fathom - 4:10 am on Oct 9, 2004 (gmt 0)

Historical Patrick -= a few months later.

fathom asked: Don't know if this is answerable GG > Off-topic to the question - on-topic to your answer. A penalty > does it penalize the technique/tactic only or actually penalize the page and site (which are really two different things). The best "generalized" example I can give is > tactics or techniques do not define the substance of the web site > the physical content, topics, depth, breadth and context of that site. So does the technique/tactic become ineffective when penalized or is the page/site actually removed or lost (for lack of a better words). Google goal is "to provide to best answers to the question" therefore I would believe the technique/tactic ineffective approach would be more beneficial to Google, the user, and even the clients of bad SEO advice.

GoogleGuy: Good question, fathom, if I understand you correctly. One point is that it's much better to go after types of spam than individual sites. There will always be more sites that are willing to cut corners or to try tricks. Also, if you take action for an individual site, then that means more work down the line if the site needs to write in, the site needs to be reviewed again, and so on--that leads to why algorithms work better than manual action. I think the ideal is just to make techniques ineffective. Some people will waste time doing the ineffective techniques, but they wouldn't get gain on it from Google. There's an interesting second-order effect where spam doesn't do a site any good, but a competitor sees the spam on the site and assumes that it helped. That's probably an advanced topic for another time though.

If you consider that Google "wants the best pages" and the "technique" doesn't change the merits of the page, and associate this to GG comments, and the fact that hidden tet is still in the archive - the point today -- merely effective.

The "clean sweep" was actually enormous networks with tons of hidden text - that got a manual boot.