steerpikegg - 8:29 am on Apr 13, 2011 (gmt 0)

After this most recent update, I'm wondering if there is any future or point to Google's webmaster guidelines.

For many years now, I for one have stifled my creativity and the way my site has evolved due to fear of violating these unofficial laws of the internet laid down by Google. In the end, it has got me absolutely nowhere seeming like the further I followed the rules, the further my rankings slipped.

Back in the old days, designing and running a website was a fun and exciting thing to do - you could link to whom you liked, put what you liked on your pages and all without some sword hanging over your head all the time.

Now I know that things have moved on from then and there are a lot more bad guys around, but as a designer I absolutely hate being told what to do. The web has become a very, very boring place due to this fear of being creative and how Google may penalise you for anything they don't like.

Google have based their whole ranking system on who links to your site with one hand, and on the other they are constantly driving home about not passing PR meaning that practially every webmaster I know automatically nofollows every link by default. They have taken every aspect of the web and twisted it to their own ends and this makes me mad.

If following these guidelines rigidly has gotten most people nowhere at all, what is the point in having them - why should we bother when Google don't?