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syndic8.com Spam Backlish sends evil doers into feeding frenzy!

May 16th, 2005

I stumbled onto this opinion post about syndic8.com getting banned from Google because they accepted advertising and placed links to subdomains that contained thrid party content that some people perceived as spam.

Syndic8.com was the subject of a net backlash resulting in Google dropping syndic8.com to PageRank 0 from an 8.

For the record, syndic8 is back up to a PageRank 8 and it appears Google has accepted their apology (must be nice to brownose with the Googles :’>)

Here is an excerpt from an opinion post that prompted me to weigh in.

May 12, 2005

Post Title: Syndic8 on the hot seat for gaming search engines

Quote from TDavid:

“I’ve met Jeff Barr in person and he is a very nice, personable fellow. Nice or not, though — and I think Jeff would agree with this — he made a collosal business blunder here. It’s easy for the rest of us out here to be an armchair quarterbacks and I’m not trying to just pile onto a good guy with this one, but it bears repeating to webmasters reading this: do not try to game the search engines!”

“Read the Google guidelines and follow them. Do not let any advertising deal or scheme rope you, fellow webmasters, into something that smells fishy. When in doubt, make a blog post and ask what others think about the deal and if it would be kosher. Heck, I got taken a little bit to task over just making a freaking checkbox default checked (which is still under consideration for change, BTW), so you can bet people out there will offer opinions proactively — instead of reactively — to any questions one might have about the ethics of a given activity.”

Please read the full text Posted by Tdavid at the URL:
http://www.makeyougohmm.com/20050512/1850/

OK, here is what I have to say.

In my opinion I do not believe Jeff Barr of syndic8.com had any intenion of “gaming the search engines”.

I believe Jeff Barr made a business decision he thought would make him more money from advetising and that decision turned out NOT to be a good one. I’m confident that Jeff had no idea that this decision could get him banned from Google.

Please read Jeff’s post in his blog entitled:

I Was Really Stupid, and Greedy Too
URL: http://www.syndic8.com/~jeff/blog/index.php?p=214

I appreciate that Jeff is apologetic, however I am concerned that he is now running scared and will take less chances and be less innovative because he feels he will have to always look over his shoulder.

I haven’t studied what syndica8.com did specifically, so I can’t comment as to whether what he did was right or wrong. I suspect it was wrong or at least partially wrong…

I would like to respond to the avalanche of negative feelings sent his way and the varying opinions stated that seem to feel that any kind of search engine optimiztion, or the selling of advertising are evil practices and that offenders should be hung out to dry.

Google’s “guidelines” “TOS” “Rules”, whatever you call them, are vague and next to impossible to follow except in a very broad sense.

My interpretation is:

you better not do bad evil things or you’ll regret it.

A passage from their sacred TOS can be roughly translated as

“Ads should not be placed on pages with the intention of making money”

It’s not specific in any sense… not black or white - right or wrong. It’s intentionally vague and authoritative.

Google likes it this way because it makes everyone walk on their tip toes carefully and leaves their terms of service wide open to interpretation ( OR MISINTERPRETATION !!! )

“Better safe than sorry” many cautious and fearful webmasters say… better not put ANY links on a page, because some links are bad… better not try to make money on my site because making money and greed is bad…

Since when is showing ads and hoping they get clicked an evil thing??? Google does it – on every page of their site!

If you think about it – Google goes out to the net and borrows content – words, images, news stories, whatever – puts them on it’s web pages without permission and then slaps a bunch of advertisements on their pages so they can make billions of dollars.

Don’t get the wrong idea here – I am being sarcastic.
I believe Google has every right to do that.

Now, don’t we have the right to do that as well, or only allow the right to Google.

Whatever happened to the original spirit of the net? People exploring, expressing, creating and interacting with others in a whole new way.

Suddenly the web is overpopulated with sour grapes, jealous losers, tattle tales and complaining whiners.

Am I complaining :’> Er, sorry!

For some twisted reason it has become fun for some bottom dwellers to be the evil lurker in a forum and make people feel bad. Fun for some people to write blogs criticizing others and calling out for a lynching without even a trial. Negative vibes emmanate all over the net.

What ever happened to KARMA?

do something NICE and something nice will happen to you…

Do unto your neighbors… blah blah.

If you don’t have anything nice to say…

Why can’t we just get along???

Why is it that so many people enjoy other people’s misery? They enjoy it so much that they even go to great lengths to make other people feel miserable.

And if you are successful like Jeff Barr from syndic8 - look out… there are likely people gunning for you… waiting for you to “game the search engines” so they can start a backlash…

I have learned to stay away from discussions in forums and such, because it never fails, there is always someone quick to jump in and spread the negativity. Serve up hostility. They enjoy it.

Why does it make people feel so good to make other people feel so bad?

That should be in the “guidelines” someone. BE NICE TO OTHERS.

Back to what is good conduct in the eyes of almighty Google…

Google does not make public their “rules and regulations” other than to paint a broad picture that anything bad isn’t good so don’t do it.

If you at all think about WHY you are doing something, it probably is evil.

That’s what I get from the TOS at Google.

I’m not saying that what syndic8 did was good, right or proper. I didn’t see it with my own eyes and from my point of view the DNS redirection part with subdomains was obviously not smart.

They could have made more ad money in a more legitimate way I am sure, BUT since when do webmasters have to ask their visiting public what is OK and what is not OK to do on the websites???

Do we have to ask permission if it is OK before we make decisions like what kind of ads to place on our sites, or whether we should do so at all?

Just because someone makes money or as people put it “they took the money”, doesn’t make it bad or evil… Google takes the money like crazy… are they bad? They run ads up the ying yang and even make the advertisers bid on terms so that they have to pay $75. a click for “lung cancer cure” or whatever…

Sure, we’d have more “feel good” moments if all those evil doing net business people did this thing for free, or donated all profits to save the whales, but hey - this here is the USA!

We do things to make money so our quality of life improves and we have more toys to play with, right???

Is Google unethical for putting ads on all their pages? Are they evil for charging $75. a click to customers willing to pay it?

No, they’re just doing business. They simply wanna make their stockholders shit loads of cash… that’s not evil… it’s just being Google.

But dare any other less God like web businesses try to make a buck… look out!

If great web sites like syndic8 are to remain valuable resources, it is reasonable to expect that they will be a “business” and do things to “make a profit”. Not underhanded unethical things, but hey – occasionally they may run an ad that offends us or doesn’t seem like it belongs… so what?

Is placing an ad for HOT CHOCOLATE when it is not a hot chocolate themed web site acceptable???

Other times it may be making “business decisions” for things like ad placement… placing ads where they make more money from people clicking more often. That isn’t gaming is it…

Running a popular web site is a business and somebody has to pay the bills - unless they make the site suck so bad it isn’t fun to visit - why complain about how they make money???

It’s OK to make money on the web, right???

I can hear a few of you saying… “it’s not OK to make money IF…” IF is subjective. As long as it is legal, let’s not be so quick to judge. If you don’t like what a site is doing – don’t visit that site.

Please don’t think I condone spam or evil practices in any manner - I do NOT! But instead of starting a web backlash and running off tattling to Google, why not reach out to the web site and let them know you’re disappointed in something before you go and crucify them.

I just don’t get it when people are so eager and HAPPY to stomp on other people and point the finger at them and say things like they are EVIL for wanting to make money.

I say – worry more about what you are doing and pay less attention to the way you want other people to live their lives and run their businesses.

OK. Did I piss anyone off out there??? NO??? GOOD!!!

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Entry Filed under: Online Marketing Advertising & SEO