SXSW: Google's Amit Singhal Talks SEO "Experts," Mobile, Search

Nerval's Lobster writes "Google senior vice president Amit Singhal, one of the executives heading up the company's search-engine operations, sat down with Guy Kawasaki, former chief evangelist for Apple and author, at one of this year's SXSW keynotes in Austin, TX. 'Our dream is for search to become the "Star Trek" computer, and that's what we're building today,' Singhal said. But he seemed reluctant to share much about his company on a more tactical level, parrying Kawasaki's queries about everything from the amount of code in Google's search platform to recent cyber-attacks on the company's systems. But the two did have an interesting back-and-forth about SEO. 'We at Google have time and time again said—and seen it happen—that if you build high-quality content that adds value, and your readers and your users seek you out, then you don't need to worry about anything else,' Singhal said. 'If people want that content, your site will automatically work you could make a bunch of SEO mistakes and it wouldn't hurt.' When Kawasaki followed up by asking, 'Is SEO bull****?' Singhal replied: 'That would be like saying marketing is bull****.' That drew a laugh from the audience—and maybe some gritted teeth from people who position themselves as SEO experts. The two talked about much more with regard to Google's future plans."

SEO as a bug

[bill_mcgonigle]

The 10% of "SEO" that is "fixing your website" is fine - good even. Make your URL's friendly, make your site accessible (to both handicapped humans and robots), follow standards, validate your code, organize your pages, etc.

To the degree that any of the other 90% works, that's a bug Google should be (and usually is) actively fixing in their search ranking algorithms. In the meantime, thank goodness for Akismet for keeping the leeches away.

SEOs are the enemy

[DrXym]

I wonder what an SEO could do for its money which is actually acceptable to Google's aims of delivering relevant search results. They might optimise the site so it loads fast, or that the landing page includes relevant keywords, or that content is frequently updated - things like that. It doesn't seem like rocket science though and I expect Google and Bing offer tips which enable sites to do these things for themselves.

It's the scummier things that some SEOs might do which make them the enemy of search engines - padding sites with meta tags, astroturfing, incestuously linking to the site from shill sites, hiring people to do automated +1 ranking, spamming forums & blogs with links, click jacking and any other scummy practice they can come up with. I wouldn't be surprised if some of these tactics actually count against a site's relevance if they are discovered.

Hey, Google, fix your own site first!

[Anonymous Coward]

Google, if you provide high-quality results that add value, people will seek you out instead of fleeing to competitors. Your results are getting useless, Google! I searched for "Barker" the other day and got results for "Baker". Your results are so sloppy and useless that I am looking for other sites. Forget SEO and Star Trek and get back to your core search functionality. Revert your code base back to 2008, when searches were more exact and the unary + still worked. Throw out the sloppy results and let people search for precise terms again. Let me know when you're done, because I'll be looking for alternatives. Better get your house in order while you're still relevant.