weeks - 3:36 pm on Aug 7, 2008 (gmt 0)

PageOneresults said:

If I were Google Engineering and had the task of minimizing the impact of automated software queries, I'm coming after this industry first! We have abused the tools made available to us 10,000 fold. I don't blame Google one bit for putting their foot down and closing that door. Too many clients are fixated on rankings. It's a volatile fixation! And, it turns into a volatile business relationship. If that is the type of environment you work in, more power to you and I'm not dissin' ya'. If it works for you, great.

Amen, pageoneresults!

Several have asked why would G do this? Whew, I thought this had been beat to death here at WW. Let's look at the basics.

In a nutshell, the primary purpose of a ranking tool would be for webmasters to use to tweak their web sites to rank against the software the search engine uses to list.

A web site is suppose work to serve the consumer/reader and the search engine is suppose to work to recognize that. A ranking tool works against that.

You don't want people to see now you are processing filters. If you have a naughty word filter on a blog, for example, you don't show the users exactly what words kicked it off--that would only help users find away around it.

I suppose it is possible white hat SEO pros might use these tools carefully, but I do not see now. I'm not an expert, however. But, G has obviously decided it's really not in their best interest to support it and I agree.