The New York Times published a very interesting (and very long) article over the holiday break that raises a lot of questions about Google and search in general. I’ll let you read the 8-page story yourself if you want all the details, but what it boils down to is that Google doesn’t always point you to the best possible results. 

Do you think Google’s results need improvement? Share your thoughts here.

Some of you probably don’t need an 8-page article to tell you that, but this story in particular paints a picture of a business that goes out of its way to treat customers poorly so that they’ll leave negative comments, which have (in the past) worked to boost its visibility on Google, as the search engine has given more focus to local businesses. It sounds crazy, but it has apparently worked, though since the story brought exposure to it, Google appears to have dropped the rankings in this instance. The point is that there is no telling how widespread this kind of thing is  - not businesses intentionally treating customers poorly for search visibility (though I’m sure this one business isn’t the only one to engage in such behavior), but just Google giving undeserved visibility to businesses that get more bad reviews than good. 

Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan, who was tapped as a source for the NYT piece, provides a great deal of further analysis on Google’s practices here. 

"Having seen the crazy things that Google will rank high over time, it’s easy to become jaded and think ‘that’s the way it is,’ he writes. "Many SEOs I know feel this way and have largely given up assuming anything will change, or that Google will take the SEO view of its ranking problems seriously. Heck, Google still won’t let people look up all the backlinks leading to a site, which might allow outsiders to do a better job helping them police their results."

This is one of the key selling points of Blekko, the new search engine to the party, which both lets people look up said backlinks and relies on community to establish relevancy. See our interview with Blekko co-founder Rich Skrenta here:

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"It’s all stuff that can be dismissed as ‘inside baseball’ and not what typical people care about," Sullivan added. "But typical people do care, do get puzzled…what Google ranks tops can have a terrible impact on real consumers."

This is true to some extent. If Google places the bad results over the good ones (and as Sullivan points out, Bing is no better at this than Google, and Bing provides results for Yahoo now), and consumers are duped into going with those results, it is those consumers who will pay the price. 

Buyer Beware

However, it is ultimately the user’s responsibility to use their own judgment and do their homework before making any decisions or suffer the consequences. As Jeff Jarvis at Buzz Machine says, " The internet doesn’t nullify the First Law of Commerce: caveat emptor. When I had my now-legendary problems with Dell, I kicked myself for not doing a search of ‘dell sucks’ before buying my computer. That’s my responsibility as a shopper. And, as I pointed out at the time, Google would have given me the information I needed."

There’s something to be said for this kind of consumer investigating. The information is out there. It’s up to you how you go about getting it, which is why social media has become an important go-to channel for trusted results. You can just as easily get poor results from social media, but you define who your friends are and what their opinions mean to you. 

Google and other search engines know this of course. It’s why Bing made a deal for Facebook results. In fact, it’s why Google recently launched a social recommendation engine (Hotpot) directly tied to local listings.

It’s not as if Google isn’t trying to overcome this problem. Google knows it’s not perfect. The problem with that recommendation engine is that it’s not where consumers’ friends already are. That’s why Facebook is such a key component to this whole thing, and that’s why Facebook in turn is a direct competitor to Google and why Google is trying desperately to build consumers’ social graphs on their own properties. 

It’s Ultimately in Users’ Hands

If users want Google to be their way of finding trusted information, it’s in their interest to build their social graphs through Google. For Google’s part, it’s a matter of a. getting customers to realize that, and b. getting users to care that much about Google being the place where they get their info. There are plenty of people out there that would just as soon go elsewhere, and plenty that simply don’t trust Google. 

Neither of these are easy tasks, and this bodes well for Facebook, which continues to get integrated into more of consumers daily habits. 

The trust that comes with social and human curation is important across the entire search board. It applies to shopping. It applies to news. It applies to information in general. As the web continues to grow, so to will the importance of knowing who to trust. That means real relationships (social media), and as far as search is concerned, that means access to those relationships. 

This is why social is critical to Google, and why search will continue to become more important to Facebook. It’s also why Twitter (along with Twitter search) is such an effective news medium.

Do you think social adds relevance? Tell us what you think in the comments.

What is the difference between Grey and White Hat SEO?

White hat seo is using ethical SEO techniques to rank your website high in the search engines – techniques which search engines themselves recommend.

Grey hat techniques are boarder line techniques used to get high rankings – many of the times they are not ethical techniques but the search engines can not really penalize you for this – Lets have a look at an example.

lets say you have a website and published a couple of articles – Now its no secret that backlinking to these articles on your website will help boost your rankings – however too much backlinking can get you penalized. so you will need to do this moderatly which will take time.

Now lets have a look at a grey hat technique.

You publish your articles on ezine article directory or goarticles – Now everyone knows that google or other search engines will not be penalizing such high authority sites as they have much trust.

To get good exposure for your articles and to push them up to the top of the search engines you can point as many backlinks to these articles as you like without risking a penalty – your article will boost up on the search engines much faster and you dont have any risk attached.

Building backlinks at such a high pace will get you sandboxed or penalized but not if you are using other sites to point the backlinks to.

hope this makes sense

I would like to do work at home. Thing is many people are looking for SEO type work. I know a bit have done SEO article writing and some backlinks the old fashioned white hat way as they say. Can anyone help me on what skills I need? Im a Psychology grad so not that techie. I normally source my job offers at Craigslist and Odesk if this helps. Hope anyone can help my out. Thank you!

To be good at SEO and to enjoy doing it all day, day after day, month after month, year after year from your home office with just a pet or two around for company the majority of the time, you need to be a lover of words.

For people who love writing, playing with words, making equations out of words, juxtaposing words, and making up words, search engines are like the ultimate playgrounds. Search engines algorithms are all about words–words on websites and keyword searches–and we SEOs spend large portions of out time keeping up to date on how the algorithms may be changing and what words need to be changed or added to a client’s site in order to advance up the rankings for keyword searches.

And speaking of clients, you’ve got to love them too–and you have to love selling to them because the best SEO in the world can’t be an SEO if he or she isn’t making money at it. If you can’t sell yourself and your skills to a client, you’ve got to at least sell them to an employer who will pay you to do SEO tasks for them. You’ve got to be a good business person to be an individual SEO consultant or agency.

As far as all the other stuff, reading blogs (as Jason mentions) (How’s it going Jason?), on-page and off-page stuff, web page programming, backlinks, etc., you’ll pick that up as you go if you really enjoy the work and you’re smart.

SEO ain’t the sexiest job in the world and it may not always be the most fun but if you are great at playing with words, few other jobs can match it.

http://stewartmedia.biz/myblog/ or http://twitter.com/jimboot – Taking SEO questions from the Twitterverse. Domains & SEO stuff to do before the site goes live.

Duration : 0:9:56

http://www.makecashnow.biz Article review of Search Engine Optimization Strategies (SEO) Part 1 – Incoming Links. Create incoming links to your website by Buying Links, Directories, Press Releases, Forums, Writing Articles, and Creating a Blog. Covered tips include: marketing, search engine optimization strategies, SEO, SEO Tips and Strategies, SEO Tips, SEO Strategies, Search Engine Optimization, website optimization, optimization, SEO Optimization, Page Rank, Google Toolbar, and backlinks.

Duration : 0:4:39

http://www.AttractionListBuilding.com
Franco Gonzalez shares free training on how to combine social media marketing, content syndication, blogging with wordpress and search engine optimzation to generate FREE targeted traffic, create internet social buzz and dominate the conversation in YOUR niche to get more traffic, build a bigger list and following and make more money.

Free Internet marketing Training:

http://www.AttractionListBuilding.com

http://www.GlobalCashflowSystems.com

Duration : 0:5:8