Matt Cutts, in a rare move, spoke on his blog as an official Google Webspam employee, and even had the Google lawyers review his post first. Why?
Because for the first time, Matt spanked a SEO Company officially (Traffic Power (renamed to 1P):
I can confirm that Google has removed traffic-power.com and domains promoted by Traffic Power from our index because of search engine optimization techniques that violated our webmaster guidelines.
I gotta think that’s a nail in the coffin of the Traffic Power case against Aaron Wall.
There’s a nice thread going at Threadwatch about this as well.
On another note….Is it good for Matt/Google to out SEO companies whom they feel have broken their webmaster guidelines?
11 Responses
Yes! Finally…. A while back I hired these jokers (firstplacesoftware.com, aka 1p aka trafficpower) to see if they had some secret stuff that I wasn’t aware of. After realizing that they were actually hurting one of my businesses I told them to go to hell – never did get that refund though. At about the same time I found the TrafficPowerSucks website and donated a few bucks.
I’m glad that this may also put an end to Aaron’s ordeal with them – Aaron’s too good a guy to be spending time and money with these idiots.
Best,
John
Yes they should out them, and what took so long? Athletes caught using performance enhancing drugs? Out. Caught cheating at a casino? Out. Caught speeding, running a red-light, not reporting income, patronizing or a being a prostitute, smoking a join, urinating in public, open container? Busted and outed. Everyday TV and print news publish the names of people accused (not even convicted yet) of breaking the rules (even victimless breaking the rules). Though a person is innocent until proven guilty, there is damage is done to their reputation. Why not out those who are guilty of s@mming, especially when they have profited from it?
Didn’t Matt just end up saying what would have become public record in due course?
>>Is it good for Matt/Google to out SEO companies whom they feel have broken their webmaster guidelines?
Probably good for the industry, bad for the company that gets a mention.What isn’t good is SEO bloggers outing other SEOs and websites. Looks like a playground fight.
Ya know, I should add to this by stating that I’m extremely happy with Matt and Google’s decision to make these statements in the defense of Aaron Wall.
I was glad to see Matt make the statements he made and I’m hoping that Google’s position helps Aaron.
It seems like almost everyone working in this industry is interested in the industry’s credibility. We need SE reps to make strong statments to reduce the ambiguity in the field.
I would like to see more positive news. It seems as nearly every article in the mainstream media equates ALL SEOs to schemers and tricksters. I’d rather not see Hack3rZ, Phishers and S3Oz. 😉
Anyone want to take a guess on how long it will be before we see the Google subpoenas in this case?
Then he should have named the french company who was doing SEO for BMW and Ricoh.
My guess is that they wouldn’t normally out anyone – too much potential for trouble. I’d speculate that Matt personally decided to give a hand to Aaron specifically because of who Aaron is and how he conducts his business in this community. Which is pretty cool when a company that large can deal with exceptions like that – and get it past the lawyers.
Well considering that it should not have been too hard to get a subpeona in the case I think matt took and early preventative measure that makes that unnecessary. Perhaps postpones it. I bet he/they thought long and hard about setting a precidence like this. It was the right thing to do though. Unfortunatly TP was one of my earlier mistakes and I still feel stupid for getting caught by their supposed “guarantee”. I know better then this and trust no one now.. I still “owe” them $300.00 they called up and told me if I didnt pay they were going to sue me. So sue me I dont have anything lol
Anyway I hope that matts actions in this case dont come back to haunt him. but then I think any sites manually edited by google should have a message from google stateing why the actions were taken. Normal algo ranking losses should not have to be explained but manual removal should. If nothing else its written evidence for the site owner and removes all doubt.
Awesome! Great job Matt!
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