Fantomas - Search Result Hand Jobs: The SEO Implications

Analysis of the role Google raters may have in Google's search engine results:
Search Result Hand Jobs: The SEO Implications

Webmaster World - More Details on Google's Human Evaluators

Interesting Webmaster World thread on Google's human evaluators and how this affects the search engine results for SEOs:
More Details on Google's Human Evaluators
I'm also including a link to Google's blog with a post about Google's use of evaluators:
Search evaluation at Google

Dave Naylor Blog - Are Blogs a waste of time in Google now

Discussion about blogs and how they are faring from the link wars in Google search engine results:
Are Blogs a waste of time in Google now

High Rankings Advisor - Measuring Success Beyond the Search Engines

Good article by Jill Whalen covering specifics of Google Analytics and Google Webmaster tools. This is one of my favorite tools, you don't see enough articles covering Google Analytics and Webmaster tools so this is refreshing to see:
Measuring Success Beyond the Search Engines

Johnon.com - Google Barters Backlinks to Show The Way

Good article I missed a while back on the nofollow debate and how Google is using posters to their help forums to help themselves:
Google Barters Backlinks to Show The Way

SEOMoz - White Hat Cloaking: It Exists. It's Permitted. It's Useful.

Interesting post and discussion about the levels of cloaking and Google's response to cloaking. Matt Cutts gets involved in the discussion as well:
White Hat Cloaking: It Exists. It's Permitted. It's Useful.

Graywolf Blog - Google’s Two Tiered Internet World Sinks to a New Low

Another debate on the Graywolf blog. This one centers on the new Google Trends for Websites tool showing your visitor trends compared to your competitors. This is a touchy subject for business owners and the fact that Google websites are not included in the information has made it even more controversial:
Google’s Two Tiered Internet World Sinks to a New Low

Stone Temple Consulting - Matt Cutts Interviewed by Eric Enge

Interesting interview with Matt Cutts with some info on what he views as reasonable linking techniques:
Matt Cutts Interviewed by Eric Enge

WebmasterWorld Supporters Forum - Significant Traffic Declines For Short Search Terms

Good thread on changes in Google for short term searches, the suggestion is that longer keyword phrases will work better compared to two keyword phrases (paid supporters forum):
Significant Traffic Declines For Short Search Terms

Smackdown - Sitelinks at #60 - A Warning Shot From Google

Very interesting Google info shared here relating to a -60 penalty for paid links in Google's search results:
Sitelinks at #60 - A Warning Shot From Google

Google Webmaster Central Blog - Best Practices When Moving Your Site

Post covers Google's best practices for moving your website, some helpful tips included here:
Best Practices When Moving Your Site

Search Engine Land - Google Hiring Investigator / Threat Analyst For Safety & Security

Barry Schwartz has a very interesting post at Search Engine Land about a new job position at Google which may entail some online reputation management:
Google Hiring Investigator / Threat Analyst For Safety & Security

Search Engine Roundtable - Google Declares War on Paid Links: But Why Now?

Extensive list of discussions about Google's Paid Links strategies. One of the newest changes is that Google is disallowing AdWords ads that mention selling PageRank:
Search Engine Roundtable - Google Declares War on Paid Links: But Why Now?

Search Engine Guide - Search Engine Guide Publisher Responds to PageRank Drop

Robert Clough's article about Search Engine Guide's recent Google PageRank drop and discussion on paid ads. Search Engine Guide has been around long before Google was created and is a great resource for small businesses.

Search Engine Guide - Search Engine Guide Publisher Responds to PageRank Drop

Search Engine Guide: NoFollow is for Blog Spam...

Comprehensive series on Google's no follow rules and paid links from searchengineguide's Jennifer Laycock.

NoFollow is for Blog Spam...no Paid Text Links, wait...Paid Ads...Aww Heck, Just Stop Linking and Let Calacanis Decide the Rankings

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Google's Paid Link Crisis

I remember when I worked at O'Reilly and Associates as their in-house SEO many years ago I found out about this new search engine called Google. Most companies didn't know what SEO was and they certainly had never heard of Google search engine back then. When I discovered Google's new search engine I had a gut feeling they were going to be big so I made sure O'Reilly's pages were submitted early on back in the day of search engine submissions.

In the late 1990's things were simple. A link was a link. In fact, links were around long before Google ever was born. Too bad Google doesn't remember this. In fact webmasters linked to each other with no concern because they wanted to link to each other. Webmasters saw a great article they liked and linked to it. Webmasters even sold ads because it was their website and they were trying to make a profit. Pretty simple concept.

Google's crisis is the PageRank icon they created. Not so simple to tear down now apparently. They created it but can't control it. The world wide web is a growing entity. New ideas, new methods of providing users information and making a living off the web has been changing with the times. Google's initial idea of using link popularity to rank was built into their algorithm and the other search engines followed the leader.

And here we are today with Google deciding webmasters can't use paid links to make a living while Google makes its living from paid links. Its a sad statement really. From the beginning Google was focused on the search engine user. Things have changed. The reality is it is too difficult for Google to tell which ads are paid and which are not unless they use human evaluation. Imagine the number of pages they would have to evaluate manually. As webmasters and SEO's become more clever about linking its just going to get worse trying to detect paid links. Detecting paid links is not easy now, much less when paid links go underground.

My advice to Google is to share the wealth with folks trying to make a living on the web. Considering the web was around before Google appeared it seems like the user friendly thing to do.

Search Engine Land - The Big Paid Link Debate Roundup

List of discussions about Google's paid link crusade:
The Big Paid Link Debate Roundup

Forbes article: Google Purges The Payola

This article from Forbes quotes a number of SEM industry professionals about Google vs paid links. What I found most interesting is at the end of the article the Ask representative talks about the specific difference in how the Ask algorithm evaluates links compared to Google:
Google Purges The Payola

14th Colony Web Development blog: Google plexed over link buying

Well written post on the Google Paid Links debate. Matt Cutts spoke at the recent San Jose SES and again addressed this issue. To me it seems strange for an independent business to tell another an independent business what to do. Paid links from online websites have nothing to do with the organic search engine results in Google. Link building, yes; paid links, no.

Google plexed over link buying

Google Webmaster blog: Supplemental goes mainstream

Results labels on Google supplemental pages are being eliminated.

Supplemental goes mainstream