Google

We thought this one was already a closed case, but apparently the question of META tags still gets asked to Google engineers frequently. So today on the Google Webmaster blog, there’s a nice article on what META tags Google uses and which they do not. The META keywords is quite notably omitted, with love going to the often neglected META description tag and the SEO’s favorite tool, the Title tag.

Again, no thunder bolts of lightning here, but nice to hear that Google’s hands know what the others are doing. And another nail in the coffin for META keywords, MSN notwithstanding…

Not to give up the topic of this week’s SEO Audio, but an article by Matt Cutts this weekend progresses the issue of buying and selling paid links debate to one more degree with very strong evidence to support Google’s position.

Webmasters have been aggravated for weeks because of Google’s more aggressive policy, with most of the drops in PageRank a few weeks ago blamed on a penalty to sites perceived as buying or selling paid links. That net-wide rumor let to a huge number of irate webmasters crying foul, while Google maintains that the drop in PageRank was as much related to a re-calculation of the PageRank algorithm as to greater policing.

So, if this is all new to you, here’s the recap:

• Google has said not to sell paid links that pass PageRank for a while now, but only recently has taken a more aggressive stance towards penalize sites that are selling links.
• People are angry, especially small-time bloggers and some search marketers who rely on paid links as a source of income. Their argument is that a webmaster has the right to do with their website as they please.
• Google’s argument is that buying or selling links that pass PageRank effectively skews search results to favor sites that may not be relevant and with a budget sufficient enough to buy those links. Google is OK with links with a rel=nofollow attribute that keeps the link from passing PageRank. The reasoning behind their position was well explained by Matt Cutts in the article mentioned above.
• Google is definitely taking action, though the extent of which and methodology is largely unknown. Penalties include everything from stripping a site’s PageRank to de-indexing a site altogether. Obviously that takes a tremendous toll on a website, beside it it being quite a pain to get back into Google.
• Some people are saying they just don’t care while others are reluctantly bowing to Google.

There are strong arguments on both side of the camp, which really highlights how ambiguous this issue really is (is a link traded for a service “paid”? How about donations? Don’t I have a right to make money with my site? It’s not fair to allow paid product listings to get a competitive advantage to sites who can’t afford to buy links, right?).

Regardless of your stance on the issue, the possibility of a Google penalty is just too big a risk to take. We strongly recommend that if you’re currently buying or selling links or paid reviews on your site, you phase them out or put a “nofollow” on them. And if anyone proposes buying links from you, well… How much is the risk of a Google penalty really worth to you?

Were you one of the thousands of web site owners crying foul this week? Or maybe you hardly know what a PageRank is, but want to know the kind of thing that gets bloggers from coast-to-coast, time zone to time zone gossiping and ganging up on Google to figure out the causes for a PageRank drop among many of the top blogs on the ‘net.

Well, get Hall’s take on this question this week’s SEO Audio.

SEO Audio - Episode 4

The New York Times reports this morning that Google has unveiled a system to automatically prevent copyrighted videos being uploaded to YouTube. This system looks to be an olive branch in what’s turned into a bitter battle between Google and major media companies, including everyone from Disney, CBS, NBC to Viacom and Time Warner.

The system uses a fingerprinting technology, where media creators would upload content to Google’s servers. Google’s software, in turn, creates a fingerprint which is checked against any files that a user attempts to upload. If the file too closely matches the fingerprint, the upload is blocked.

The opinions of media representatives about the technology range from the lukewarm to the dubious, and for good reason. While from a copyright-owner perspective it’s nice to see Google taking a serious move towards blocking free uploads of copyrighted video clips, their position has long been that their position as a sharing-service is protected by the 1998 DMCA. Google is happy to remove copyrighted clips when alerted to their presence, but the lack of a cohesive, thorough means of blocking these uploads has frustrated media companies and lead to accusations of Google’s profiting off this copyrighted material (by having a service that is more popular because of the unauthorized content).

While the record-companies continue to wage war against file-sharing even as the future of DRM grows more and more dubious, it’s clear that the copyright battle is just beginning for video media. And Google, as much as they can within legal limits, is standing on the side of more open sharing and proliferation than the media companies that risk losing a lot more with this emerging technology.