Forum Moderators: open
If you were Google, knowing that spam is the enemy, wouldn't you protect your business from spammers? Of course. So then, how do you find them? Find out who hangs out in the spam neighborhoods. See where they are going and what they are doing. Follow at a distance, don't let them know you are onto them.
If a surfer heavily visits spam forums, affiliate intermediaries, and has a pattern of viewing a few choice sites in depth, there is a good likelyhood that a stealth review on those sites could reveal spam techniques. If something is particularly successful at manipulating the algorithm, it could then be quickly dealt with.
The motivation is there. The ability is there. Sun Tzu would give it two thumbs up.
Makes perfect sense to me.
Why WOULDN'T they do it?
To answer toolman's question, no toolbar info was used for our index changes. Just to nip a rumor in the bud before it starts.
I never browse with the toolbar on, not because of any worries about google. I personally hate IE, it doesn't do anything the way I want it to. I only use it for the toolbar and to check that my site works with it.
GoogleGuy, how about a toolbar for moz? once you write a mozilla compatable one, I am sure that all the other OSS browsers would support it, as well as opera.
I'm still going to have to make sure my site works in IE, and even though PageRank might be overrated, I'm still going to check it after the updates and check the PR of the sites that I get to link to me. Even though I have no real need to care what my PR is, it is a little addictive. And there is more than a little ego involved in getting a decent PR on a site by doing things right. ;)
