[James_Duval]

I think you're entirely correct.

I'd add that SEO is an easy target because it is (or has been until its very recent transformation into content marketing + nice clean usable sites) blatantly a zero-sum game, whereas most marketing is not inherently zero-sum.

There's uncertainty about what SEO is right now which makes the scammers even harder to spot. Many people using harmful practices (harmful to users as well as the company they're working for) genuinely believe that they are helping.

Black Hat SEO is hilarious. Oh, it works. It works very well, and definitely at least as long as it takes for the SEO to collect their check & a recommendation for the next job.

Interesting that this update comes in the wake of Penguin 2.0, incidentally - could Moz have fallen victim?

[ignostic]

Sorry, but not a chance in hell that Moz got hit by Penguin.

1) You can look at their links yourself, if you have any clue how Penguin works, and see that it's not even close to spammy enough to get hit by any Penguin algorithm.

2) Their rankings for key terms remained solid after Penguin. [1] The very definition of a Google penalty includes drops in rankings.

3) In this case the Penguin penalty would transfer across with the 301 redirects they've put in place.

[1] http://suite.searchmetrics.com/en/research?acc=12245&url...

[James_Duval]

I've got to admit, I didn't check whether Penguin 2.0 was substantially different from 1.0 before I made that idle speculation. I thought it might be looking at some different, but related, over-optimisation style stuff.