This is clickbait. The last story they had on HackerNews was shortly after the RapGenius drama. According to someone smeared in that story they tried to blackmail him: Pay us and we won't publish. Tweets from them collaborate this: "It is a report on Expedia BH (Blackhat) SEO, check your G+ account Martin, anyone in charge can contact us back. Yes, my husband contacted you there, please keep communication with him.". I usually do not mind an agenda, but in this case I do not want any HN readers burned by this company. This post will give them 1000s of visitors and perhaps a few clients.
So there definately is an agenda. Google banned a few of these people's sites. They are not happy about that. But they still have something worthwhile to say right? Wrong. This is only written to create uninformed controversy and a difficult PR problem for Google.
They are not insiders leaking how big sites do shady SEO. They were creating spammy small sites and sometimes were sourced to write linkstuffed articles for bigger sites. They can see just as much as we can see.
We don't know if these tactics are even working. Maybe Google already discounted any links, through algorithmic detection, spam reports or manual spam fighters. Who knows? Certainly not the spammers that were caught time and time again: Proving Google is way ahead of them. Google can't ever say: These guys are right, we favor big sites. But that is the popular sentiment they are exploiting. One does not have to feel sorry for Google, but I hope people realize the position they're in here.
I'm sorry but you are incredibly misinformed. As someone that has sold sponsored posts for a very long time with some of the biggest websites on the internet, I can confirm to you that it is happening at a much larger scale than you can ever imagine. For those that know, this story is not really news and has been going on for several years. Google has indeed been fighting spam and has done a decent job at it but in many cases the smaller sites are the ones affected the most and the big name sites get away with it.
"We don't know if these tactics are even working." They are working. Google is catching up but it's still FAR from being ahead in fighting these blackhat SEO practices. What you mean is that Google WON'T be saying "these guys are right, we favor big sites" but the reality is they do.
I made a fairly large comment on here with the last report. Many of the comments said "show me proof!" which then I came along and did just that. Matt Cutts reached out to me shortly after and I forwarded over emails received from Expedia. The funny thing is, a few weeks after that I STILL got emails from Expedia BUT it wasn't from Expedia.com. "Only Expedia.com was affected so we're still going to sell links for Expedia.co.uk". It amazes me sometimes how blind everyone is about this.
So there definately is an agenda. Google banned a few of these people's sites. They are not happy about that. But they still have something worthwhile to say right? Wrong. This is only written to create uninformed controversy and a difficult PR problem for Google.
They are not insiders leaking how big sites do shady SEO. They were creating spammy small sites and sometimes were sourced to write linkstuffed articles for bigger sites. They can see just as much as we can see.
We don't know if these tactics are even working. Maybe Google already discounted any links, through algorithmic detection, spam reports or manual spam fighters. Who knows? Certainly not the spammers that were caught time and time again: Proving Google is way ahead of them. Google can't ever say: These guys are right, we favor big sites. But that is the popular sentiment they are exploiting. One does not have to feel sorry for Google, but I hope people realize the position they're in here.
If you want to know more about how Google fights spam (they probably dinged a few major sites during the time it took me to write this post): http://www.google.com/insidesearch/howsearchworks/fighting-s...
If you want actionable SEO advice for your startup: http://hackersandfounders.tv/RDmt/rand-fishkin-inbound-marke... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El3IZFGERbM