GPWA Times - Issue 21 - May 2012

By Paul Reilly I s Google at it again? We know they lie to help create the illusion of algorithmic perfection. This was confirmed when Eric Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman and former CEO, admitted, under oath to the U.S. Department of Justice, the use of whitelists and blacklists, to help manually correct the SERPs using human intervention. Until this point Google had categorically denied such activity. Manual adjustment – or the “Hand Job,” as it became known in the SEO industry – had long been suspected of being used as a method to help correct the problems where the algorithms failed. What I am about to share is purely based on my own set of beliefs, which over time I have learned to trust, regardless of conflicting opinions of other SEOs. Notice of detected unnatural links An SEO friend of mine sent me his Google Webmaster Tools login as he’d been notified of his dodgy link profile. I was fortunate enough to somehow sidestep this notice; I guess I’m naturally lucky with this stuff as my clients were all in the clear. Some very skilled link builders have been served this notice and I wanted to know what was behind it all. The first question is always . . . What is the motive? Then the next question is . . . Algorithm or human? Before speculating on either of these two questions, I wondered to myself, why haven’t I been served notice and why did a well-deployed paid link on a meager £2K per month budget get flagged when my £100,000+ per month link-buying clients get away without detection? Surely half a million pounds’ worth of links would trigger this link- detection filter and result in notice being served. Back to the motive . . . Google needs to identify sites which sell links to prevent link buying, which is effectively vote rigging in an otherwise democratic system. Manual or algorithmic . . . Mass penalizing sites based on algorithms is too high risk (in my opinion) when identifying link networks because link networks (when built correctly) should be entirely undetectable. Consider . . . 1. How quality link networks should be undetectable to algorithms, and 2. What happens when SEOs confess to buying links when making a reconsideration request. We know that Google doesn’t just rely on algorithms and we also know that Google representatives suggest sending screen shots of link removal requests “Google needs to identify sites which sell links to prevent link buying, which is effectively vote rigging in an otherwise democratic system.” LIES LIES LIES: Notice of detected unnatural links 38 LIES LIES LIES: Notice of detected unnatural links