Is Google Really the Bogeyman?

Another day, another Google story is blown out of context across the web in the name of SEO.

It seems each week some throwaway line by Matt Cutts or a mysterious rumour sends all the SEO blogs into overdrive as thousands of paragraphs are unleashed to thoroughly dissect and debate the news before anything is even clear.

SEO Beating Up Stories? You Betcha!

Although I'm relatively new to the world of SEO, online marketing, copywriting and blogs, I have been quick to read as many blogs, news feeds and bookmarking sites as possible in order to determine the best strategies for me to employ. As an outsider looking in, I have noticed a deep paranoia and nervous twitchiness pervading many SEO practitioners.

There was the PageRank adjustment in October. That produced a week of blog complaints, conspiracy theories and wild predictions. Others desperately resisted the long-overdue and highly predictable correction for paid link farming by releasing a large number of articles defending their practices.

Just this last week, a short answer by Matt Cutts at PubCon regarding the benefits or otherwise of using subdomains was unleashed onto the internet even before Matt had left the stage and was the hot topic of a number of SEO blogs by sundown.

As before, Matt answered the critics today with his latest blog post that essentially pulled the rug from underneath the conspiracy theorists by pointing out that the new algorithm has been in place for a few weeks and no one had even noticed. The change is minor, is geared to preventing subdomains from effectively 'spamming' the search results, and contains enough flexibility to allow multiple subdomain results where appropriate. So not big news, after all, except for those sites that rely on subdomains to generate a more than usual presence in the search listings.

But I think that is the whole point.

How to Turn No News into Sensational News

An SEO blog voraciously requires fresh meat every day, consuming ideas and chewing out online marketing observations at an alarming rate. It therefore is hardly surprising that even the most harmless of news items is descended upon by the bloggers like a pack of wolves on an injured deer, before being ripped to shreds as the wolves try to extract as much newsworthy meat as possible in order to sate their blog hunger for another day.

The truth was hardly blog worthy, but the rumours and conspiracy theories produced lots of link-friendly hot-topic gossip that could reach the front pages of Sphinn and the bookmarking sites.

Are the bloggers aware that they are beating up a non-existent story? Probably not. Online marketing is such a finely-tuned artform that changes to the Google algorithm can affect a business income, so there is certainly an element of self-interest in trying to understand and analyse even the smallest change. But some of the reactions to the 'subdomain' change certainly ranked as ill-judged, even going so far as to claim Google was trying to "dictate how the internet works".

What Came First? Google or SEO?

It is this antagonistic 'us versus Google' angle that seems to pervade many SEO posts these days, but this argument doesn't work for me.

After all, Google is not dictating how the internet works. They are only dictating how to identify the best selection of search results for a given request.

The role of SEO is in understanding how to improve our websites to meet Google's expectation. But remember, no one is forcing anyone to abide by Google's rules. Google doesn't rule the internet, but we recognise that Google has influence and we want some of that influence for our websites. Going on to criticise Google for that influence seems rather counterproductive.

If you don't want Google to dictate how you run your website, then don't. But you then cannot call yourself an SEO practitioner. Search engine optimisation is led by the search engines - the clue is in the title. By working in SEO, we understand this relationship and that our whole business is about finding those loopholes and tricks that produce the best results within their guidelines. To flout the rules betrays the misconception that search engines should be dictated to by the websites. Search engines are concerned with the user first, not webmasters, and their algorithm should always be tweaked and adjusted to close any loopholes SEO practitioners may be exploiting to continue providing the best results.

If one of your favourite loopholes is closed, it isn't Google's fault. If it is anyone's fault, it is yours for not producing a website that relies on quality content to achieve search engine success instead of tricks.

But the final question is whether all this criticism and Google paranoia is real or just a way of producing hot linkbait for SEO?