While I’m sure they’re trying to be helpful, it seems like nearly every time Google expands on a fuzzy definition from their guidelines or TOS it only leads to more confusion, at least for me.

I spent a lot of labor hours several months ago trying to get as much information as I could on Google’s position regarding paid links. I offer advertising on some of my company sites and wanted to ensure–while Google was slapping everyone around for paid linking–that I kept those business sites within “the rules according to Google”, or as close to being within them as I possibly could. Some pre-existing arrangements prevented me from complying 100% on some sites at that time.

During those long hours of researching Google’s stated positions, asking questions when needed and often waiting days for replies… I came across what appeared to be some straight forward advice from Google’s own SEO Strategist, Adam Lasnik, regarding the publication of paid links on a web site:

“It’s [nofollow] one of several tools you can use to avoid having PageRank passed. Other possible ways of accomplishing this are using JavaScript, and also redirecting through a page, a file or directory that is named in robots.txt as a page that should not be crawled. Nofollow works equally well; the key is that it tells us to not pass PageRank and related signals.”

Life was good, rather than bloat my HTML with silly “nofollow” tags that only Google seemed to give credit to anyway, I could use JavaScript to display paid links because the search engine bots won’t read (or follow) those links. Most of my paid link problems seemed solved.

Fast forward to this month and I find that Google has been kind enough to offer some definition clarifications on the Google Webmaster Central Blog. More information is always a good thing, right?

One of the clarifications that caught my attention right away was regarding Geolocation and the practice of serving specific content to visitors based upon their geographic location. I really think that making content delivery more personalized–which includes localized to the visitor–is going to be a major part of web development in the future. It already is for some services, but ultimately I think even smaller web sites are going to have to apply mechanisms for personalizing content in order to compete.

Google’s points on Geolocation were pretty simple and straight forward (again), just make sure that the Googlebot sees the same content a human visitor from the same IP address would see.

Then the shocker came… beneath Geolocation was Google’s clarification on the black-hat practice of Cloaking. Here’s how Google described cloaking in the clarification:

“Cloaking: Serving different content to users than to Googlebot. This is a violation of our webmaster guidelines. If the file that Googlebot sees is not identical to the file that a typical user sees, then you’re in a high-risk category. A program such as md5sum or diff can compute a hash to verify that two different files are identical.”

This leaves me a little confused and worried, because if you take Lasnik’s advice from above and use JavaScript to display paid links which the bots won’t see but human users will, then wouldn’t that technically be “serving different content to users than to Googlebot”, which is a violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines?

And forget about just paid links, what about the plethora of Web 2.0, Ajax enabled sites which are delivering dynamic content via JavaScript to users that bots aren’t seeing?

I understand that this may seem like I’m being nit-picky about a technicality, but given that we often don’t know something we’re doing is going to cause us search engine smack-downs until it happens I think there’s a valid concern here.

Is it still acceptable to use JavaScript to deliver content on our web pages, or is Google going to begin punishing (perhaps selectively) sites that do for “cloaking” under this newly clarified definition?

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Technorati Tags: cloaking, Google, paid links

Over the past few days Chrissy (she works with me on many projects) and I realized that one of our latest launches has been sandboxed.

At first Chrissy was a bit nervous and upset about it, but I’ve reduced her coffee intake and helped her to see that it’s really not that bad at all, and in fact might be the best thing that could have happened for this particular project.

Here’s the way I see it, when a new site gets launched and indexed right away it’s easy to become complacent with the fast results of search traffic. But when a new site gets sandboxed then you know there’s going to be a period of time (from a few weeks to several months) where you’ll have to honestly earn your traffic for the site until Google “lets you in”. And almost everything you do during that period to build traffic will have long lasting effects on your SERPs later.

So, while it may seem tragic for you when a site gets sent to the sandbox right away, the truth is it’s going to force you to do things that will positively effect your project rankings in the long term.

Maybe I’m just strange, but just the same as I view competition as a good thing I don’t mind sandboxing at all when it happens to me. As with competitors, it simply forces me to “do better” and keeps me on my toes.

If you have a new site and it appears to get sandboxed, don’t become discouraged. That’s all I’m saying here. Sure, you’re going to have to do some extra work to build and sustain traffic until you’re out of the sandbox, but that work will probably pay back ten-fold for you in the long run, so instead of an obstacle just view your sandboxing as an opportunity to “do better” with your project.

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Technorati Tags: sandbox

I’ve written a little already about the whole Google PageRank mess that’s all the talk in the blogosphere right now, but I’ve tried not to get too deep into the issue here simply because it isn’t that heavily connected to the topics I want (and think readers agree) this blog to be covering.

However, I do enjoy seeing the two sides (pro-RankSlap vs. Google-Goofed-This-Time) square off. I’ve been following a lot of blogs closely and have come to a couple of my own conclusions about the whole thing that I do think relate to the topic of this blog–owning your own online business–and should be pondered by anyone who plans to one day start a web site or online business, or even already has one going.

The point that I want to cover here is about fundamental ideas and decisions every site or business owner must eventually make for themselves, and understanding that we must be prepared to deal with whatever consequences result from the actions we take along the way.

Since I don’t want to regurgitate what’s being said everywhere else already, I’ll try to keep from getting too deep into the latest Google smack-down and resulting debates in this post. There’s plenty out there to find if you’re interested, and I’ll even point you to one of the better threads I’ve seen for both initial posting and follow-up commentary over at Michael’s blog. By the way, if you’ve ever wondered about linkbaiting, Michael’s post is a perfect example.

So, what conclusions have I drawn from all of this noise about Google’s latest rankings move that I think site and business owners should care about?

No business exists in a vacuum. Everything is connected to something out there. No, there wasn’t extra fruity in my morning Fruit-Loops, just hear me out for a second.

As you build and grow your online presence you’re also building a reputation for yourself and your business. This is what a lot of folks refer to as the brand–though I personally cringe every time I hear a blogger or marketer speak of themselves in the third person as a brand–but essentially you’re building a relationship of trust and authority in your field or niche with those who visit your site.

At some point–and most likely on a fairly regular basis–you’re going to have to make decisions about resource linking in your site content. These choices will cause your visitors to perform actions, and that equates to having effects on your reputation. If you send off visitors with links of value to them it will improve your standing with those people, and if you send them off to garbage it’ll cause them to turn up their noses to you. Remember, you own–and are responsible for–what you ultimately provide to your visitors.

Now, how does this relate to the Google PageRank issue? Not to take sides in the debating, but it’s obvious to me that Google has “blown it” with respect to ranking the value of web sites for searchers. Which seems important since at its core Google’s primary function is to provide searchers with the most valuable results based on their search requests.

But the decisions Google made in the past for how they would rank the value of web sites have ultimately led to a point where outsiders were able to manipulate Google into returning less valuable results to searchers, which supposedly prompted Google to take actions to correct itself. There’s nothing technically wrong with Google doing this, however it is a reactionary move that displays a position of being behind; a vulnerability to any business that’s expected to be on the leading edge of its industry.

You may be wondering why I feel Google blew it and is displaying a vulnerability if outsiders manipulated the results? That’s a fair question, but I’ve already provided the answer above: you own–and are responsible for–what you ultimately provide to your visitors. That same standard absolutely applies to Google just as much as it does to you and your site(s).

When Google made the decision to rank and value web sites as part of their business model, they also assumed the responsibility to prevent obvious manipulations just the same as a shop owner has some responsibility to install locks on the doors and a security system to protect his inventory from burglars at night.

Sure, any security can be broken and I wouldn’t hold someone to the fire if they take reasonable steps to prevent an intrusion, but Google didn’t do so much as “close the front door” when building their system. They created it with the most obvious of methods for outside manipulations built in. Not just built in, but also having paramount effects on the whole thing. Where anybody with a dollar could come along and change search results. That’s the equivalent of basically letting everybody have direct access to the database tables holding their ranking values.

If you owned a membership web site would you knowingly allow perfect strangers who weren’t even logged into your site to come along and edit your member’s profile information as they pleased? Google did.

With all of their resources, Google built a faulty foundation for their core business function. If I owned or worked for Google I wouldn’t be begging web site owners to help me fix my business like they are now. Didn’t this problem begin with the ability for outside influences to affect rankings? So where would the logic be in depending on outside influences to get it right for me now–no matter how safe I thought the fix-method was?

And are Google’s recent actions to correct the problem really any smarter than the initial decisions that caused them? I’m not so sure. On the surface it may seem logical that Google can better filter results if site owners use “nofollow” tags to remove improper link-juice flows and by devaluing sites that sell text links, but that whole fix starts from an assumption… that sold links are NOT relevant. I know first hand however, that many sold links ARE relevant, so in-fact the fix really adds to the problem in some ways.

Think of this, there’s current Site A online which is an established authority on some niche topic, but suddenly Google devalues links from Site A because they believe the site is accepting money for links. So far that sounds like a good idea for preventing manipulation on search results… but then along comes some new startup we’ll call Site B who may have the most informative and useful content ever created on the niche topic, but because it’s a new site the owner wants to get the word out to others and approaches related sites such as Site A to purchase some advertising. If Google’s fix is devaluing that advertising either by devaluing links on Site A or by Site A placing “nofollow” tags on those links now, then isn’t it also acting as an obstacle for what might be the most valuable site on a topic from climbing up the search results? And if so, isn’t that causing less valuable results to be returned to searchers? So, in some instances the fix is causing the same issue as the original problem… searchers aren’t being provided with the best and most relevant results.

No, if I owned or worked for Google than instead of trying to correct a problem of outside manipulations with outside band-aids I’d hang my head in shame and quietly go back to the drawing board to find an internal solution that I held full control over. This way, for better or worse and with no excuses I could own and be responsible for my own future again.

Who owns your site/business? This may seem obvious and trivial, but a major driving force behind my decision to leave a cushy day-job and form my own company was the desire to be absolutely responsible for–and in control of–my life. To not be dependent on anyone for anything, including my paycheck and financial future.

Since I believe I own my business and web sites, I base my decisions on what I feel are right and best for me, my associates and my customers. I don’t care if Google (or any site I don’t own) is broken and wants my help. That may seem like a cold-hearted stance, but lets remember that this is business.

Google blew it with some bad choices, and so far instead of taking responsibility for blowing it they’ve pointed the finger of blame at others and are placing responsibility for correcting it on everyone else.

Again, how does this impact you and why should you care? Simple, if you own a business or web site, or plan to start one there are several valuable lessons in what’s happened, how it happened, and how it’s been handled:

First, plan for every possible way to lose control of your content and then secure against it. Don’t leave open doors for anybody to come along and manipulate the data that you will be displaying to your visitors and customers, because what visitors see–not what you may have intended–is what they’ll ultimately judge you by.

Second, own the good and bad results of your decisions. I honestly believe the fact that Google hasn’t stepped out in-front of this and said “our bad” is the primary fuel keeping the debate burning across the web right now.

Sure some folks just like to take pot-shots at giants any chance they get, but a lot of the people balking at Google right now also make a large portion of their revenue via Google and I bet they would likely be more ready to “help” in some meaningful and intelligent ways if they weren’t feeling as though they were being blamed.

In other words, as my Grandpa used to say, “a small slice of humble pie holds more nutrition than a pot full of excuses.”

And finally, every person and business will have a share of mistakes over time. Very few mistakes are ever large enough on their own to define the future for us, but how you handle them and whether or not you learn from them will.

I like Google, I always have even though I’ve always preferred Yahoo!, and lately I think that the Social Web holds more promise for the future of online traffic flow than search engines do. But, I’m sincere when I say that I hope Google will learn something from all of this beyond the art of finger pointing and blame shifting. And more importantly, I hope reading this has given you some things to think about in your business planning as well.

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Technorati Tags: Google, linking, pagerank, responsibility

Earlier this week I posted a couple times about the Google PageRank shakeups that had taken place, and made it clear that I supported Google’s right to do as they please with their index, even if I thought penalizing web sites like they seemed to be doing was a bad decision for Google to make. And I thought that was the end of it for me.

Then a funny thing happened… this blog, which has had a positive page rank for the past year and which wasn’t affected by the recent “link sellers” penalty (and why would it be since I don’t sell links here–in fact I give them away free for related content at the bottom of every page), suddenly appeared to have a page rank of Zero this morning.

Isn’t that strange? Several days after everyone else had their rankings “updated”, and also coincidently after I posted that I thought Google had blundered on this whole thing, my blog loses all of its ranking. Hmmm….

A lot of people speculated earlier this week that these penalties were being manually dished out at Google, but I thought that seemed a little too “conspiracy theory” to give it much credit, but now I do have to wonder.

Okay, wondering time is done. I don’t know why Google decided that the content on my blog that it felt was valuable for the past year suddenly isn’t so valuable, and I don’t care.

I don’t write or work for Google. Unlike a lot of web masters, I’ve never allowed myself or my sites to rely on a single source (Google) of traffic. In fact, the majority of my blog traffic comes from various social and blog networks, and of the little search traffic I do get, Yahoo sends the most to me with Google and MSN fighting month after month for second place.

So seriously, if Google doesn’t want to play in my yard anymore I’m cool with it. Especially after seeing the way Google’s been turning on their long-time friends lately–I mean, who needs friends like that anyway?

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Disclaimer: I always want and encourage contacts, but I typically expect them to be civil–that wasn’t the case yesterday.

Yesterday I wrote that while I believe its Google’s right to conduct their operations as they see fit, there can be what I consider unintentional or even innocent victims who get squashed when giants stomp their feet.

I also talked specifically about the Open Source offerings my company has been making for the past 21 months, and funding via corporate sponsors as a way to prevent pushing any costs onto end users. How apparently our use of the word “sponsors” in acknowledging them on our web site led to Google including us in the penalties being dished out, which led to the immediate withdrawal of one sponsor already and the realization that gaining future sponsors will be much more difficult, if not impossible for us. Given this, we’re likely to eliminate the Open Source offerings all together, including all future developments and support for existing applications.

I didn’t write about that for sympathy or any emotional response what so ever, though some knuckle-heads who contacted me privately seem to feel I was pulling at “heart strings” in an attempt to change the “consensus” opinion online that this move by Google is a great one (their words, not mine).

I wrote about my specific experience simply to relay it isn’t only those who buy and sell links that are affected by a broad sword move like this. Every end user of our open source wares for example, will no longer be able to get upgrades or support if we do eliminate the offerings. And that’s not really a “choice” that we’re making because we “just up and decided” to create a fork in the road to prompt a choice, its a business decision that we’re forced into making as a direct result of another decision that Google made.

To be clear, this whole thing doesn’t financially affect my business in any way. The open sources were a break even venture that we kept up because we could without losing money. Its sad that we’ll probably have to end it, and I’m very sad for the loyal users of our wares in that case, but life and business will go on just fine here.

My posting yesterday didn’t rant against Google. Multiple times in my posting yesterday I expressed support for their right to operate as they want to. But for the brain-farts who felt warranted to flame me for having an opinion they didn’t like on the matter, lets put this move by Google into a little clear perspective:

• Google is not interested in preserving the dignity of PageRank, its an intangible value that holds no dignity
• Google is not working to protect and defend the purity of web linking
• Google does not have an All-Seeing-Eye that can clearly determine between honest and anything-else links
• Google is interested in controlling how and where online traffic flows
• Google has a financial stake in crushing those who barter online advertising outside of Google’s system
• Google has clearly shown the nature of their motivations for this specific penalty roll-out, which can be seen by simply looking at who the primary targets were (NOTE: while I’ve called this a broad sword move on Google’s part, the reality is if you look at the numerous lists of affected sites that are floating around it becomes obvious that this was in-fact a target-specific strike made by Google)

Let me close again by saying I’m making no moral judgments about Google. Its business, and I get that. I also still support Google in conducting business as they wish, even if I personally think their actions in this case were counter-productive to their long standing mantra of “Do No Harm”.

So don’t bother flaming me from fantasy high-ground stances and indignation because I don’t agree that this was long overdue and the best move Google could make, you only show what a twit you are with such private communications to me.

And yes, I do mean you, Joe/Dale/Drew/George/and-a-few-others.

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