Did you know that SEO bloggers, like myself, are the reason you see fewer and less nuanced responses from Google Search reps? John Mueller from Google said so on Reddit, where he wrote, "Love the SEO news/bloggers, but it also means I can't reply to things with nuance publicly."
Of course, I, an SEO blogger, had to cover this. And I do not disagree.
John added, "SEO bloggers tend to take replies with nuance out of context and it sometimes results in 10x more time spent reacting to things than the initial reply took, so I try to focus on things that are a productive use of time, or reply in private where it helps those who asked directly, without needing to hedge it for the loud internet noises."
I mean, it make sense, sometimes I get things wrong - heck, I see other SEO bloggers sometimes getting it wrong too.
Here is what he fully posted after someone complained that his initial response came off "dismissive and disengeneous." John replied, "things got busy and this is quite a wall of text - I'll check it out in more detail on the weekend." He then went into it:
- SEO bloggers tend to take replies with nuance out of context and it sometimes results in 10x more time spent reacting to things than the initial reply took, so I try to focus on things that are a productive use of time, or reply in private where it helps those who asked directly, without needing to hedge it for the loud internet noises. For walls of text like yours, the taking-out-of-context is inevitable, and makes it almost impossible for me to react to. Love the SEO news/bloggers, but it also means I can't reply to things with nuance publicly. (People publish private replies sometimes too, so, hey, fewer responses all around.)
- We tend not to diagnose 3rd party site issues - if the site-owner can't really do something better / differently from a response, it's not that effective. I don't know if the sites here are yours; if so, that's easier.
- There are certainly edge cases where using the disavow tool makes sense, but conflating those edge cases with everything else does not make sense (see "nuance" above). If you're unsure whether your site is an edge case, then it's not an edge-case. The general question about disavow is whether it's worth the time to chase unhealthy links and neutralize them -- and that question is easy to answer with a no.
Just to be clear, in no way am I insulted by this statement or think it is wrong.
Forum discussion at Reddit.
