The Chatterbox

Some Google News

There have been a couple of interesting developments in The Google Universe recently. One of which is quite noteworthy.

This past week Nick over at ThreadWatch broke the news that Google has begun a pilot program where they will (sometimes) notify a site owner when their site is in jeopardy of being dropped from Google's index for doing things that run afoul of their guidelines. The ThreadWatch report, with a ton of comments, is here if you're interested in reading the minute details.

Matt Cutt's of Google has confirmed the program.

There is a lot of hysteria by some in the above mentioned post. For those who have been doing things the right way all along have nothing at all to worry about.

FTR, the first thing that Google is apparently advising people about are the shady JavaScript redirects that a certain SEO company got hundreds (thousands?) of sites nailed for some time ago. I don't see this as a bad thing at all for Webmasters. There is no downside for them.

But it could be a very bad thing those SEO companies who are performing this type of rogue optimization.

Google has made it clear that their intention is to expand the program and let the webmaster know about other things like hidden text, hidden links, etc. All of which they will penalize a site for. To top things off, the first emails they are sending out is mentioning the specific things a site is being marked down for. Hopefully that continues to be the practice so that the average webmaster will no longer have to guess at what might be wrong.

Personally I think it's a very good thing. In fact, this type of feedback is something some of us have been asking for or wishing would be put into place for many years now. Hopefully, once it's up and running, Google will expand it further to include such specific information when someone sends in a question to them as to why a site has taken a significant drop.

Hey, a guy can hope! Even if it's something I very much doubt I would ever have to worry myself. I know how my sites are optimized after all. LOL I keep it all above board. I simply don't see anyone who follows common sense rules ever getting into trouble.

The whole thing does raise a very interesting question though...

Let's say you hired someone to optimize your site, turning over total control to the SEO company. You pay them, likely thousands of your hard-earned dollars, then a month or two later get an email --from Google no less-- that your site is going to be banned for something that the SEO company did.

How do you proceed at that point? If I were in those shoes I can't see letting the SEO company have access again to fix anything. They would have already lost my trust. Plus, if they're that stupid, I'm not certainly not going to let them have any control over my livlihood.

But what about the money you've already paid them?

Their efforts have obviously failed if your site is getting banned instead of climbing in the SERPs? And you're likely going to have to spend significantly more cash or a lot of your own time to fix their faux pas.

If you paid by credit card, and find out about the problem before 90 days have passed, the easiest thing to do would be to charge it back most likely. I can't think of much better proof to give to your credit card company --or a judge in court for that matter-- than something in writing from a search engine stating that your site was being removed.

Or do you confront them with the letter and ask for a refund? What happens if they refuse to give you one? Are clients going to start suing their SEO?

You'll hear me say this a lot... Personally I think it's a very good thing. A wonderful development. I can't wait for it to be expanded and become commonplace. Maybe the other major engines will start a similar program.

I also think that it's quite likely going to be a major factor in cleaning out the rogue elements from the SEO field. Those spammers and scammers simply won't be able to get enough to clear to stay in business after a time. Yup, that's a good thing.

One smallish point that some were worried about at ThreadWatch and other places it's being discussed...

Some have made claims of Google being a spammer by sending out the notices. That's complete BS as far as I'm concerned. The folks making those claims are quite likely the same supposed SEO's who are going to get nailed by this. I completely disregard those complaints. They're worried about getting sued and whining.

There is however a semi-legitimate complaint that someone reporting their Hosting company being CC'd on the email from Google. Matt is checking it out, but I'd be willing to bet that I know exactly what's happening.

Google is sending probably sending the notices out to the email addresses contained in the WhoIs information for the domain, rather than taking the time to see if an email address appears on the site.

If you've been paying attention the last several years you may have noticed that almost any domain that is purchased through a host almost always contains contact information for the host. If nothing else, their information always appears in the Technical Contact section; often it's also in the Billing Contact section; and sometimes it's even in the Admin section, even though this last one runs averse to the ICANN regulations.

So let's say that Google pulls up the WhoIs info for some domain to extract the email addresses. WhoIs records are notorious for having fake or bad email addresses in them. They're public records and can be scraped by the spamlist bots, so people often put totally fake contact info in there.

Knowing this, Google would want to send an email to each individual email address listed in the WhoIs, trying to make sure they get through to someone. And in the process the host ends up with a copy of the email.

Personally, I think it's a non-issue. Breaking Google's rules is not like breaking the law. So I can't fathom a host threatening a webmaster over a letter from Google. Especially not when they get used to seeing them.

Keep an eye on Matt Cutts' blog. He has promised to offer some more information on the pilot program as soon as he gets a chance to make sure he has all of the facts straight.

In fact, you might want to visit Matt's blog today! He's got a pretty interesting bit of information there as to how one should go about getting a previously banned site re-included in Google's index. Note all of the stuff he mentions as a reason a site can be removed or penalized. It was just posted today, Sept 18, 2004 in case you need to find it later in his archives.