SEO Ethics: Which Hat To Wear - Considering the search engine factor
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How the search engines are viewed by the SEO is another important factor. Some SEOs consider the search engines to be their friends, while others view them as the mortal enemy. Still other optimization specialists consider the search engines to be either a necessary evil or just another tool in an overall Internet marketing program. It’s fairly easy to understand the reasons for each of these points of view.
For those people who see the search engines as friends, the SERPs are usually thought of as delivering what amounts to free customers. For minimal financial outlay, compared to most other Internet marketing efforts, a white hat optimized site can send paying customers directly from the free organic search results. These SEOs believe the search engines are, in fact, providing a free to the public service. For that reason, search engines are considered friends, to be helped by providing them with the best possible sites optimized within the search engine terms of service.
Other SEOs take a harder line on the search engines. Instead of thinking of them as good guys, they consider search engines almost as an enemy. They insist that search engines, instead of providing what are thought to be relevant search results, reward heavily spam and black hat sites with high rankings. Highly relevant sites, in direct terms of the search phrase, are pushed deep into the organic results. These SEOs argue that the search engine terms of service are merely a guideline that are not uniformly or fairly applied.
As a result of inadequate and spam filled SERPs, these SEOs believe the search engines are not fulfilling their stated goals and terms of service. Because of that failure on the part of the search algorithms to provide relevant spam free results, black hat SEOs believe there is no legal or moral obligation on the part of the SEO or the website owner to follow them either. In their opinion, if the search results reward bad sites, and by extension punish sites that follow the terms of service, the webmaster guidelines can be safely and honestly ignored.
Finally, in a third SEO practitioner opinion, the search engines are businesses like any other, and as such shouldn’t be thought of as entirely benevolent. The search algorithm is neither good nor bad, but is merely a computer program. The algorithm owes the website nothing, except to attempt to place the pages correctly in terms of search relevance.
Like any other business, these SEOs argue, use of their business and products requires the user to follow the business’s rules. In this case, the webmaster guidelines and terms of service are the business rules. In the same way that a restaurant can refuse service to patrons not wearing shirts or shoes, the search engines can deny listing at any time for violation of their rules of use.
Because of the wide range of opinions on the ethical aspects of search engines and their algorithms, the best policy is to consider the search engines as a business, with their terms of use like any other business. They set out their webmaster guidelines as well as their rules for use in their published terms of service. Violation of those business rules entitles the search engine to legally and morally remove an offending site. A search engine is under no legal or ethical obligation to index every Web page or even site on the Internet. Failure to comply with their rules gives them every right to penalize or remove an offending site.
In the same way that an unruly customer or shoplifter can be removed from the premises, or charged with a crime, the search engines can penalize websites. Because of this, it is important for the website owner to follow the rules as prescribed by the search engine as a business. If for no other reason than as insurance against penalties or banning, following the webmaster guidelines will keep a site from any problems with the search engine.
While it can be argued that the search engines don’t always police their search results very well, they do provide for a feedback option from webmasters. Reporting a spam laden site will often result in its removal. Unfortunately, those removals are often slow, and occasionally don’t happen, leaving the spam site high in the SERPs for weeks or even months.
There is little doubt that all of the major search engines have room for improvement in the area of spam site detection, penalties, and removal from the SERPs. That problem on their part doesn’t automatically translate to meaning a webmaster or SEO can violate the stated terms of service with impunity, however. Noticing an unpunished spam site doesn’t mean it can be duplicated freely, but simply that the search engine has not found and penalized it yet.
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