Michael had asked me to post here to respond to the criticism. Sadly, I haven't read all 13 pages of the thread, but I left this post at Michael's blog, which should hopefully address some of the issues.
Quote:
Michael,
As you’ve asked me to over email, I’ll try to address your concerns here on your blog.
The series of events as you’ve painted them make it look like I promoted our directory list in premium content (which I did), then was negligent about responding to criticism on several forums and blogs (again, I admit to it - I’m overwhelmed with stuff at work and planning a wedding, was on vacation all last week and have tons of projects and a few clients as well with demands on my time).
Your other concern is that I glossed over the critiques of my methodologies - I’d say again that I still believe that the rankings I pointed out to you over email and those I discussed in the V7N thread and the SEOmoz blog are indications that Google has some issue with Aviva. You’re certainly free to disagree, and you’ve brought up many searches where they perform adequately.
I think the best way to determine whether Aviva passes value is to buy some links there, point them to some test sites in relatively non-competitive fields and see if the links can help to raise the rankings. If they can, then my arguments are baseless and your points are validated. Frankly, I’m surprised you didn’t go this route to help prove me wrong - no evidence would be more damning.
In any case, I’ve done so tonight - bought a couple links to different pages and we’ll see what the results look like.
Hopefully I’ve addressed your concerns - let me know if there are other pieces you’d like to see me respond to.
|
Sorry that I've been so busy. Please feel free to follow up and I'll try to revisit this thread tomorrow.