Comments on: Traffic Power CEO in jail

By: Courtney

Courtney — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 22:42:55 +0000

Thanks for both of the posts matt! It is a tough world out here, and everyday I feel it is a constant evil vs. good struggle. When the wrong do really wrong, they should be penalized(if they are found guilty of course)

But, come on- 99.99% of the country is a “little guy” trying their best to make it in a really tough world. Some get mad, some get even… other just try to do the right thing- possibly using a few shortcuts here and there…

By: Brian Mathers

Brian Mathers — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 21:39:36 +0000

What amazes me about the internet is there are posts such as this one that is a reminder of what the SEO Industry is trying to stand for. Here we are in 2011 and some corners of the industry will still try and cut corners or do things that are not ethical to try and beat Google. I notice the guidelines offered by Google are mentioned again within this page. If more people would just adhere to those rules and work harder at their websites, it could be very rewarding for website owners. The problem is nobody wants to read the rule books or is prepared to learn how to properly drive their website and not bend the rules.

By: Matt Gerchow

Matt Gerchow — Fri, 27 May 2011 11:59:29 +0000

I agree. I met a business person not too long ago, who told me he was doing black hat. He said, “I’m trying to make money”. While the particular method he mentioned was not earth shattering, it’s the principal of the method that makes it wrong.
Manipulating cookies, search engines and customer purchases violates the invisible fabric that holds us together.
We recently went through an extensive investigation by Google on all of our traffic building techniques. I’m happy to say we now have the approval of Google for all of our white hat processes. The moral of the story is, stay within the terms of service and outwork your competition.

By: Ewan Kennedy

Ewan Kennedy — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 20:39:29 +0000

A very old post maybe but still relevant and useful to be able to refer to when debating with people that advocate blatant disregard for the rules.

By: Evan

Evan — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 12:06:48 +0000

Hello Matt,

I am glad for people like us who work on Google ranking but focus mainly on site content. I hope honesty and integrity can continue to be upheld.

Best wishes,

Evan

By: kev

kev — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 21:17:06 +0000

this is the stuff that makes me stay straight on SEO, no matter how high the tempation may be to cheat. Although, I will say this….Matt Marlon is out of jail and back in vegas.

By: Mark Rogers

Mark Rogers — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 02:44:15 +0000

What a site! I love the opening comment, it voices my frustrations almost verbatim. In America today, the mom and pop stores are on the way out because of better financed larger corporations. Google supports the death of small business and the supremacy of mega-conglomerates with their policies – including a sites age, who links to you, how much money you spend on traffic, etc affecting your PR. I owned a company that spent $10,000 p/month on PPC and I had page 1 results everywhere in my first year. Now that I don’t have that kind of money, my pages are scattered few and far between. Google should focus on inviting small business into an open playing field. – Internet Marketing Contingency Consultant

By: Itsme

Itsme — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 12:30:22 +0000

Matt,

I have a suggestion for a feature that would be useful for your blog. I just typed in a very lengthy post, taking perhaps 45 minutes to do it. Apparently I entered the spam protection number wrong and was told to return here and try again. Of course I knew that everything I typed would be lost, and it was.

The other day I went to post on someone’s blog, and it had a feature that in addition to showing you the error, also showed you what you had typed so that you could copy it and and then paste it back in when you went back.

I don’t know what type of blogging software they use, or you use, but if such a feature is available, I’m sure that I’m not the only person who would appreciate it.

I don’t have the time right now to retype my original post, but I’ll try to return here in the next few days and type it in again.

By: NextIdeas

NextIdeas — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 18:03:32 +0000

Hi Matt and everybody else. Just a note to share my opinion about this post and people in general, we all have pretty much the same mission in life we just end up doing it differently. Being unethical produces different results than being ethical, it’s as simple as that. Lets not forget that we all make mistakes and it’s much easier to be right about how great we are and how bad everybody else is. The moment we forget that, we become righteous about ourselves, what we’re doing and forget to look at ourselves. At the end we all produce the results we worked towards. Black hat / white hat. Purple hat. Everybody speaks in absolutes while there is no such a thing. I’ve been SEM / SEO ‘ing since 1997 and I’ve always only used ethical, so called white/hat. Some of the work I’ve done for apparently no reason where technically should not be ranked are ranked and some of them where they should be ranked are not. What’s my point? Take things as they are, do your best and move on

By: security-dude

security-dude — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 16:38:59 +0000

I guess the concept of Google “warning” sites when they are perceived as spamming (e.g. duplicate content) is a nice one. Maybe some kind of spam ‘score’ when you log into Google Webmaster Tools, with some automated warnings? That way Google could keep it all automated, and help clean up the web! Or is that too much like the tail wagging the dog…