[cosmie]

  > At the same time google should be extra careful that it does now allow good websites to be penalized by activities from even shadier SEO types that turn around and use these facilities against their competitors (rather than to avoid being penalized by it themselves).

That was the point being made - people are being targeted by their competitors, using the negative penalty from link farms to devalue competitor's sites. And Google can't tell the difference. You're right in that it's SEOs doing what they've always done, it just now has a penalty attached which gives unscrupulous ones a new service to offer and good SEO's a link-removal service.

  > The disavow tool is used as a threat against webmasters to take manual action to remove the spam that was placed in an automated way by the perps in the past, that's a really bad balance there.

While it may be a manual action on Google's part, it's quickly becoming automated[1].

[1] http://www.removeem.com/

[jacquesm]

Yes, I know that is the point being made. But that's a very small bit of fall-out from a huge improvement.

OP is right in fact but this is a rarity, overall google search results improved and the fact that the whole SEO world is in panic about this (proof in my inbox) is fantastic news. That it can be used for bad purposes is obvious, those that were gaming before will game this just as much. But rather than being in denial about negative SEO google should simply come clean about the numbers, any kind of classification system has false positives, a categoric denial is simply something you should not believe.

And in spite of that Google should stay the course, they're not a court and nobody has an innate right to an x% of search traffic. If that were the case we could replace google with a link lottery.

[cosmie]

Oh definitely! I like the fact that my top results aren't always dominated by eHow, Wikipedia, WikiAnswers, and Yahoo Answers now.

It's the denial about false positives that is frustrating. If you're going to build in logic to penalize link farming, then one would hope you'd make an attempt at identifying malicious link schemes. By categorically denying the possibility even exists, it leaves most people assuming such an attempt hasn't been made.

[adriand]

Why can't Google just apply a different algorithm to link farms that have appeared recently? Presumably anything relatively recent is either someone who doesn't know about the changes to the algorithm that penalize link farms, or is engaging in negative SEO.

[lifeisstillgood]

That's so obvious now you mention it :-) Any spammy link created now should simply be discarded, it either is an attack or it is a fool. Either way ignore

[rfergie]

That means that, as a site owner, I would be free to engage in spam SEO.

If it works, then I get rankings and traffic.

If it doesn't then there is no harm to me and I can go try some new tactic

[lifeisstillgood]

I don't think so...

1. I already have spam links pointing to my site. It hurts me so I clean up the spam and make the world a little better.

2. I add spam links to my competitor who previous had no spammy links. Google notices the dates on the links and does not alter the PageRank of my competitor. The world is not made a little bit worse. I stop doing it.

So as long as there is some clear cut of date for spammy links (and hopefully some definition) then it seems workable. Any black hat SEO will know no to bother adding post-Penguin/panda links - for good or ill.

[cosmie]

Exactly! Which is the exact scenario the recent update attempted to address: getting rid of the no harm aspect.

[jacquesm]

Yes, exactly. With the cut-off date being the panda roll-out.

[bjterry]

It's not a question of a false positive rate in this case, because the current false positive rate relies on the current baseline level of malicious actors. If they admit that there are false positives, then that will cause more malicious actions, which will increase the false positive rate. It's actually not clear right now whether google even tries to tell the difference between someone using spammy link building for themselves vs. someone using spammy link-building on a competitor. I don't even know where you'd begin on trying to figure out the difference, since you would never have any data to calibrate to.

[jacquesm]

But of course there are false positives. It's a classifier, no classifier that is automated on something as fluid as relevancy for a particular user will be 100% spot on all the time.

Precision and recall can't be 100% accurate given a large enough set of inputs. That would be magic. You can try to do better, of course. But it will never be perfect and you'll never make everybody happy. False positives are a given. Matt was wrong when he said that, he pretty much had to be wrong due to the nature of the problem.

That he stuck to his guns is imo a mistake, that google can be manipulated into dropping sites from their rankings at the behest of others is a serious problem. Such unscrupulous behaviour should be punished, but then you get yet another layer of complexity in the arms race.

Basically you can read this whole saga as Google having to come to terms with the fact that even though they were a cut above altavista they too will have problems that no algorithm will solve.

Admitting that is probably above Matt's paygrade.

[Isofarro]

"That he stuck to his guns is imo a mistake, that google can be manipulated into dropping sites from their rankings at the behest of others is a serious problem."

There are two main ways of dealing with issues:

* Prevent them from happening

* Mitigate the risk so the fallout is minimised if it does happen

Because there are flaws in the first way doesn't mean the second hasn't been explored or carried out.

We mitigate risk all the time. Seat-belts, looking both ways before crossing the street, insurance. The entire banking system.

So you get hit with a manual penalty for spammy links. Deal with it. Document it in great detail, publish it, share it with Google. Then SEOers will have both the data they need and a Google rep to talk to. Plus, if it is as terrifying as SEOers keep telling us it is, the news headline boost alone will make up for the link profile damage.

I think I know why SEOers are in an uproar about this: they'll have to collaborate with Google on a new level of openness. Effectively, recipients of negative SEO attacks, who then notify Google, will also have a nice shiny Google light shone on their SEO tactics leading up to the negative SEO attack. And I guess almost all SEOers have done something they are not entirely proud of, or wish to be forthcoming about. It's the fear of being seen as something other than completely white-hat.

The ways to avoid reaching that uncomfortable point is:

* Hope their fellow SEOers don't hit them first with a negative SEO attack

* Hope Google reverses this decision, so they don't have to venture down that road.

It's a bit like that Simsons sketch where the whole family are in a shock therapy session:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eP4INdt_-fk

The SEO fear is one of their fellow SEOers pressing the button.

Hopefully it will make them more forthcoming in cleaning up their industry. A bit of public naming and shaming would be nice.