Are The Bad Guys Winning At Google?
Google Search Engine Related Question
Hello Jill,
First off, thank you for your informative and straightforward newsletter.
I see Google in a different light than you. [Last week you said] “As long as Google is still around and still focused on relevancy…”
Google is more concerned with inbound links than relevancy and they are ripe for misrepresentation if you have the money. If you search for “gas scooters” on Google you will see that the same company owns 9 of the top 10 spots. The same company pays for their text links at a very large, PageRank 6 site then interlinks all of the sites. If this sounds like sour grapes, it’s because it is. You can’t compete against money and brute force if you are small.
Thanks again,
Mike
Jill’s Response
When I first read Mike’s email, I basically thought of it as just another complaint from someone looking for a scapegoat because he couldn’t get high rankings himself. However, I received several similar emails from other subscribers over the past week. They were all concerned about their own Web sites’ ability to be ranked highly when there were companies dominating the search engine results pages (SERPs) through apparently deceptive means.
So, are the bad guys really winning at Google? Unfortunately, for many keyword phrases, it appears that they are.
I looked at the results for the gas scooter phrase Mike mentioned and yes indeed, I was aghast at the tricks being used on many of the top sites. I found every trick in the book, in fact. After doing a bit of digging, I even found some subtle clues that makes me think that I know which “SEO firm” is helping them.
One of the things I found were high-PageRanked sites, cross-linked with other high-PageRanked sites of the same genre, with numerous keyword phrases in the hyperlinks. Checking backlinks on these sites was also interesting because I found pages that were cloaking, pages that were stuffing image alt attribute tags and other things that I thought were pass’ in Google. Apparently they’re not at all pass’.
Surfing the sites with a Lynx browser was very revealing because JavaScript doesn’t work with Lynx, so I saw lots of stuff I wasn’t supposed to see.
The bigger question that I have to ask, however, is how does the person looking for gas scooters feel about these results at Google? Are they getting what they want? Are they happy with the results? Are they relevant to their query?
At first glance it appears that they are.
This may certainly be all that Google cares about. I don’t know — I’m not Google. Perhaps Google really does only care that the results are relevant and the means used to place them there are of no consequence. We know that their first priority is the user. As long as they’re happy, Google is happy. I guess they are happy…?
The thing is, I’ve always kind of thought that they did care. Maybe I’m wrong. Or maybe they’re just a little bit mixed up right now. Or maybe there’s just no way for Google to spot these techniques and we should all just use them. Okay, I wouldn’t actually go that far! Many of the techniques being used on these sites have been penalized in the past. I’ve seen that sort of cross-linking thing get sites PR0’d (penalized) many times. Perhaps Google’s PR0 penalty thingamabob is just broken?
Come to think of it, I remember that I wrote something similar way back in April of this year regarding the SERP for the phrase “email marketing consultant.” If it was just a bug, surely it would be fixed by now — over 6 months later. A quick check shows that nope, Google is still full of sites using deceptive optimization techniques.
So what’s up, Google? Tell me it isn’t so. Tell me that you still believe in good vs. evil and that the ends don’t justify the means. Cuz right now, you’re telling me that it does, and that makes me sad.
As to Mike and the others who have to compete in this space, all I can say is keep at it. You can keep making your sites better and better. You can continue to build up high-quality backlinks to your site. I took a quick look at Mike’s site, and Google is not showing any backlinks. He does have links, but they’re not yet considered high-enough quality to count for much. I didn’t notice any high-quality directory links pointing to Mike’s site, which might make a difference. Keep at it. Build up a great resource site all about your gas scooters. Invite others to write articles about their gas-scootering experiences, and whatever else you can think of.
We have no control over Google’s rankings. If they choose to let deceptive sites win, eventually the overall quality of Google will deteriorate. I’m sure they don’t want that to happen. They have a very tough job having to fight spammers every single day. The thing is, when they err on the side of penalizing too many sites, then everyone is up in arms because they got caught up in spam filters by mistake.
I’m confident that eventually Google will find a happy middle ground and someday be able to automatically tell the difference between sites that got there because they are truly the most relevant, and sites that deceptively appear to be the most relevant. Could be a long wait though.
If you believe that another site is abusing Google’s quality guidelines, feel free to report it to them here. Don’t expect any miracles, however.
Author Bio:
Jill Whalen of High Rankings is an internationally recognized search engine marketing consultant and editor of the free weekly email newsletter, the High Rankings Advisor.
She specializes in search engine optimization, SEO consultations and seminars. Jill’s handbook, “The Nitty-gritty of Writing for the Search Engines” teaches business owners how and where to place relevant keyword phrases on their Web sites so that they make sense to users and gain high rankings in the major search engines.
