Whitey - 4:46 am on Jan 23, 2012 (gmt 0)

There's being proactive, then there's being proactive without a direction

There's being commercial, then there's being "moral" and then the balance of the two. Google surely possess' a responsibility with it's acquired power to manage this with a duty of care and consideration.

What's preventing Google from providing precise guidelines and samples before they implement a disruption, with sufficient time to remedy sites, rather than creating chaos with action and vague statements, which seem intended to "divide and conquer". With such power, Google surely has an increased duty of care.

Here's my suggestion. In WMT implement a content review system for subscribing websites stating the failure of sites to meet basic design standards, and then provide actual examples, both visual and written of those precise guidelines. Something around this could be built.

Probably the response here would be that the algorithmn isn't perfect in the human editorial sense, and it would leave Google vulnerable to proven contention when loss could be proven [ highly unlikely to be achieved ]. But at least a step in this direction would seem reasonable.