whitenight - 4:26 pm on Aug 16, 2008 (gmt 0)

Disclaimer: I don't personally use WPG. I care because of the principle of the matter

graywolf, whitenight, it's not spin at all.

By definition, everything is "spin". It just a matter of how much and for whom, to whom

MC,
if there's a Goog heaven you'll definitely make it. :P

As always, my gripe with how you handle things is the basic flaw in the understanding of YOUR relationship to US (webmasters)

Mr. Schmidt was on MadMoney the other day swooning over his love of CONTENT PROVIDERS. And then goes on to mention the NYT as an example?! What?!

Do you guys at the plex still not realize WEBMASTERS/SEOs are both your source AND your customers?!
And I'm talking about the same webmasters who think they need WPG to check their rankings every 4 hours...
THOSE are the webmasters writing topics on boring, obscure, silly, or unique content (read - not national news, gossip, or sports) that makes YOUR company so profitable.

I can seriously get updates on the War, Paris Hilton, and Yankees scores ANYWHERE. And rest assured, people NEVER needed Google for that.

What YOUR CUSTOMERS do need Google for, is the new page some smart SEO just wrote that people keep looking for information on, while Google keeps feeding up broad, unsatisfactory, or off-topic pages from Wiki, Answers.com (more scraped content), or A NYT article from 3 years ago.

It's the SEO community that's going to write the most comprehensive, thorough, user-friendly, etc page on any given subject precisely because we know what BOTH Goog wants and the CUSTOMERS want.
(and yes, most small time webmasters are going to CHECK if that page is ranking)

When are you guys over there, going to realize this?!...

And start working WITH US, to "make the world a better place" (quoting Mr. Schimdt) instead of perceiving every SEO activity as a "threat to your business model"

It's Neanderthal thinking (every Goog employee should be required to read Ken Wilber's work). Google itself works as an advanced-form of business BUT THEN you make the ultimately fatal mistake of slipping back into US vs. THEM thinking with everyone outside of Goog.