[antjanus]

I'd like to look at it in another way. I've a small blog, one that I love running, it makes barely any money, but for a long time ranked for some pretty good keywords.

Anyways, a few of my articles blew up on hackernews, reddit, even on twitter (with smashing magazine tweeting it out), as a result, everyone and their grandma linked back to my articles when they discussed the topic it targeted.

What happened then? I looked at my link profile and I've a few thousand "dangerous looking" backlinks. All from people that had low-ranking blogs or 0 ranking blogs, or that used Tumblr's share feature (which blogged a link and an excerpt) to "bookmark" my site. And some from people that FULLY reblogged my site without permission. Meaning that they took the entire article. They weren't shady either, they had a big banner that said: "I repost articles for my own use to read in case the site goes down" or something to that effect with, obviously, a link back to my site as a source.

What happened? Penguin, Panda, and all the other animals killed most of these sites. Even considered some of them spam.

Now, I have a "dirty" link profile through no fault of my own, using no "shady" tactics.

This just pisses me off to no ends. I never "link built" anything, the links just happened naturally. Yet, I get penalized for it. It's fucking shitty. And I'm sure I'm not the only one.

[leephillips]

Imagine how much worse you'd feel if you found out that someone who doesn't like you did this to you deliberately.

Google makes this too easy. Through ill-considered changes to their algorithms they've provided a new weapon for the unscrupulous.

I've noticed a similar thing with my own personal site. For years it was on Google's front page for a bunch of things (niche topics that wouldn't translate into money). So was my name, which really surprised me. Lately, as it's gotten more links to it from higher profile sources, including some national magazine sites, it's rapidly fallen back in Google's listings.

[lifeisstillgood]

I don't fully understand this. How did you look at your link profile? Is this a blessed google thing ? And how do you know your drop in rankings is down to this back link issue - what if other people have written better stuff (apologies !)

[antjanus]

There are several tools out there which scan your backlink profile and give you a report on your backlinks. They usually scan the sites and give you a "danger" rating for those sites. I can't remember the name of the tool I used but I had nearly 20K links in the "danger" rating. Half of them were super-spammy sites that simply repost what you already posted, the other half was a mix of bloggers (good and bad).

Usually you can tell that it's because of that issue when a major penguin update goes out, and your rank suddenly drops. To confirm it, you'd disavow the bad links (so, the link farms that link back to you, the reposters, reblogers, spammy affiliate sites etc.) and see how it affects your ranking and exposure.

It worked VERY well for me once everything was said and done.

[Isofarro]

"I never "link built" anything, the links just happened naturally"

Great. that's what's supposed to happen, links accumulate naturally. (I'm deliberately ignoring the inconsistencies in your story, BTW ;-)

"Yet, I get penalized for it. It's fucking shitty"

How are you being penalised? Did you get a warning of bad links in your Google Webmaster dashboard? If not, how do you know?

Links accumulate, and some disappear over time. That's natural on the web. If Google taking out a bunch of low quality sites affects your own site, that only means the value of your site is significantly positively affected by these sites, so your site was over-ranked. Now it's placed closer to where it should be.

Being linked to by big traffic sources also brings attention from less known sources - that's quite normal.

[jacquesm]

Why does it matter so much? That's a blog, and a non-commercial one at that. Why do you care so much what your 'link profile' is?

If someone copies your content, go after them, sue them if you have to and out them. Make sure that they realize that if they copy your content that it will hurt.

I have absolutely no idea what if any backlinks I have to my blog, nor could I care less about it. People will read it, or maybe they won't, like yours it id non-commercial, a way for me to practice my writing and to sometimes tell stories and share those with others. It does not make me money and it costs me time. What google makes of it is not my problem.

I would not think of paying someone to increase the visibility and it took many years to get to any kind of exposure at all.

[vectorpush]

Why does it matter so much? That's a blog, and a non-commercial one at that. Why do you care so much what your 'link profile' is?

Well, besides the fact that it's his prerogative to care about his blog's search ranking, I think the implications are pretty obvious; he's suggesting that if it could happen to him, it could happen to anyone, including someone who does have a commercial interest.

[antjanus]

That's one thing another thing is that just because my blog is non-commercial doesn't mean it shouldn't rank. I monetized it recently and would like to continue making some cash off it (to cover costs and as an incentive and excuse to continue doing this). On top of that, I like to write, the more people read my shit, the more I'm excited to write.

What sucks about this entire dilemma is that we're all looking at "lost revenue", no one is looking at "quality content going down the drain". Good search results disappear and are replaced by someone who has a ton of cash backing them whose content is meant to convert and monetize, make cash off the user and nothing else.

At least in my case, I want people to primarily read my stuff.

And it seems ridiculous to me that someone would say, "Who cares if people read your blog, it's not as if you're making any money off it!"

Can you imagine some of the most popular devs that have non-monetized blogs all of a sudden disappearing from google search with their insights and answers? Among others, there's Jeff Atwood and Scott Hanselman both of whom rank well but have non-monetized sites.

[jacquesm]

Forgive me for being stupid, but what does google have to do with all this? It's the last source of traffic that I would think of when it comes to blogging, I could be completely wrong about this but I can't imagine that's the way to to it.

What would do it is: interesting articles, a userbase that likes what you write and passes it to their friends, a reputation for quality and useful articles, people linking to you because they found your content useful, engaging you audience and so on.

In contrast with that (which takes a long time to build up, that I will readily admit) google traffic seems so fickle.

[spankalee]

As a Google _user_ I care a lot about this issue. A lot of the technical topics and questions I search for are answered best by blog posts from people who've solved the same issue, or are an authority. I don't want them thrown out with the spam, and I don't want all such content to have to be hosted on sites like Stack Overflow to be findable.

[jacquesm]

Yes, now we are in agreement. For the users of google it matters, but those are not the people that are currently screaming blue murder, it is the webmasters who had a ton of traffic from google before and that lost it (fairly or unfairly is a case-by-case thing).

If users no longer find relevant content then that is a real problem but I think that in this particular respect your goals and google's goals are very much in alignment. In other words, if they could do better they would.

[jshen]

This is a rather arrogant comment. Why assume that everyone fits the same niche as you? I once ran a site/blog where I blogged about a particular disease that I have and all of the research I did as I tried to understand it. This means that my content was typically found by people who have just come down with this disease and turn to google to search for information. I did not have a relationship with these readers prior to them getting this disease.

[jacquesm]

That's an interesting use case where search traffic and blog posts are an essential complement. Thank you for pointing that out.

[moistgorilla]

When I search for an article on some new tech or a tutorial for some library or such I almost always get a few blogs with good content. Many of those blogs have books written by the owners which they advertise on the subject they blog about. I buy those sometimes. Basically, google is a good source of traffic for blogs.

[watwut]

"Forgive me for being stupid, but what does google have to do with all this? It's the last source of traffic that I would think of when it comes to blogging, I could be completely wrong about this but I can't imagine that's the way to to it."

The biggest source of traffic on my blog is google. Links from elsewhere cause spikes at bests, but that is it. Search engine is what drives clicks.

[squeaky-clean]

I've found dozens of good blogs through Google. You've never had a problem that you googled and found a solution on someone's blog before?

[jacquesm]

You have switched the perspective to the user now. That's fine with me but the original complaint was by the website owners.

If google no longer finds solutions on blogs that's a problem but that shifts the debate from the one that we originally had, which is that some blogs no longer receive the traffic they did in the past. If that means other blogs with relevant content receive that traffic instead then from the users perspective there is no change.

If the other blogs are less relevant then that is a problem, both for the users and for google.

[tobltobs]

Are you trolling?

[jacquesm]

Is it possible that if someone has a different point of view about some issue after having given the matter some thought that they are not trolling?

If that's a possibility then you already have your answer, I would not put this much time and effort into a discussion if I were merely doing this to piss other people off.

Trolls typically don't go around with their name and reputation in full view on controversial topics.

[jacquesm]

I miss the bit where we have a right to traffic. That's maybe naive, but just like I don't expect customers to beat their way to my door through some act of magic I don't expect visitors to come to my website either. If I want them there I have to go and engage them. That's marketing, building customer relationships and so on. Hard work, and definitely not easy money but it is very hard to assail that from the position of a competitor or even Google.

Of course it could happen to anybody. That is the one reason why you should never ever run a business that is dependent on a single source for customers. If you do that you don't have a business at all, just an extension of the ecosystem owned by someone else at whose whim you live or die.

[jshen]

I'm really shocked by your naive arrogance in this thread. You can't see beyond your own niche and use case. There is an enormous space of good content where the best method of finding that content is searching the internet, not having a previous relationship with a client/customer. In an earlier comment I gave one of many examples, medical conditions that people don't care about until they get it, and at that point they turn to google to search for information.

Google is effectively a monopoly on this front, and at some level should have an obligation to the common good.

[jacquesm]

The problem here is not that 'good content' is not going to be found, it seems to be that in spaces where there is a ton of competition that the competitors are all in some kind of state where they all feel they and they alone have a right to be the ones to engage with the searchers on topic 'x'.

I highly doubt that in the use-case that you envision (which is indeed not one that I had in mind when reading the comment above) where you are providing to the point information about something you care about you'll find that your information gets drowned out by content that has been SEO'd to the hilt. But even if that were the case I'd blame the SEO guys, not the search engine.

Remember how altavista was spammed to death with on-page trickery and google came and it all suddenly was much better. At the time we did not realize that this would come at the price of the destruction of what made the web great, the links that would lead you from one place to another.

The fact that google is a monopoly is our collective problem, not google's, it's only a monopoly because we let them and because - for now - they are still the best way to get to relevant content.

The thing that could happen in your use-case is that someone would end up finding their information somewhere else or that they would engage with someone else. The only case where there would be a loss to them (your hypothetical visitor) is if they would not engage with anybody at all. But that can't really be true since we're theorizing here from the point of view where there is a glut of relevant content competing for a limited number of slots and then regardless of what the criteria are some of those sites will simply miss out on potential visitors.

The only real worry I have here is that the users would not find any relevant content or places to engage at all. And that's far from being proven.

Google does not have an obligation to the common good other than an ethical and a moral one, a real obligation is a legal one and I - in spite of being fairly harshly critical of google on lots of fronts - have no doubt that if they could solve the spam problem in an effective way would not need any prodding at all to go and do that immediately.

Demanding they do better is tantamount to dictating that an advance in technology be made, maybe the problem is harder than it seems?

[jshen]

"you'll find that your information gets drowned out by content that has been SEO'd to the hilt. But even if that were the case I'd blame the SEO guys, not the search engine."

Maybe, but the part that bothers me is that if you listen to Matt Cutt's he basically says that you should make good content, make a good user experience, build a relationship with your audience, and not think about SEO explicitly. This isn't true for large swathes of content types.

"The fact that google is a monopoly is our collective problem, not google's, it's only a monopoly because we let them"

This is like saying that we don't need antitrust laws because it's our own fault if we allow them to become a monopoly or get into some other situation where fair competition isn't possible.

"The thing that could happen in your use-case is that someone would end up finding their information somewhere else or that they would engage with someone else. The only case where there would be a loss to them (your hypothetical visitor) is if they would not engage with anybody at all"

No, there is a loss if the only content they find at the top of google is demand media style content with no good information but that is SEO'd to the hilt, and people with good and real content can't outrank them.

"Demanding they do better is tantamount to dictating that an advance in technology be made, maybe the problem is harder than it seems?"

I mostly agree, but I think this is a bit too simplistic. I worked on search engines for years and fully understand how hard this problem is. I don't know the answer to this problem, but I see a clear problem or problems. One of which is Google's PR which says "hey, just make a good site with good content and the rest will take care of itself". They aren't really being honest here. For years they dodged the question of negative SEO.

[vectorpush]

I get what you're saying, but as far as business goes, it's just not very pragmatic to ignore the monumental impact that google can have on your hits/conversions. Your competitors certainly aren't ignoring it.

[ameister14]

I disagree with your second statement. If I run a gas station along a heavily trafficked street, is that a mistake? I have one source of customer; people aren't going to be loyal to my services enough to drive for them. If the traffic on the street lessens, I can lose business.

It doesn't mean it's a bad idea to buy or build the gas station there.

[jacquesm]

Yes, if the traffic on the street lessens then you will lose (some) business. But where is the unfairness in that? You don't actually have a right to business.

And if people are not loyal that's a serious problem with either the line of business you are in or your relationship with your customer.

[ameister14]

I'm not saying it's unfair. I'm saying you can enter into a business where you have a competitive advantage based on location and run said business profitably, and that's not a mistake.

If it didn't work, we would have no gas stations. I don't know about you, but I'm not so loyal to a particular gas station that I would drive farther to reach it if there were others more convenient to me that offered the same service for the same price. That doesn't mean it's a bad business. It means there is competition with fairly exact substitutes, and location is a big part of success.

[chrismcb]

It isn't just about the web site owner and their traffic... It is also about you. Don't you want Google to give you good results? Wouldn't you be unhappy if the best result got hidden on page 50 because someone link spammed them?

[mfjordvald]

As someone with a blog, the size of my audience matters a lot, knowing I actually have people reading what I put out there matters a lot. Having people interact with my content or tell me it helped them sure does motivate me as well.

If I lost my search engine traffic that'd account for half of my daily traffic. (only around 500-600 people so not huge) If that happened that'd be pretty demotivating.

[jacquesm]

> If that happened that'd be pretty demotivating.

Ok, that's a good reason.

But when you started blogging you did not have any visitors at all, you must have done it for some other reason.

And when you have 1200 visitors (say a year from now) per day and you lose half your visitors per day (because they are search engine traffic) and you're back to 600 you could still argue that you lost your motivation.

How many visitors come to your site is just a number. What you get out of the engagement is the key imo, and in that sense 50 people that you engage with are worth 500 that just visit and look at what you write.

[graeme]

>But when you started blogging you did not have any visitors at all, you must have done it for some other reason.

Or maybe they expected that if they blogged, they would get visitors? It's pretty well known that if you put good stuff on the internet, people will find it, including through google.

>And when you have 1200 visitors (say a year from now) per day and you lose half your visitors per day (because they are search engine traffic) and you're back to 600 you could still argue that you lost your motivation.

Yes, it's always true that it hurts to lose a source of traffic. I don't follow your point.

>How many visitors come to your site is just a number. What you get out of th engagement is the key imo, and in that sense 50 people that you engage with are worth 500 that just visit and look at what you write.

This is true, but you seem to be assuming that google visitors are less engaged. Why? My time on site is highest for organic search traffic.

[ProAm]

| Why does it matter so much? That's a blog, and a non-commercial one at that. Why do you care so much what your 'link profile' is?

Because networking is everything in life. Maintaining a good reputation, providing valuable information may not pay off immediately today, but you never know what you'll need tomorrow. If you are penalized today, you have no chance at tomorrow.

[jacquesm]

But google traffic is not networking. And a link profile is not networking either, that's just a bunch of bits.

Networking is meeting and engaging people.

[ProAm]

You can certainly build a network by meeting people via your blog content. If they can't find it, you'll never engage with those people.

[DontBeADick]

Are you really trying to pretend that you don't care if people read your blog even though you link to it here all the time?

If there were an olympic event for mental gymnastics, you'd be dominating right now.

[jacquesm]

> Are you really trying to pretend that you don't care if people read your blog even though you link to it here all the time?

I checked to see if you have a point here, I submitted exactly one link out of the last 30 or so to my own site, the rest have been posted by others. If we go back 60 links that's approximately 300 days and there are still only 2 links, and both of these were in response to HN content, either articles or comment threads.

Suggest you re-read my original comment and then take your own nick as advice.

[DontBeADick]

Regardless of how many links you've posted (it's also in your profile), the point still stands: You want people to read your blog. The simple fact that you have a public blog on the internet demonstrates that, even if you never posted a link to it.

If you truly don't care about "what Google makes of it", why not block Google with your robots.txt file?

I'll tell you why: Because you do care, but you're pretending not to for the sake of arguing with a bunch of people on the internet. And the position you've taken in that argument appears to be based largely on spite rather than reason.

We get it, you don't like SEOs, but these changes clearly hurt innocent people who know little or nothing about SEO.

[jacquesm]

Not caring about google includes not caring about whether they do or do not send traffic to my site. As you are no doubt aware because you have done so much work to research this there is no advertising on the blog. If people find it through google I'm perfectly ok with that. But I won't bend over backwards to make sure more people will find it, nor will I take action to ensure less people will find it.

The rest of your comment seems to presume you know me better than I know myself so I'll leave that without a reply, but I'm happy that we have established that your original comment was a load of nonsense.

[DontBeADick]

I don't need to know you better, I'm just more honest about who you are.

[Isofarro]

"We get it, you don't like SEOs, but these changes clearly hurt innocent people who know little or nothing about SEO."

These changes are clearly hurting SEOers who practice massive link building regardless of quality, too. That is a good thing.