SubscribeKeeping SEO clean: Search engines cracking down on shady search practices
2009-12-08
Online marketers should be aware of the toughening stance that the major search engines are taking on unethical search engine optimization techniques, say experts. Google has led the pack on this issue, coming down hard on what it sees as unethical practices.New rules for Google's AdWords service will ban users if Google decides that they are not providing a "good user experience" to Google searchers. The central tenet of the new AdWords rules seems to be that ads for their own sake are never acceptable, and that sites that offer poor or no functionality beyond advertising will be swiftly removed from the listings.
Additionally, Google bans the distribution of "free items…in order to collect private information," affiliate sites that are nothing more than ad-heavy redirects to another domain, and, naturally, malicious websites that attempt to install software on unsuspecting computers.
Jonathan Lawoyin, in an interview with B2B Online, told the site's Hands On: Search feature that not only are such unscrupulous tactics well-policed, they are frequently ineffective: "I've heard many horror stories about SEO professionals who got clients to the first results page of Google for a given keyword, then plummeted 70 spots a few months later."
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