Danny Sullivan Highlights Google's 2 Tier Justice System

Danny highlighted how many aggregators of aggregators and content cesspools are bogusly clogging up Google's search results with sites that would be viewed as spam if the owner was not socially well connected:

You kind of feel sorry for Joe Schmoe. Build a name by once having worked for Apple or by having written a few marketing books, and you seem to get much better treatment than Joe would get if he pulled the same SEO play stunts.

Alltop, Mahalo, Squidoo -- none of them dominate Google. But seriously, Squidoo has a PR8 home page? Alltop has a PR7? Search Engine Land, which actually produces original content, sits with a PR6 -- but these guys that simply compile content from others get a big fat PR kiss on the lips?

Hey, I don't fret about PR scores. I know how meaningless they can be. But Joe Schmoe who tried to launch one of these types of sites wouldn't get any PR at all. Google would have shut them down long ago. Lesson here? To be a really successful SEO, get successful at something else, then jump into your SEO play.

Danny Sullivan is probably the only neutral reporter in the search space with a decade + of experience AND a background in traditional journalism. He is usually quite neutral, so for him to say that, you know Google is screwing up pretty bad.

If you are good at public relations you can have all the PageRank you want. Can't afford a proper public relations campaign? Have no brand equity other than being branded as an SEO? You are the scum that makes the internet a cesspool. Better luck next life!

If you can't be found you don't exist. As Google's "spam team" grows more subjective with the definition of spam (hey I know him it's not spam, never heard of him it's spam, etc.) the web loses out on its diversity. Meanwhile how about you view some great fraudulent government grant ads through AdWords.

Google's public relations team publicly lied about cleaning those fraudulent ads up.

"Our AdWords Content Policy does not permit ads for sites that make false claims, and we investigate and remove any ads that violate our policies," said Google in a statement e-mailed to ClickZ News. "We have discussed these issues with the Federal Trade Commission and reaffirmed our commitment to protecting users from scam ads."

The above LIE was quoted from an article published 3 weeks ago, but Google is still making over $10,000 a day carpet-bombing searchers with that reverse billing fraud (and probably $10,000's more on the content network).

Spam is only spam *if* the spammer is not paying Google and they are too small to fight back against the often arbitrary and injust decisions of the irrational Google engineers that "fight spam" while turning a blind eye to grant scam ads.

Pretty worthless hypocrisy, Google. Who is trying to turn the web into a cesspool full of fraudulent ads and corporate misinformation? This company:

Published: March 25, 2009 by Aaron Wall in google

Comments

yvonh
March 25, 2009 - 2:54pm

This should happen, when a company has a monoply it crosses the red line and you can't do anything against, that's why competition is good. Time to turn on alternate search engine? not yet because this matter is known to tech savvy people not the masses until it reaches the newspaper headlines.

hugoguzman
March 25, 2009 - 3:36pm

I definitely think that there's a certain level of two-tier justice (it's just human/corporate nature).

That said, the fact that an extremely anti-Google post like this can be written, and that it will likely suffer absolutely no penalty and will grab it's fair share of Google referral traffic speaks to the other side of Google.

A search engine that let's you grab market share by slamming it as a brand isn't all bad.

March 25, 2009 - 4:11pm

If Google did trash this site right after I wrote this post that would make them look super evil. Not sure how them not doing it says anything good about them. To me that is more of a non-statement.

brianratzker
March 25, 2009 - 7:31pm

I agree with Aaron, they couldn't trash this site without ramifications to their integrity. On the other hand, the practices that Danny Sullivan is writing about is difficult to understand by most, let alone difficult to detect.

geobak
March 26, 2009 - 12:51am

Just sphunn this excellent post on google's hypocrisy...

swipethemagnets
March 26, 2009 - 7:12pm

I rarely, if ever, comment on any of Aaron's posts, but this is spot on.

ach444
March 26, 2009 - 7:30pm

Interesting Point, I bet you could chart out the number of Google Adwords Ads that are in violation of Adwords TOS, and the line would be the exact opposite of Google's Stock price.

As Google's puts more pressure on ad-revenue, their editors get less and less picky about what Ads get through, here are some examples:

ALMOST ALL THE FOLLOWING ADS ARE AGAINST ADWORDS TOS (http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/static.py?page=guidelines.cs&topic...)

http://www.google.com/search?q=fake+fendi+bags
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=fake+gucci+handbags
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=auto+dialers
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=glass+bongs
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Vegas+Escorts
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=license+plate+covers
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=brass+knuckles
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=butterfly+knives

incrediblehelp
April 1, 2009 - 4:43am

Amen Aaron!

bookworm.seo
April 3, 2009 - 1:49am

I'd put the figure the networks make at 8 figures, each, easy. The Florida AG got $1M each out of Azoogle and some other scam-promoting networks for their "free" mobile content scams. And that was only for Florida's residents! Honestly, I would just LOVE to be a class action plaintiff's attorney on something like this, because there's 0 competition in the field right now, and the money to be made suing these jerks is HUGE! Plus you're benefitting consumers by getting them some of their money back and deterring future such abuses.

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