TheOptimizationIdiot - 10:29 pm on Mar 18, 2013 (gmt 0)

Oh, and what no one else has pointed out yet, so I will myself, is I stand corrected and "big brands" obviously do have an upper hand since JohnMu took the time to research why a major brand (the BBC) received an unnatural links notice, but I don't see him taking that kind of time and doing that kind of research for everyone who receives one, which he should if there's not favoritism or partiality from Google's side of things.

He made Matt Cutts look like a complete liar on this one, but I don't blame MC specifically for that, because I doubt he had any way of knowing JohnMu was going to do this for one specific brand and not everyone receiving a notice when he made the statement, but JohnMu represents Google as much as MC does, so Google definitely "went out of their way" for a major brand in a manner they do not for everyone.

Hopefully Matt Cutts will eventually retract the statement or find a way to include everyone with the granularity of information the BBC received from Google (via JohnMu) otherwise his statement will go down in history as complete BS because it is.

Not one single webmaster I've read reporting on an unnatural link notice has received the granular answer the BBC did, what they have received is basically generic, vague, and, since it's not the "desired reply or a desired e-mail" it's essentially a spam answer from Google.

In my opinion, it's complete BS to say Google does not favor "big brands" unless they start to provide this type of answer for everyone now that a "big brand" has received a very granular answer since no one else, to my knowledge, has ever received this granular level of reply from a Google Rep.