Ok, I was going to let this just pass by, but I've had a change of heart and thought that I would make some comments about a blog post made by Matt Cutts last month, and it's implications for the web...
Some of you may read Matt Cutts very interesting Google blog (
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/). Matt is "on the inside" at Google.
He had a pop at my directory, and some promotion that I was doing in terms of some "paid for" inbound links. (
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/text-link-follow-up/)
I bought these links from Jeremy Zawodny (
http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/) who also writes a very good blog.
Matts premise was that Jeremy was devaluing his blog by selling links, and in particular he mentioned the link that I had bought. This was because I have a site listed in my directory that is about "Lesbian Sex Positions" and so it is theoretically possible to get from Jeremy's blog to the Sex Positions site in just two clicks via my site (This is actually incorrect but I'll ignore this initial indiscretion).
Now, all links have value, whether we like it or not, all links now have value of some degree or another, why is this? Well, because Google (in particular) has given them value in the way that it's algorithm is structured. Google gave links value, and so the fundamental criticism (from Google) that there is now a trade in links is somewhat strange in the first place. I can see their point; paid links are “unnatural”, or “unorganic” but at the end of the day if you give something value then people will trade in it, surely you have to accept rather than try to fight that!? And even then people will only pay for and promote sites that make a profit, popular sites will make money and hence will be further promoted, so there is still an organic nature about them, even if not in quite the same way and non-paid links.
Secondly, I notice that Matt decides not to link to my directory even though it forms part of the discussion that he is making. The internet is about links; no? HTML was designed so that information could be quickly and easily referenced by links, if he wants to discuss my directory then surely a link would be sensible so that people can easily take a look and decide for themselves? Why was this I wonder? I suspect that it's because Matt knows that links have value and he doesn't want to pass any to me. So he is not even using the internet as it was intended! He refuses to make a sensible link because of the "value" that Google has given it. Quite frankly I find this ridiculous.
Thirdly, there is absolutely nothing wrong with a website about sex positions (lesbian or otherwise), some people may not like it, but others are interested in that type of information and wish to find it. It's not pornographic or offensive, why should Matt criticize this site (or indeed my choice to link to it)?
Finally of course if I really wanted porn or any other manner of dubious material I would simply search Google for it in just one click! Of course I would then be searching Google's index of information "scraped" from the internet with no regard for copyright what-so-ever!
I think that Matt's post succinctly demonstrates some of the things that are currently wrong with Google. This oxymoronic war against paid links while still prompting links as the key indicator of a websites value, the effect of which discourages links where they maybe useful, and penalizes website owners for trying to legitimately promote their offering.
Anyway, the outcome or all this is that Jeremy had dropped his "sponsors" section and lost an additional income stream.
Whilst I still have plenty of respect for Google and what they have achieved (I still use it as my search engine of choice) I think that they need to tone down their criticism of what they perceive as "bad practice", and I can only think that strong opposition to their dominance is still desperately needed for the good of the internet as a whole.
LOL
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