On Google and SEO Reputations
Google has expanded its share of the UK market even further, managing to attract an incredible 87 per cent of visits in May alone, new research shows.
Analysis published by Hitwise has shown that, while Google properties accounted for a substantial 68 per cent of all US searches last month, the search behemoth was responsible for almost nine in ten UK queries.
This represents an increase of 12 per cent on last year’s healthy figures. Google really is the search engine of choice for Brits – and here in the UK, we make an astounding number of searches. In April alone, UK consumers made more than 4.1 billion searches, according to comScore research.
Now, to me and many others, this suggests that marketers need to focus their efforts on ethical search engine optimisation, as Google is a pretty difficult search engine to fool.
This was probably meant to be the gist of a recent Guardian technology blog post made by Jack Schofield. While chatting about the Hitwise figures, he cautioned firms not to bite the hand that feeds them their traffic but to play by Google’s rules and avoid being penalised.
However, the blogger then added: “That’s not going to stop some people trying to game the system with linkfarms, splogs and other SEO (search engine optimization (sic)) scams.”
Now, I don’t need to tell Mister Schofield that his damning SEO comments rather miss the point and that Google itself describes the ethical arm of the industry as providing useful services – comments left on his blog do that.
However, it does sometimes concern me that black hatters have damaged our reputation so badly that even technology bloggers for national newspapers think SEO means aggressively forcing marketing copy on unwilling consumers by fooling search engines.
You are, of course, right
If I had any power/influence, the Guardian would spend more on SEO for starters.
The problem is that when SEO is done really well, it’s invisible to users. We only see the bad stuff, so it’s easy to think it’s *all* bad stuff….
Comment by Jack Schofield — June 12, 2008 @ 10:18 am
“Aggressively forcing marketing copy on unwilling consumers by fooling search engines.”
..that’s exactly what I do half of the time ; )
“When SEO is done really well, it’s invisible to users.”
That’s half true - and half bullshit.
Schofield paints a quick black & white picture. He’s a typical middle class moaner that doesn’t know anything about SEO anyway.
There’s clever whitehat SEO, stupid whitehat SEO, clever grayhat SEO, stupid grayhat SEO, clever blackhat SEO and stupid blackhat SEO.
..and I’m already bored by this “new” discussion.
The SEO industry is damaging it’s reputation itself by acting like popstars: backstabbing, gossiping, blablabla.. the whole day long. Everybody in the industry seems to have a serious attention-deficit.
http://www.gonzo-seo.com/what-the-seo-world-needs-is-a-little-less-talk-and-a-lot-more-action/
..I couldn’t agree more.
Comment by gawsapus — June 13, 2008 @ 8:05 am
Interestingly, I wrote a post on almost exactly the same topic and received a detailed response from Bobbie Johnson (another of The Guardian’s tech journalists) explaining that they didn’t have anything against SEO as such.
I think it’s great that they’re engaging in the discussion but agree that they could paint a slightly more nuanced picture in the posts in question.
Comment by Ciaran — June 13, 2008 @ 10:14 am
The SEO industry is damaging it’s reputation itself by acting like popstars: backstabbing, gossiping, blablabla.. the whole day long
I think that is an inevitable result of a community which blogs a lot for professional reasons. I don’t think that many outsiders are picking up on it.
Comment by Felicity — June 13, 2008 @ 11:26 am