[dawnerd]

They'd most certainly whitelist the google ips.

[fooey]

that's against TOS for Google SERPs

Showing different results to google than you do to users is called cloaking and it's not allowed

[dawnerd]

Definitely, but someone at LinkedIn could get in touch with their google contact and make it all work and follow the rules.

https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/40543?hl=en

Apparently, we had something similar at Demand Media before the panda update.

[WikipediasBad]

How does one build such google contacts if you are a seed stage startup? I understand it wouldn't be the same league as LinkedIn Reid Hoffman level contacts, but even some kind of contact at Google search?

[dawnerd]

I wish I knew. Easiest way is to make a ton of money off google ads like we did. Even then it was hard to actually talk to someone - especially at YouTube. And they had an office a few floors up...