irishsolar - 11:02 am on Apr 26, 2012 (gmt 0)

Nope, its a Google fail.

They seem to be failing a lot because this is happening across all niches and SERPs. The site I mention is not an isolated case.....not even for the same search term.

Structure, coding and the rest help Google in correctly understanding the content. That's SEO, Google style.

Not until recently. Like it or not Google's algorithm was built on counting backlinks. Everything else has been added to that framework.

IMO now that they have messed with the fundamentals of how their search engine works everything has went haywire.

Paid, swapped or otherwise built links not legitimate ways to get pages to rank, according to G.

That is black hat SEO. But all SEO seems to be getting targeted not just the black hat because Google can't tell the difference between good content and bad content.

Example:

Blog network posts that are heavily spun gibberish content with a link embedded in an inappropriate place that doesn't make sense.

Obviously this should be punished!

But, what about a guest blog post?

A webmaster supplies great quality content to a legitimate blog in the form of valuable information and in exchange for an embedded link that is highly relevant to the post and useful to the reader.

The webmaster in question has followed the guidelines, produced quality output to another site, helped the visitor of that site and basically enriched the web with his small contribution. Should that be punished?

Google can't tell the difference so should it just devalue both links? (There is large consensus now that Google manually punished BBR and ALN as well as a few others.)

Some people obviously think they should devalue all types of SEO and IMO this is a basic misunderstanding of how SEO works.

Anything that enriches the web should be rewarded. Proper SEO should always enrich the web. Proper SEO is just marketing and everyone in this forum is a marketer - so is Google!

At the minute it is as if you are guilty for using SEO before trial even amongst other webmasters. There is a saying that it is better to let 9 guilty men go free than to jail 1 innocent man. Our legal systems are built on that premise - innocent until proven guilty.

IMHO this update has made webmasters guilty until proven innocent.