Heil Said,
June 30, 2007 @ 9:25 am
Randy Wrote:
“To those who say rankings are meaningless, how about the small guy SEO who is trying to land new clients who want to know what rankings the SEO has achieved for other sites and for which terms? Then, when you explain “rankings don’t mean squat”, the prospect thinks you’re a scam artist who doesn’t know how to get decent rankings. These clients want to know their rankings and most of them don’t want to sit there doing manual queries and then trying to find their site in the listings, nor do they want to pay me to do that for them. Using an automated rankings checker allows me to provide the information they want without charge.”
It’s called “teaching” and “education. MOST all clients or potential clients “think” they are hiring you to “get them ranks”. Think about that for a moment. Do you really believe a client hired you to “get ranks”? Really?
Personally; I actually believe site owner or whoever hires a SEO because they need “help” with their website. That’s a broad and general statement, but it’s a fact. That means that they need help with their website. oh; I already said that….. they really do though. Needing help is “not” some sort of rank at all. That client of your’s need to “make more sales”. Period. He just thinks he needs a rank, but what he fails to understand, and so do MOST SEO’s is that clients really want MORE SALES. Getting that is much, much more than a simple rank in google. A rank gets you “visitors”. That is it. What’s next?
Educate your client about what is important. I see truly real bad sites in the serps consistently. Do these bad sites actually make a sale? Almost none. But I do know the so-called SEO who helped that bad site with getting a “rank” sure did make a sale, right? The poor site has good ranks, but cannot make a sale. What’s wrong with that picture? Clients are “not” the experts in this industry. The SEO who is taking that clients money IS the expert. The client does not know that what he really wants is help with his website, and not just a simple rank.
Read that a couple of times please.
Multi-Worded Adam Said,
June 30, 2007 @ 10:47 am
Igor, thanks for the help, but no thanks. I’m not afraid to ask for help on something when I want it, but this isn’t one of those times (in fact, most times I don’t).
Like I said, I’m changing the layout slightly, and as a result certain elements (including that pic) will be changed as well. So don’t waste any more of your time on my account.
corey Said,
June 30, 2007 @ 10:50 am
“Cloaking refers to the practice of presenting different content or URLs to users and search engines. Serving up different results based on user agent may cause your site to be perceived as deceptive and removed from the Google index.”
I think it’s time to go beyond “may cause” and define when Google is OK with cloaking. I searched this website and you have not explained this on more than a case by case basis focusing on reg-req’d pages.
I’d like to echo what was said 3 years ago on SERoundtable..
“…we need the search engines to come up with a clear acceptable cloaking policy.”
…and this year on SearchEngineLand…
“I urged Google to alter its cloaking policy to something stressing that cloaking was bad only if not approved” … “Did what you do help or harm the search results, in Google’s opinion? If you were harming search results, Google’s always reserved the right to boot you out. And if you were technically violating guidelines but not in a harmful way, Google’s always reserved the right to turn a blind eye. Or rather, an approving eye, an eye knowing that it’s intent that matters, not some technicality.”
Jon Dale Said,
June 30, 2007 @ 11:50 am
Are UK Web sites (www.somenameorother.co.uk) that show up less in Google search results at Google.co.uk when using the “pages from the UK” option than they do when using “the web” option being penalized for something they’ve done, or is it a fault in Google’s systems?
Pat Johnson Said,
June 30, 2007 @ 11:50 am
Google should scan all the web sites with AdSense on them. I bet you will find out that 90% of these sites are nothing but search engine spam(mers) using every balck hat SEO technique under the sun.
Charles Said,
June 30, 2007 @ 12:18 pm
Hi Matt, I am glad to have found your blog.
I wish to ask if a webmaster is doing a marketing campaign for asking his readers to link him in return of a prize or money, how does it have to do with abusing Google quality guidance? Because in the Internet world, all a webmaster can ask for is only links to his website in his marketing campaign. And such marketing campaign shouldn’t bounded only by advertising links where the webmaster pays for. Webmaster might actually pay his readers for linking him too.
Can you let me know more about this? Thank you..
Harith Said,
June 30, 2007 @ 2:22 pm
Matt
When does GOOG intend to update the webmaster guidelinesin Danish ?
E Lawrence Welch Said,
June 30, 2007 @ 5:35 pm
Hi Matt:
Much more clarification is needed in these guidelines. Since it’s such an important subject - I’m sort of shocked that it’s so short. Reading through the posts - it seems the guidelines create more questions than clear “guidelines”. Don’t you agree that webmaster “guidelines” should clearly “guide” webmasters? The guys creating them should ask themselves the question “Do these guidelines ‘guide’ or create more questions and confusion?”
Thanks for the opportunity to give input.
Brian Ussery Said,
June 30, 2007 @ 6:28 pm
I’m sorry but this is not a forum for discussions, it’s a blog asking for user comments and not more “unofficial” answers or advice!
If your name is not Matt Cutts and you don’t work for Google, please refrain from attempting to answer questions or giving advice on topics that you are not qualified to address.
Reading your unofficial rhetoric, in response to the legitimate comments posted herein is a waist of my time and I’m sure confusing to others.
Thanks,
Brian
Dave (original) Said,
June 30, 2007 @ 6:48 pm
Not IMO. IF you buy a link, pay ONLY for traffic. If you pay for PR or any sort of SERP boost, you are wasting money and giving your money to link mongers.
Doug Heil Said,
June 30, 2007 @ 6:52 pm
Brian wrote:
“Reading your unofficial rhetoric, in response to the legitimate comments posted herein is a waist of my time and I’m sure confusing to others.”
Well Brian, then you don’t have to read anything you don’t want to read. If things are “confusing” to you, maybe you need to learn more about things? Our opinions in here are just that…. our opinions. You just stated your opinion, right? So what’s the prob? Matt Cutts states his “opinion” in here as well, and is “not” an official of Google while doing so. I’m sorry if you did not know that fact, so now you know.
What do you think would happen if only questions were asked in here without any answers? Matt’s blog would be pretty darn dead, right?
When members ask questions some of us can answer, why the heck not answer them? What you are suppose to do is figure out for yourself who to believe and who not to believe. If all you wish to do is wait on Matt to spoon feed you, then you have a long time to wait.
Dave (original) Said,
June 30, 2007 @ 7:00 pm
If you sell links base the price on the amount of relevant traffic you can provide and use nofollow. Using nofollow is in YOUR best interest so you don’t end up being associated with a ‘bad neighborhood’.
Harith Said,
July 1, 2007 @ 12:32 am
Igor
Does WGHF stands for:
Winter Garden Heritage Foundation ?
Harith Said,
July 1, 2007 @ 1:57 am
igor
Maybe you, keniki and SearcHEngineSWeB join forces and start your own forum/blogs/Insane Asylum/webmaster Psychiatric hospital etc..
Sorry couldn’t resist
Fruit Helmet Cat Said,
July 1, 2007 @ 3:34 am
Dear Matt Cutts,
From what I’m reading here on duplicate content, I wonder if a practice I am doing (and many of my peers) is counterproductive for us. Here’s my examples.
Since last summer, Ebay support has been actively suggesting to us store sellers to create guides, wiki and blog entries on their site for search exposure. They also encourage us to duplicate that content on our store pages (on the ebay site) and also go to blogger and copy/paste it there to increase even more traffic. They also now have these ebay to go widgets and ughh affiliate site packages we can implement to help us with our sales.
Can you clarify the impact of this duplicate content in regards to my little personal site vs the content I place on the monster ebay site? Have I somehow put a noose over my sites neck Matt?
More and more of us are growing up and moving from ebay into the real internet. If we don’t have a basic understanding of how to keep our “neighborhood” on the internet clean, we may be inadvertently contributing to a junky experience because of our current understanding of how to drive traffic. What do you think?
I can’t expect Google to adjust their guidelines to speak to just my situation, but maybe if you can reply that would be helpful to understand. I would appreciate it.
Fruity
William Said,
July 1, 2007 @ 5:00 am
Matt, how about some “do no evil” comments on this ?
http://google-health-ads.blogspot.com/2007/06/does-negative-press-make-you-sicko.html
Karl Said,
July 1, 2007 @ 5:10 am
Hi!
From whom should, a hypothetical inventor of a wheel get
(in a also hypothetical world, that uses the internet but for transport only sledges) natural links?
Natural I think is only
one more word with delicate content
Self needing borders
Frank D. Said
The Google guidelines are more important than the desires of the users.
Because of no one sees the site
if google do not like the owners *
On my Site are hypothetics of mine,
which may be today abnormal
but in 10 years they could be standards
(if some one could discuss them with me)
but if Google only like American style, easy amusement content,
it could be very complicated to search consequentials.
And on the people which laughing here:
Buy some old educational books
and say me after: Today’s knowledge is 4 ever!
Ian M Said,
For example, how to specify the contents of a page, in a method that is understood by Google, as either US-English or UK-English.
JohnMu Said,
I realize the initial review at Yahoo costs $299 and it is not a paid listing. However subsequent years also cost that much — without a review. Is the first year ok and the next year bad (as a paid listing)?
and where is the border between paid and allowance?
Greetings Karl
lots0 Said,
July 1, 2007 @ 6:38 am
Brian Ussery Said,
June 30, 2007 @ 6:28 pm
“I’m sorry but this is not a forum for discussions, it’s a blog asking for user comments and not more “unofficial” answers or advice!
If your name is not Matt Cutts and you don’t work for Google, please refrain from attempting to answer questions or giving advice on topics that you are not qualified to address.
Reading your unofficial rhetoric, in response to the legitimate comments posted herein is a waist of my time and I’m sure confusing to others.”
****