Google Algo Change - Disaster waiting to happen

[Guard Dog]

According to a CNN news story, Google will be changing their algorithm so that bad reviews of a website will knock that website down in the SERPS. Anyone see the potential hazard in this???? BH webmasters have a new tool, it seems to me.

'Being bad' no longer good on Google - CNN.com

 

[dfiocch]

Let me understand ...
If a competitor webmaster says that my site is superlative, google throws it down?



Not enough all blackhatters on top of SERPS?

 

[NoDepositCasino]

According to a CNN news story, Google will be changing their algorithm so that bad reviews of a website will knock that website down in the SERPS. Anyone see the potential hazard in this???? BH webmasters have a new tool, it seems to me.

'Being bad' no longer good on Google - CNN.com

WOW - and I was just reading a WSJ article about a guy making it extremely high in SERPS with eyewear only by being extremely rude to customers and gaining hundreds of bad reviews on getsatisfaction.com - and how that was benefiting his rankings - and how during the research for the article they concluded that google just CANNOT get into sentiment analysis due to the extreme problems it can cause (they brought the example of obama during the election and how divided opinions and public sentiment was) - so aside from the obvious gaming of the system by competitors there is a slew of other potential issues if they go down this route.

The WSJ article said that a more likely approach was that they would incorporate the negative reviews themselves next to/below the actual top result so that its results from several categories.. ie. regular results, a few reviews etc. - just like they do for local searches already but have not started doing yet for other categories of search.

 

[bonustreak]

This is a load of crap! We all know how petty and revengeful competitors can be and now they have just been given a weapon!

 

[NoDepositCasino]

This is a load of crap! We all know how petty and revengeful competitors can be and now they have just been given a weapon!

I dont think it will happen in this way. Would be to easy to game the system.

 

[Simmo!]

I dont think it will happen in this way. Would be to easy to game the system.

I tend to agree. I think that WSJ article you pointed out NDC was more on the money. Google doesn't want to arm black-hatters and competitors with stuff to affect rankings if it can help it.

 

[NoDepositCasino]

More in-depth analysis of issue

Hi Guys,

Finally got around to digging up the links again -

so here is the original NYT article - its long but a worthwhile read - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/business/28borker.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail0=y

Now google responded with this: Google Changes Its Rank Algorithm In Response To DecorMyEyes Story | WorldTech24 | news 24h

And they do point out in their response the following :"Google instead wrote an algorithm that can detect which hundreds of merchants (including DecorMyEyes) have provided “bad user experience” and algorithmically force them lower."


And here link to actual google blog post that outlines in more detail that they are NOT going for sentiment analysis (and that the review sites already use no-follow so google ignores it)
Official Google Blog: Being bad to your customers is bad for business

And specifically what they ended up doing is:

"Instead, in the last few days we developed an algorithmic solution which detects the merchant from the Times article along with hundreds of other merchants that, in our opinion, provide an extremely poor user experience. The algorithm we incorporated into our search rankings represents an initial solution to this issue, and Google users are now getting a better experience as a result."

so I would GUESS that they use "SEMANTICS" analysis - ie. matching words that reflect negative user experience (suing, stealing, etc.) and scan for those - but give weight to only large sources like major magazines that have credibility. So for a competitor to "take you out" - he would need to actually be able to get not just one but numerous serious articles like that printed up. Since they point out that they do NOT want to go just after negative comments since that could be to easily manipulated.

Long story short this is a good development IMHO.

 

[Simmo!]

so I would GUESS that they use "SEMANTICS" analysis - ie. matching words that reflect negative user experience (suing, stealing, etc.) and scan for those - but give weight to only large sources like major magazines that have credibility. So for a competitor to "take you out" - he would need to actually be able to get not just one but numerous serious articles like that printed up. Since they point out that they do NOT want to go just after negative comments since that could be to easily manipulated.

Long story short this is a good development IMHO.

Yes I agree. Very interesting and as long as the credibility issue is followed, makes sense.

 

[grem]

I cannot see this becoming a important factor and they are still the more popular search engine.

Otherwise forums would then grow in size and power

 

[Simmo!]

I cannot see this becoming a important factor and they are still the more popular search engine.

Otherwise forums would then grow in size and power

Possible, although I would suggest that Google will use/look for the hAtom-reviews (or similar) microformat to determine "official" reviews, as well as carefully selecting which sites it uses. The use of microformats would rule out scurrious forum, blog and comment posting by unscrupulous competitors.

 

[Vladi]

Much ado about nothing for most people. From what I took from it, all google is doing is devaluing links that come from a source that is a bad review. So if a site has a majority of bad reviews then it will plummet because previously those links were counted. So unless that is you then its pretty much carry on and you won't notice a difference.

 

[lots0]

Goes back to site "Reputation" in google.

Ever since folks figured out links were google's golden goose, google has been going in the direction of domain "Reputation" to rank pages. This is just one more 'small' step in that direction... IMO.

And I agree, it is a good thing. (Plus my google traffic went up ~17.5% across the board, right after the algo tweak) ;D

Added... the eyeglasses guy was using black hat SEO to get those rankings... The bad reviews were just a part of the BH Strategy.