SEO, SERPS, Is There a Google Search Engine Fairy?

“Google is not your friend
In fact, you are not even Google’s customer.
You are the PRODUCT Google sells to its customers.”
~ Adam Toporek in Google+ and the Illusion of Privacy

Credit for sharing this video @MicalJohnson in Don’t be Evil Google
Mical in turn credits @Ed_Dale who just published
*BOOM* Google Upends Search - I Warned You!

See also Google’s Real Name Policy: Why YOU are the product

Pete from Currency Exchange commented in my Google Monopoly post, writing,

“I must admit I have an implicit trust in Google to deliver authentic and trustworthy results. So long as the company adheres to clear principles and punishes those that manipulate the SERPS I won’t object its influence. Is there such a thing as a benevolent dictator?”

His comment is an excellent example of so many reasons why we are all losing our rights and freedoms every day. This short comment set off so many warning bells in my brain that this post is the result.

“Implicit trust in Google”

This is based on pure and simple PR from continuously being mentioned and written about in the mainstream media in everything from movies, prime-time television shows, soap operas, and major newspapers and news coverage both online and off.

Google’s “don’t be evil” is akin to
used car salesmen saying “trust me”.

Google Trustworthy? NO:

• Google is systematically taking traffic on search phrases that convert to sales away from small businesses and handing it to big brands by what they put on page one for each search. They are hiding products in Google Base / Google Product Search for those same phrases even if you search within a particular store, but showing them for less important phrases (which proves the products ARE listed in their database). See screen captures and red text in Why eCommerce Sales Decline and Fluctuate
  
• Google and Facebook accused of bypassing iPhone’s privacy settings to spy on owners to build advertising profiles
• Google NSA Secret Relationship (Their relationship with both the NSA – U.S. National Security Agency – and NASA)
• Google CEO Retracts Street View Privacy Joke – Google CEO told CNN reporter Parker that “if she didn’t want to be on Street View, she could just move.” How long are we going to allow companies to claim it was just a “computer glitch” or “innocent mistake” every time they get caught red-handed?
• EU Google Antitrust Probe – European investigation into “Google stifling competition by juicing its search results to favor its services over its rivals”.
• Google Lets People Block Your Domain – fair enough if you want to block a site for yourself – but those blocks are REPORTED TO GOOGLE. Have you read all my posts about the problems with Akismet blacklisting blogs – not junk blogs – the very best blogs we regularly read? Hello Google Search Akismet! See my CrowdSourcing Failure post for more details on this.
  
• Invading children’s privacy by asking for their city of birth and last four digits of their Social Security numbers in order to submit a doodle drawing to a Google-sponsored contest. THAT is Google evil. << Read this <<
• Google Privacy – they value THEIR OWN but not ours
• Google pays income taxes of only 2.4% to the U.S. on their income; the average American company pays 28.3% – Does that sound like Google pays taxes fairly? The story mentions Facebook and Microsoft use the same tax loopholes Maybe they learned them from GE – a corporation long famous for paying next to no taxes.
• Read the post on Tax Justice that includes this quote: “The $3 in my wallet is more than ExxonMobil, GE and Bank of America paid in taxes last year, combined,” said Carl Gibson, founder of US Uncut Mississippi. “There’s a direct connection between corporate tax dodging and what’s happening to real people’s lives. Because of overseas tax havens and other tax loopholes, US corporations are making profits in America but barely paying taxes here. If we close those loopholes, we wouldn’t have to be cutting back on firefighters, library hours and student loans.”
• Google’s growing undisclosed “conflicts of interest” are baring their teeth
• Googleopoly: The Google-DoubleClick Anti-Competitive Case

Clear principles? Which principles might that be?

How authentic and trustworthy are Google’s results?

Don’t take my word for it. Read these:

• “Do No Evil?”
• Stealing data including passwords with technology installed in Street View cars
• Is Google Favoring Big Brands in local, organic and paid search?
• Manipulating organic search listings or artificially inflating AdWords bid costs during the critical ecommerce shopping season?
• Outright stealing from advertisers by substituting worthless traffic for converting traffic (what we refer to as distribution fraud) in a manner that makes detection unlikely by the average user or even major agencies?
• Google CEO announces their intention to “clean up the Internet cesspool” by Favoring Big Brands.
• Google has turned search results into a popularity contest among brands.
• Google Censorship – How it works

Are those the principles Pete meant?

Manipulating the serps?

We need to get clear on what is meant by that and WHY Google does not want businesses to know how they can be found in the search engines. Is Google Playing Fair? To imply that if you proactively make your sites easy to find that they will Google slap you scares businesses into inaction.

Do you believe in the Google search engine fairy?

NO? Well then you HAVE to actively seek out related links somehow – whether that is by commenting in blogs or using Twitter or Facebook or other Social Media or doing article marketing or asking related sites to link to your site.

If you DON’T take action to make your site easy to find
no one will be finding you in their search engine anyway.

• Links and the words that are actually linked are one of the ways search engines “know” what is on a Web page.
• If you build a site that has zero incoming links, how really do you believe anyone will ever find it – no matter how good it is – to give you a link out of the goodness of their heart? Most people are selfish and they do NOT seek out ways to give their valuable time (time IS far more valuable than money) to strangers by linking to them. Yes, some of us DO go out of our way to do that but most people do not.
• Do you believe in the if you build it they will come school of Web design? Read my post on building traffic for why that will not work and what site owners MUST do to be found.

The best site for understanding search engines, serps and SEO is SEOBook and a good place to start is AaronWall’s excellent post Two Diametrically Opposed Google Editorial Policies.

If there has ever actually been a benevolent dictator it might be the stuff of fiction such as King Arthur and Camelot or possibly the kingdom of David, but finding an example in modern times may be impossible.

For 23 years I worked for IBM, arguably the most apparently paternalistic corporation in the world, who “took care of” their employees as though they were children – at least that is what we all thought until they converted our REAL pensions to illegal cash pensions, eliminated benefits that we had been promised IN WRITING and suddenly reduced salaries for some employees by 25% – all when they were making profits and before the economic declines.

What was our “loving” corporation really up to? Read IBM and the Holocaust and my readers may start to understand why I am such a champion for privacy rights. IBM’s technology was used to round up those sent to the death camps and technology today WILL be used in the same way in a not-too-distant future.

As luck would have it, the No Verichip Movement has a video that not only explains IBM’s connection to the Holocaust but also the IBM Verichip connection:

There are many other videos on that site and on YouTube and around the Internet. This is NOT a secret and you don’t need to be a prophet to know what is happening. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND WATCHING THE OTHER RFID VIDEOS.

Did you read Aaron’s post highlighted in the box above? In it he wrote,

“Some bloggers who didn’t know any better got torched based on a single blog post” ~ Aaron Wall of SEOBook, #1 for SEO training ~

THAT is the power of Google. So you might want to start saving the URLs of your favorite sites and blogs somewhere YOU control – so you can find them should posts like this one or even innocent things they say that are not even controversial – get them booted from Google’s search engine.

If that happens, be brave and make noise about where your favorite sites have gone across Social Networks or we are all already oppressed beyond belief and any “freedom” we perceive is TRULY an illusion. July 26, 2010 I wrote in this comment that hyperinflation ends Fiat currencies and what to do to prepare. There is much good information in that post.

A final P.S. to everyone and especially Pete. Read my post What Caused the Great Depression is Now and the exceptional explanations it links to regarding currency, the sliding dollar, how the worldwide economy works and the real history of the United States. What is coming is unavoidable so you may was well know what you’re up against and be better prepared.

“The Google Webmaster Guidelines are an arbitrary device used to oppress the small and weak, but do not apply to large Google ad partners.” ~ Vancouver SEO Rob Woods ~

GOOGLE ALGO CHANGE REACTIONS:

• GrowMap: Google Farmer Update slaps Google Competitors
• NEW: VERY INTERESTING SEO PANDA RECOVERY INSIGHTS from @robdwoods
• Also see Local SEO Guide’s aggregate links about what is now being called the Google Farmer Update
• Aaron Wall of SEOBook: How Demand Media Used PR Spin so Google Kills Demand Media’s Competitors (See comments: GrowMap, Donna Fontenot, more as they comment)
• From Chris Knight, CEO EzineArticles.com on late February Google Search Engine Algorithm Change
• ReadWriteWeb: Google Announces Big Algorithmic Improvement

Manipulating SERPS:

• Google search results easily manipulated

JUNK SERPS:

• Matt Cutts Criticizes Deceptive Ads, Doesn’t Realize Google Is The One Serving Them
• Google Losing the Battle Against Spam
• Twitter Better for Finding Answer Than Google Search Results

CHECKING YOUR GOOGLE POSITIONS:

MUST READ posts on why you DO NOT rank where you think you do when YOU search for your keywords!

• Yoast Disable Personalized Search Plugin
• SEOMoz: How to Unpersonalize Google Search
• Google lies! Why a plain search for your site’s SEO rank won’t work

Related articles

• Dear Google…THAT was a content farm update? (seo-theory.com)
• Changing Landscape in Google’s SERPs May Indicate a Shift in Relevancy (seo.com)
• French search engine joins anti-Google campaign (cash-bandit.com)
• Overstock Overstocks .edu Links and Google Schools Them (marketingpilgrim.com)

Tagged as: google serps, SEO / Google / Organic Traffic