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Yesterday, the SEO community went nuts after they learned about a Norwegian AdWords blog post announcing that Googlers will be providing site clinics to help webmasters on the SEO front. You can read the translated version over here.
Yes, it is weird that an AdWords blog is talking about SEO site clinics. But it is not like Google is offering SEO services, where they provide link building services, make changes to your web site, give detailed site audits and you are paying for it. Google is basically offering best practice advice, which they do every day in their Google Webmaster Help forums, which comes in many languages.
They have offered live chat events, they come to conferences, they have webmaster tools and more. They haven't done detailed site clinics like this in the past, but this is far from SEO services in my opinion.
Matt and Danny put together a nice history on Google helping with SEO. It may be worth a look.
In fact, I actually was emailed or saw a forum thread on this a while back. I forgot exactly why I did not cover it, but to me, this did not seem like such a big deal.
Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums, Sphinn.
