Miscomprehension

[gothwalk]

Originally published at Now Is A Long Time Too. You can comment here or there.

There’s a story on SEOmoz at the moment, detailing how an “upper member of regional management” in a radio company told employees that:

if you want your page to show up in Google, you need to pay, say, $30 to be listed on maybe the 200th page, but you can increase your bid and show up on the 7th or 8th page, and you can pay even more to show up on the first page of results.

Good gods. And this guy’s company have a “partnership with Google”. Now, chances are, given this guy’s comprehension of how search engines work, that the partnership consists of carrying Adsense ads on the company website, but even so… the level of sheer misunderstanding that’s in there is unbelievable.

I know, at some level, that this is one more manifestation of the news-reporters-know-nothing-about-my-area phenomenon. This is the one where, when there’s a news report on your area of expertise, you cringe and shout at the TV, “that’s not how it is, you idiots!”, but then in the next report, they’re talking about someone else’s area, and you’re going, “well, it’s on the news, it must be true”.

The thing that bugs me is that if this guy - and the newsreader - can get things so utterly wrong about areas they’re not familiar enough with, it follows that I must be, on a near daily basis, producing statements that are so far from being accurate that they’re out of sight. And I don’t know. I try hard to be accurate in everything I say. So, uh, if I’m spouting bullshit on something (aside from the times I’m winding someone up, mind, in which case you’ll just spoil the joke), could you do me a favour and call me on it?

Comments

[aidian.livejournal.com]

uh, you know, 99% of SEOblog stuff is utter bullshit, cap'n. it's pyamid schemes and pump n'dump and plagarism and spam and amway all rolled up into one. don't misunderstand me - there's nothing wrong with setting up a nice site and making bucks off of it, and even telling others how you did it, yeah, fine.

but the trend of setting up sites to make money by talking about making on blogs while stealing content and regurgitating information that's useless or downright damaging, unethical, or just plain bad - that trend is vile and disgusting. and it's everywhere. it's the same assholes that pimp themselves out in "motivational seminars" and crap like that(patrick swayze in "donny darko", anyone?)

i'll hop on over and smack you one if you get into that bad place, ok? :)

[gothwalk.livejournal.com]

Do that. Although I think 99% is a bit strong - the black hat stuff is a small part of the over SEO scene. There are plenty of SEO blogs that are good, white hat stuff. Jill Whalen, Matt Cutts (hell, he's in Google's anti-SE-spam division), people like that.

[aidian.livejournal.com]

hyperboly is an art, of course ;)

that being siad, i find all too frequently that even when it isn't strictly a "black-hat" type of operation, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. on another note, though, i do have to say that i like it when you write about blogging. you're sincere, not obviously just scrounging for a buck. i appreciate that quite a bit. it also helps that you're a good writer. i think i'm discovering personally that i'm really not as great a writer as others have lead me to believe; as a result, i'm coming to value good writing all the more.

[mollydot.livejournal.com]

That sounds like libel. I wonder are google following up?

[sares2000.livejournal.com]

A lot of financial news is total nonsense.