GoogleGuy - 5:48 am on Jun 12, 2003 (gmt 0)

Q: Does Google like honest SEO's or would you prefer there not be any?
Q: What do you think about SEO? Do you think there will be a room for SEO in future WWW world?

A: I think that there will always be a need for consultants that help site owners make their site more useful for surfers and search engines. That might include advice on site architecture, explaining what sort of pages would be crawlable by search engines, or giving help on the copy on a site. Lately, I also see more SEOs broadening their offerings by managing PPC for clients as well.

I think the thing that *doesn’t* work well is when an SEO gives bad advice, or does things well outside quality guidelines from search engines, or takes advantage of their client’s lack of knowledge. That happens less than it used to, but sadly it still happens pretty often. For example, earlier today our hidden text algorithms detected a spam network run by a really bad SEO. There was hidden text stuffed at the bottom of the page, and hidden links to old-style doorway pages. There was proof that the SEO did rank checking on Google; basically this company was breaking almost every guideline you can imagine. The really nasty part is that unknown to their clients, the SEO also inserted 7-8 hidden links back to the SEO, so roughly half the PageRank that each customer had earned was getting routed to the SEO! Because the SEO put hidden text, hidden links, and doorway pages on their clients’ pages, the clients may have temporary trouble now. That SEO has basically shot their credibility with both Google and all of their customers. That’s the stuff that we really hate to see. You see that happen less often than it used to, but unfortunately it does still happen sometimes.