Google has certainly become a major voice in the SEO community but I don't think the criticisms levelled at Google are valid. SEOs ultimately determine who they will listen to.

Ethical SEO does need to take each search engine's guidelines into consideration because violating those guidelines puts a site at risk.

That doesn't mean the guidelines define SEO ethics, however. It just means you have to respect the boundaries set by those services whose resources you use for your own gain.

There are different definitions of ethics. Kant defines ethics by motive: anything with the motive to hurt other people is bad. Anything done with the motive to do good to yourself or others without hurting others or yourself is good. The result should, according to Kant, not be taken into account.

From that basis, ethical SEO does not take google's opinion into account at all, because it doesn't focus on results. It does take into account motive.

Other philosophers (about whom I haven't just had a lecture) do take the effect of action as a measure of right and wrong. If the effect of SEO is to put a site on top that doesn't belong there (spam or something) - that would be bad. But putting a legitimate, informative website on top of the serps through link-buying doesn't hurt anybody - and therefor can't be considered 'bad' or 'illegal'. Because Google really is not God or the government. To that extent The Shower Scene is absolutely right.

Google doesn't determine right from wrong - we do, with our own conscience.

It sickens me to see people discussing such issues as link baiting from a prospective of ethics. Since when do we let a company like Google decide for us what is ethical? There are obvious ethical issues with everything we do, but Google is not the entity that we look to for guidance.

"... and therefor can't be considered 'bad' or 'illegal'. Because Google really is not God or the government."

Wrong. It's Google's search engine. Just as they have no right to dictate what we do with our sites, we have no right to dictate what they do with theirs.

They just happen to run a search engine, and if they want to say that buying links to improve results in their search engine is unacceptable, that's their business.

We can easily -- as Webmasters and searchers -- take Google out of our personal pictures any time we want to.

Search engines are not the Internet. They are not a collective where we each have our own space inside a larger communal space. They are Web sites, nothing more, and they have all the rights and prerogatives that any other Web sites have.

Adam's already doing a great job on that thread, but it is frustrating that I don't have a chance to do everything I'd like to do. If I've only got limited time, I could spend that discussing something or a forum, or try to write on a new topic (malware, Stephen Colbert, robots.txt crawl-delay and why we don't support it).

annej, regarding the -950 thing, I'd watch this video I made: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4814548594071648913#1m42s
Starting around 1:42 into the video is where I talk about this.

My problem is the lack of definition when they throw "warnings" out to the public.

WHAT is a paid link? Anybody?

Leaving those things undefined plus add to comments elsewhere that imply what could be meant or not does nothing else than heating up the debate and people have to assume the worst. This is most of the time not what comes out of it, but sometimes it does.

The original poster got a few facts wrong.

First,

"On Matt Cutts blog and the official Google forums you are not. Google controls the dialogue and the outcomes of the discussions. "

Google Groups Webmaster Help is a zoo. One frequent poster is an outright racist for crying out loud and another poster bashes Google every chance he gets. But guess what? Neither of them are banned and most of their posts are left untouched.

"When was the last time GoogleGuy or the other representatives did something on the webmaster forums to help or answer questions?"

Matt Cutts is GoogleGuy.

A well-written, emotionally charged rant, but a rant built on sand.

90% of all websites I looked at where the owner claims Google is the problem I find things that prove otherwise. For example, owner of resist inc posted in GGWH:

"We have reviewed the webmaster guidelines and cannot think of how we might have vioated any of them."

When I went to the site, I found they've been hacked, with hidden links to stuff like “brewster ny honda”, “drawn horse”, “yahoo game back door,” “hip hop cartel”, and “bronx bankruptcy lawyer” (for more info, just google resistinc)

Moral of the story: Webmasters need to take responsibility for their own sites and stop wasting energy on things that are beyond their control.

Hi Matt,

Wimbledon is coming up in a few weeks and as an owner of fan site
http://www.murraysworld.com this is the time of year I get all my new
members. In the last month I have suffered a sudden drop into 40-50
results, I'm so upset and if this remains through Wimbledon I'm going
to be so depressed :(

I keep sending re-inclusion requests as I did notice and remove
excessive H1 usage, the use of display:none and paid links but I still
haven't be unpenalised. None of this was intentionally deceptive, I'm
an honest author.

Even when I search my domain on Google it isn't on the front page,
this is so depressing. And it means absolute nothing that Yahoo, Ask,
Altavista have me as no1 as I survive off Google.

I beg you to please allow me to enjoy my favourite time of the year
for my website! :(

Mark, I wish I had time to chat with each webmaster and give personalized advice, but I really don't. That's part of the idea of the webmaster help group -- to let peers give suggestions.

That peer group can be really helpful. For example, suppose that in April you had a bunch of links at the bottom of your page that looked like "Online Loan | Santa Cruz Hotels | Xbox Mod Chip | Home Loan | Mobile Phones " or "Bad Credit Mortgages | Afvallen | Problem Remortgage | Mortgage | Myspace Layouts". Linking to bad neighborhoods or spammy sites can affect your site's reputation. So the webmaster help group might look at your site and say "Hey, why not remove that link co-op stuff and then do a reinclusion request that says 'In case this was a factor, I'm no longer participating in this co-op link exchange and linking sites like this from my root page.' That might do it."

It's a helpful group, and you can often get actionable advice from it.

Mark,
You don't need to do re-inclusion requests for your domain, it's already in the index. Type in site:http://www.murraysworld.com into Google's search box and you'll see your pages are there. Reinclusion requests don't have a thing to do with where your rank in Google.

Where you show up on the results depends on how you optimize your website. As Matt pointed out - that's what the groups are good at helping you with.

~Li

Heh, I was following Marks site at google groups. I think Mr Cutts is saying in a round about way that he should have said about the dp co script. Mark you were not so truthful but to be honest most sites in the co op still rock, so if that is the case it is not fair picking on a few. Should take them all out.

Hey Li

Matt might come back on this, but to the best of my knowledge Google has said that the re-inclusion request can be used in any circumstance where a site has breached the guidelines and suffered a penalty for same. Not just for an outright ban.

Oops, I just noticed that Matt implicitly mentioned this is his last comment here :)

As a regular reader of Google Webmaster Help Group, I have to say a TON of great people are there and help out daily. The real value lies in the fact that actual sites and URLs are not discouraged but almost required to get opinions. Many, many site owners have been helped there.

Of course, full disclosure of what was being done prior to coming in for help is key, as we don't have those wonderful tools that Matt Cutts does.

Hi Matt,

Thank you so much for replying to me. At the time I signed up with those guys, I honestly did not realise it was some sinister scheme that Google would have a problem with. They simply posed as company wanting to advertise on my site.

However after being penalised back a month ago, those paid links were removed and I mentioned in the re-inclusion request (which is entirely appropriate in this situation Li Evans) that I had paid links that did not have rel="nofollow".

Maybe now with this discovery, I should put a re-inclusion request in saying I was in some horrible co-op scheme.

Thanks a lot!

Regarding the reinclussion requests for penalized as well as banned sites. Adam Lasnik addressed that officially on the GWHG on 11/29/06. We've documented it on the groups collaborative effort to do just that sort of thing:

http://webmastershelp.iblogget.com/2007/03/09/reinclussion-requests/

I just sent in a new re-inclusion request thanks to Matt's advice. If all goes well, I will be unpenalised in time for Wimbledon :)

"Dear Google,

In my ignorance I accepted a request from the Marketing Manager of ztmc.com wanting to do some DigitalPoint co-op link exchange scheme on my website but at the time fooled me into thinking it was a legitimate way of their company just advertising on my site.

Under their advisement and to the best of my memory, I uploaded files ad_network_274.php, ad_network_ads_272.txt and display.php to the root of my website and forum. I then placed in every page of my entire site so that the ads would display.

If this form of advertising was a factor in me getting penalised then you should know I no longer participate in this co-op link exchange and no longer have their ads on any of my pages including the root page.

I have learnt my lesson and as an honest author I will never participate in such schemes again and will never sell links that can affect SERPS.

Sincere apologies for breaching the Google guidelines.

Kind Regards,

Mark S."

Mark, thanks for the update. I'll ask someone to check into the status of your reinclusion request.

Wow, I'm shocked. Thank you a million!

My site has been unpenalised!

Thank you so much Matt.

I'm just too lucky with this. First time some random end user has been fast tracked maybe? :)

Hi Matt, I am new to this business to i need a little help. Being a young lad i think i made some school boy errors and now my site has been give a penalty. I think this was due to a common mispellings section i placed on the site. Now i have removed it along with any links from my site and any link pages as i have been reading that could be bad. I really dont know what to do as i have filed for reinclusion but im going into my 3 weeks without any income.
Can you help!!!

PS my email address is info@lucasint.co.uk and the URL http://www.thephonenetwork.co.uk

I would also like to say the only reason why the common mispelling section was on there was due to a stomperNet Video i watched. Now i have dropped out of site on Google and business is almost gone along with my wast line. HELP!
http://www.thephonenetwork.co.uk

Samuel, I suggest you start a thread at http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help-Indexing/

I have started a thred and have filed a reinclusion requestion but there seem to be many people with their own agendas who seem to contradict each other that i need someone that can really help me. This is my bread and butter and what i live off. If Matt or someone could help i would be most thankful but if not i understand and sorry for taking up your blog space

>I'm just too lucky with this. First time some random end user has been fast tracked maybe

Mark, actually every Google person I've ever dealt with one on one has gone above and beyond to do the right thing especially Matt. While I disagree with many of the decisions the company as whole makes and the direction they are moving in, you do have to give them credit for getting involved and not sitting in the googleplex tower.

yes it's really me, and no I haven't been drinking.

why doesn't google consider bizrate.com and shopzilla.com in the duplicate content domain?

Man, I could really use some advice like that Matt... and that's a pretty darn fast re-inclusion Mark!

Grats on the re-inclusion Mark. A couple of my websites are severly penalised to the point where they don't rank on the SERP for their domain names, same as yours :(

Google could work on that.... I got my adsense account canceled without reason before... they also have some issues working with firefox now... that's why they made google chrome? not really sure why!

David,

http://davidbeking.com