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Spider
09-11-2009, 09:51 AM
Loved this article. Thought you may, too.

"... Now it is increasingly clear that Google is beginning to believe its destiny on earth is to police the Internet and tell us all what we should and should not do. It is not the first nor will it be the last corporation to have delusions of moral superiority..."

Black Hat, White Hat and Big G
SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources Blog Archive Black Hat, White Hat and Big G (http://www.sitepronews.com/2009/09/10/black-hat-white-hat-and-big-g/)

Harold Mansfield
09-11-2009, 10:40 AM
That was a pretty good article.
It's a catch 22. On the one hand Google controls a large portion of internet traffic and you need them, on the other, everyone is not treated equally on Google.

I have had this discussion with other before about link generating and if it is some kind of "hat".
Google takes into account sites linking to yours as an endorsement of sorts that others feel that you have relevant content, yet, self linking (articles, directories, comments, on page SEO, interlinking of sites, and so on) is completely acceptable...basically you "voting" for yourself. SEO is basically built on "self linking". So how then is Google's mission statement and algorithm even really a valid way of returning results if you can "trick" them into thinking that other sites are "voting" for you ?

Those that can generate a massive amount of their own related "votes" will beat out a site that doesn't. Which basically turns SEO (the basis of their SERP's) into a "Who has the most time, expertise or money" in a given category, not who has the best content.

It's not equal, and it can clearly be influenced by the actions of the webmaster.
Search Results are not a competition of the quality of a site, it's a competition of webmasters and site owners.

That part about adsense is dead on. I have never seen so many webmasters jump through hoops and walk on egg shells to please such a low paying program. One that is clearly a rip off and has many accountability issues. No other program (Ebay, Amazon, Clickbank) could get away with the things that Google Adsense pulls on it's publishers, yet people accept the fact that they cannot question to decision of the Wizard and continue to offer up huge chunks of their online real estate and gleefully accept what ever trinkets are thrown at them for compensation, as if some kind of offering to the Greek or Roman Gods.

It is the only program that you cannot track any metrics to come up with a decent estimate of earnings based on traffic, sales/clicks. Absolutely none. It is completely up to the program. Based on my own experience, and following the suggestions and guidelines for placement and optimization form Google themselves, adsense tracking is either a big fat lie, or my home made banners placed at the bottom of the page convert more click throughs than the king of online advertising. I don't think I know more about advertising than Google, so something is up.

I could go on for days.

vangogh
09-11-2009, 11:41 AM
Good article Frederick.

The whole ethics debate always seems silly to me in regards to search engines. What exactly is it that makes a search engine algorithm ethical? Nothing. Search engines like Google are businesses. They aren't somehow morally or ethically better. As the article points out they do their fair share of unethical things.

You should adhere to a search engine's guidelines because you want more search traffic from that engine and because you believe that following their guidelines will bring more traffic, something which isn't always true by the way. Ethics really don't have anything to do with it.

That's not to say it's ok to do unethical things just to get to the top of the search results. Getting your porn site to rank for 'clip art' is unethical as the article mentions. Getting your clip art site to rank for 'clip art' isn't. People have serious arguments about whether or not you should do something like buy links and talk about it as though if you buy them you're somehow committing a moral sin. It's laughable. There's nothing ethically wrong with paying someone to link to you. It is however against the Google guidelines and if Google determines you're buying links they will discount the links or perhaps slap a penalty on your site. That doesn't make the practice unethical though.

KristineS
09-11-2009, 04:31 PM
I once worked for an SEO firm that made a big deal about "White Hat" and "Black Hat" SEO. I wasn't with them long, but one thing that I noticed was exactly what this article pointed out, most of the techniques that were considered "Black Hat" weren't necessarily wrong, they mostly just disregarded Google's guidelines.

I think the author of the article is right, we need to make a distinction between what is ethical and what isn't ethical, and what simply goes against established guidelines and what doesn't.

Dan Furman
09-11-2009, 04:38 PM
Getting your porn site to rank for 'clip art' is unethical as the article mentions.

Not that I mind a porn site or two in my search results, of course :)

Business Attorney
09-11-2009, 04:59 PM
I think this article spells out the "ethics" argument pretty well, but it seems to lay the blame squarely on Google for calling failure to adhere to its search engine guidelines "unethical." It seems that it is mostly unaffiliated writers who are applying that tag.

I do think that there are some ethical issues besides the several mentioned in the article. For example, I agree that using someone's resources in a way that violates their rules is wrong. But resources are more than bandwidth and storage. My most valuable resource is my time. Someone who misleads me to click on a link that provides nothing but junk and recycled RSS feeds in the hopes that I will click on their AdSense ads to me is a scumbag. Tricking the search engine is not necessarily unethical but tricking the users of the search engine is more likely to be questionable from an ethics standpoint.

Harold Mansfield
09-11-2009, 07:28 PM
Not that I mind a porn site or two in my search results, of course :)

Yeah, but I don't even want to know what sub niche of porn "Clip Art" would be.:eek:
What ever it is, it's gotta hurt.

I can see searching for "clip art" and getting a porn site...you would know right away just looking at the returned links that there is a site that shouldn't be there, but can you imaging searching for porn and getting a site titled "Clip Art" ? The imagination just soars on what that could be.

billbenson
09-11-2009, 08:21 PM
Yeah, but I don't even want to know what sub niche of porn "Clip Art" would be.:eek:
What ever it is, it's gotta hurt.

I can see searching for "clip art" and getting a porn site...you would know right away just looking at the returned links that there is a site that shouldn't be there, but can you imaging searching for porn and getting a site titled "Clip Art" ? The imagination just soars on what that could be.

That happens in porn and elsewhere, from sites reselling useless traffic ie when you buy traffic, thats what you get. Other reasons as well. Porn is just like any other affiliate except 1000 times more competitive. They want niche traffic that converts. Unless they are selling adult clip art, they don't want that traffic.

Harold Mansfield
09-11-2009, 08:51 PM
That happens in porn and elsewhere, from sites reselling useless traffic ie when you buy traffic, thats what you get. Other reasons as well. Porn is just like any other affiliate except 1000 times more competitive. They want niche traffic that converts. Unless they are selling adult clip art, they don't want that traffic.

I think you missed the joke Bill :D Maybe I've been hanging out in the Adult Webmasters forum too much.

billbenson
09-11-2009, 09:08 PM
Got the joke :)

I wouldn't hang out in places like that.

Harold Mansfield
09-11-2009, 11:01 PM
Got the joke :)

I wouldn't hang out in places like that.

In all honesty, they have to strive much harder than "mainstream" in their SEO efforts, with less resources and options.
You can actually pick up on some good tips there, and get a look at things from a different perspective.

If you can imagine having to do SEO without the things that we take for granted like articles, link exchanges, blogging, syndication, social bookmarking, social networking, forums, adwords, etc and still formulating a decent game plan to get results....it's pretty inventive.....the downside is it's a bunch of tasteless jokes and "Would you hit it ?" threads.

billbenson
09-12-2009, 01:09 AM
Like I said, its a market that is far more populated and competitive than other areas. Zero tolerance for scams and misinformation and spam. Sure there are exceptions, but not many.

While some may not approve of the product, there is a lot of knowledge and skill in the industry to learn from. "If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere"

nealrm
09-12-2009, 11:37 AM
I agree with what the article is saying, however I think they are being a little harse on Google. In general it is not Google that applies the white hat / black hat labels but individuals in the computer groups.

I will add one point. If you are using Google analytics you did sign a terms and conditions contract stating you would follow Googles guildlines. In other words, you gave Google your word that you would not try to trick their search engine while using their product. In this case using "Black Hat" methods would be unethical.

vangogh
09-14-2009, 01:59 AM
I think this article spells out the "ethics" argument pretty well, but it seems to lay the blame squarely on Google for calling failure to adhere to its search engine guidelines "unethical." It seems that it is mostly unaffiliated writers who are applying that tag.

I don't know that Google ever comes out and says that their guidelines are web ethics, though I think they don't discourage the idea either. It is mostly people that add the ethical talk though do remember Google's do no evil motto which definitely calls ethics into the equation.


Someone who misleads me to click on a link that provides nothing but junk and recycled RSS feeds in the hopes that I will click on their AdSense ads to me is a scumbag. Tricking the search engine is not necessarily unethical but tricking the users of the search engine is more likely to be questionable from an ethics standpoint.

That's fair. Those sites are certainly not displaying the highest ethics. However shouldn't Google share in some of that responsibility. Google does know those sites since they run AdSense and they do little to discourage the practice of Made for AdSense sites. If anything those sites bring in a great deal of revenue to Google.


In general it is not Google that applies the white hat / black hat labels but individuals in the computer groups.

Actually they do since one of the most common definitions of black hat is working outside Google's (or any search engine's) guidelines. It's those guidelines that set up the hat colors.

Google doesn't come out and explicitly say something is or isn't ethical, but they do create the rules when it comes to their search engine as is their right. If tomorrow Google came out and declared the word Yahoo is now considered spam and any site using it could suffer a penalty you can be sure a lot of sites would stop mentioning Google and a lot of people would soon start calling the use of Yahoo's name unethical. Obviously a very contrived example, though the point is Google does have a very strong measure of influence over this debate.

billbenson
09-14-2009, 11:09 PM
However shouldn't Google share in some of that responsibility. Google does know those sites since they run AdSense and they do little to discourage the practice of Made for AdSense sites. If anything those sites bring in a great deal of revenue to Google.


Perhaps, but that implies that Made For Adsence sites are bad sites. I would think that the best MFA approach is to have a ton of quality unique content. News sites tend to use them heavily. While some old MFA sites may be garbage and still rank, I would think it needs to be a very good new site that has quality content and a ton of traffic to do well. I don't think black hat under any definition would work there today for the long term .

vangogh
09-15-2009, 10:56 AM
I was only referring to the sites that were obviously spam. I don't have any problem with sites using AdSense and neither should Google. My post was a reply to David's statement about a site


that provides nothing but junk and recycled RSS feeds in the hopes that I will click on their AdSense ads

That's not the kind of site adding anything new or of quality. We're talking about sites that contribute nothing useful. Most are automated and grab content from other sites to create a thin content site built around the AdSense ads.

Business Attorney
09-15-2009, 03:08 PM
I agree with vangogh. I wasn't implying that any site that relies on AdSense as its revenue source is bad. But there are plenty of MFA sites that seem to simply try to lure users to the site without any realistic chance that the users will actually find anything on the site that is useful. Some of them don't even bother to provide worthless scraped content or RSS feeds - they simply reprint incoherent babble with keywords plucked from a variety of sources. The people who create those types of sites are unethical, in my opinion.

vangogh
09-15-2009, 04:30 PM
I agree. Those are generally the same people who steal my content within minutes of publishing a new post. AdSense by itself is perfectly fine. When it works well it can actually lead people where they want to go.

It does beg the question though. Google will tell us that those spammy sites are spam. Those sites run AdSense most of the time. It shouldn't be too hard for them to figure out which sites are the spam ones and simply cancel their AdSense account. Of course Google does profit when those spamsense sites profit...