Gaming Google a Gateway To Crime?

netbuzz writes "Merely hiring a blackhat practitioner of search-engine optimization may be indicative of a willingness to 'cut corners' — the kind that land business executives behind bars — says Matt Cutts, Google's top cop regarding such matters. It's an interesting theory, as generalizations go, but there would seem to be quite a leap between risking the death penalty from Google and risking a stint in prison."

Re:it's not even cutting corners

[canUbeleiveIT]

Part of the problem is that, for some reason, it is seen as somehow more acceptable, perhaps even noble to cheat for the sake of one's company.

I worked in a Fortune 100 retail environment for many years and was amazed at the moral lapses that seemingly otherwise upstanding managers would commit on behalf of the company. One manager in particular, who was particularly hard on shoplifters (always prosecuted no matter the amount) and employee pilfering, would routinely shave hours off of employees' timesheets. His "thefts" added up to thousands of dollars per month and he felt perfectly justified in doing it.

Re:in the late 80s

[Anonymous Coward]

"Now, it turns out, according to two economists at the Boston Fed who have checked Levitt's calculations in detail, that the abortion-cut-crime theory rested upon two mistakes Levitt made. So far, Levitt admits to making one error, saying it "is personally quite embarrassing."

http://www.isteve.com/Freakonomics_Fiasco.htm [isteve.com]

It *is* an issue

[Infonaut]

Yeah, non-issue; move along

The mere fact that Cutts can't prove definitively that there is a correlation between use of blackhat SEO techniques and cutting corners in other areas doesn't mean that his statement is without merit. Anecdotal evidence has shown me that in the business world if you cut corners in one place, you're likely to do the same in others. Hire undocumented workers. Pay people under the table. Don't divulge some earnings. Mix your personal and business accounts. Tarnish other businesses with innuendo. Hire a blackhat SEO specialist.

I think it is important to recognize that SEO is in the mainstream of most big business operations these days, and it is no longer appropriate to think of blackhat SEO as just a "geek topic." It's a front and center business ethics issue.

Re:it's not even cutting corners

[inviolet]

Part of the problem is that, for some reason, it is seen as somehow more acceptable, perhaps even noble to cheat for the sake of one's company.

I'll bet you we see a lot more of this in the future, because internationalization has introduced an element of nationalism into the competitions between companies. Nationalism enables our tribalist ability to slaughter (i.e. rip off) any human who is from a different tribe. Wow will it be nice when genetic engineering allows us to remove the tribalism gene.

Also, the middle-class is heavily involved in the stock market now, and companies are responding by becoming increasingly short-sighted. Short-sightedness means cutting corners and selling out the long run, as we know.

Re:it's not even cutting corners

[blahplusplus]

"The middle-class is heavily involved in the stock market now."

The stock market was always a form of usury gambling, and ownership control over key assets and a way for them to increase their wealth exponentially, and also way for the upper classes to offload risk onto the middle and lower classes. The whole idea of investment is fucked up to begin with. Gaining money without working for it through ownership loopholes (i.e. 'passive income') which offloads risk onto other people (i.e. the workers working for the company, and all through the chain of other companies they buy/sell/deal with).

Anti-trust is pretty much a failure because the government is owned and tooled by lobbyists, so the real government is the economy and the power players of the market itself and the government is merely an arm of private industry which is needed from people revolting and attacking big businesses. People really shouldn't hate the government, they should hate the private vested corporate capitalists and their lackeys fucking the world over.

The whole concept of investment is fucked up because ownership, liability, and corporate personhood is the main problem. It's sad that companies are now more powerful then states and whole other countries combined.

Re:How to help?

[billstewart]

• If the consultant says "You should really just RTFM, but if you're not technical enough to do that, or don't know if the web page design tools you're using implemented it correctly, you can hire me to do an audit", that's reasonable. It's probably not worth paying much money for, and the consultant shouldn't be charging you very much, and there are a number of web sites [googleguide.com] and books that'll help you get up to speed; it's really not very hard.

  
  

• If the consultant says "Search Engines try to find pages that are interesting and useful for people who read them, and if you want people to read your web pages more than once you need interesting and useful content.", it's a good start. Usually, consultants who say that call themselves "web designers" or "editors" if they're white-hat, and if they call themselves SEOs it's usually because they're trying to sell you prefab robo-generated "content" that'll pump up the advertising revenue on your ad-banner page, and they're probably at least sleazy if not outright black-hat.

  
  

• If the consultant says "There are billions and billions of web pages out there, and one way for people to find the interesting content on your web site is to advertise on other relevant web pages, and we can help you with that", they'll probably call themselves something like "advertisers" or "marketers" if they're legit, and only call themselves SEOs if they're not, but of course the guys who are not legit sometimes pretend that they are.

  
  

• If the consultant says "We can help you drive traffic to your site and TRIPLE your advertising revenue", then you know what business they're in, and if you hire them, you know what business you're in. Just make sure your accountant isn't also wearing a black hat.

  
  

• If the consultant says "You're trying to provide legitimate content about a topic where 99.99% of the web pages are run by scammers who hire SEOs, and you need to find a way to not get lost in all that noise", then you've got an interesting edge case, and you might want to compare the consultant's hat with a Pantone [pantoneuniverse.com] chart to see exactly what color of gray it is. Sometimes that's a non-trivial problem; if you're trying to provide a legitimate online pharmacy or drug information, for instance, there are very few sites above the noise level, and I usually ignore Google and either start with Wikipedia or go to the manufacturer's web page.