Google’s DAISNAID (Criminal?) Policy
Does Google have a “Do as I Say, Not as I Do” (DAISNAID) Policy?
In case you don’t follow me on Twitter or you don’t keep up on the “current events” surrounding SEO, you might have missed this story:
http://outspokenmedia.com/seo/google-profiles-seo-as-criminals/
To summarize the story here’s what happened:
Last week at SMX Advanced, Matt Cutts took the stage and openly stated that Google profiles SEOs like common criminals.
Now, I’ve been in this business for a very long time and was even around before Google themselves were even created.
When Google first started their business nearly everyone in web development or online marketing felt like they were “on our side”; someone to finally take on the “big corporate guys like Yahoo!”.) But…no longer.
Since that time, and as Google has grown to the corporate giant that they are, they have changed…a lot.
Where I used to feel as if they were on “our side” I now feel like it’s a group of parents telling their kids what not to do “or else”. I remember growing up being told “Do as I say, not as I do.” (DAISNAID) and quite frankly, it’s pissing a lot of people off.
Here’s why:
During Google’s I/O session (see the blog post I made on I/O), they handed out 500 free Android phones to the developers at the conference (by the way this is also referred to as “Oprahing”).
Evidently many of these made their way to eBay but that’s a story for another day.
Because Google handed out these phones for free, they received “tens of thousands” of free links to help Android in the “competitive telecom market”.
Now, in SEO, one of the “bad” things that you’re not supposed to do is pay for links to your website. This will get you penalized in Google if they find out that you’re doing so.
But when you think about it, the act of handing out gifts to attendees and then getting those attendees to blog about, tweet about and link to things about the Android phone, are in fact, paid links.
Or maybe better yet, bribed links.
Now consider this. Another well-known SEO, Michael Gray has a review website called Viral Conversations which hooks up bloggers with free products. Matt Cutts “recommended” to Michael that he made sure all the links that bloggers used for these free gifts were “nofollowed”.
In essence, Matt was telling Michael that each time one of these links pointed back to his site they should not pass along any link love. In other words, Matt told Michael that because his website gave away these free gifts to bloggers, it was considered a “paid” link. So for Michael’s site to not receive any penalties, Michael had to place a statement on his site telling people that when they linked back to him, to “not follow” that link.
Myself, along with many, many others are wondering how this is different from Google handing out Android phones and getting thousands of links. Are these not paid links as well?
The whole basis of the post was to point out how Google profiles SEOs or at least anyone with any knowledge whatsoever as to the power of linking.
As Lisa put it:
“1. Rae Hoffman, marketer and owner of BBGeeks.com, decides to loan 50 BlackBerries to some of her site’s most engaged users to build content and get unique customer reviews.
And the handout works.
She gets tons of reviews and free content for her site. And because BB users are tech savvy, they also have blogs and write about the experience, linking to BBGeek.com in droves.
Rae doesn’t ask users to nofollow their links.
2. A new bakery in town ships out 500 cupcakes to residents of a small suburb encouraging them to come into the store and try them out. There’s even a coupon for a few bucks off when they come in.
The promotion spreads like wildfire when a few of the lucky cupcake recipients use their Twitter accounts to tell others about the bakery, it gets picked up by blogs and suddenly, they’re on TechCrunch. It doesn’t even have to be cupcakes. It could have been, I don’t know, pizza.”
In the examples above #1 would be considered a “paid” link whereas #2 would not.
The bottom line is, Google without a doubt has a “Do as I say, not as I do” policy. It’s important that if you’re in the SEO business or even remotely touch on website marketing that you know and are educated on how Google may view you.
There are thousands upon thousands of us SEOs out there and granted, the higher profile you are, the more likely you are to get scrutinized.
Now, does this mean that Google is the “bad guy” in all of this? Well, it depends upon your situation. Google’s overall policy is to provide useful and relevant content to users. Ok, we all get that and most SEOs play “by the rules”.
But when you read these posts, you’ll see that there is a very large disconnect between what Google deems as “ok” for themselves but not for others. In other words, if you want to increase your bottom line and you know that one way to do so is through getting other people to link to you regardless of how you go about doing it, naturally, giving a gift away, creating a viral piece of content, you’re going to use that method. It’s just business.
However, Google can view this as something underhanded if your intention is to draw links to your site.
But, when Google uses this same method of gathering links themselves, it’s “OK”. Because they state that the intention of giving out the phones was not to gather links but rather to encourage developers to create apps for those phones.
IF and it’s a big if, you believe that.
I highly suggest that you not only read Lisa’s post but GrayWolf’s as well. This is stirring up a LOT of controversy as you might imagine but, as an SEO myself, and as you, the reader who is someone interested in SEO it’s something you need to be aware of.
- Kristine