Firstly, I am one who blogs, does paid posts and most important thing of all, I am a fervent blog reader. I spent almost 8 hours a day in front of my PC, and if I measure my time utilised on the net in regards to what I do, I’ll have to say I’m 80% an ordinary net surfer/reader and 20% the other two. I am not very well versed in the secret of SEO and those stuffs, but I can definitely speak as a blog surfer and look at things from a reader’s perspective. Yep, I don’t have SEO skills or any of those things tricks privy to webmasters, I merely have what I pride above all, simple common sense.
Matt Cutts wrote a blog entry about why paid links/posts are bad. In his example, he cited a few blogs that talked about a medical procedure called Gamma Knife. In Mr Cutts’ reasoning, those bloggers are no doctors nor expert, therefore they are polluting the search results with spammy posts about some medical procedure the bloggers themselves obviously know nothing about.
Let me put it this way, say I go around telling people there is a newly opened French restaurant at No. 5, Google Drive. I might even get paid to go around telling people that. So, is this good relevant information? I don’t know. I honestly don’t. It all depends on the readers, right? If you are one who does not like French cuisine, you will probably ignore the restaurant and thus, it is irrelevant to you. Of course there will be people who like French cuisine and will probably find the information useful. The same goes for those loan/mortgages sites out there.
The crux of the matter is, regardless I’m paid to talk about the French restaurant or not, it is a fact, there is a French restaurant at No.5, Google Drive. It is not fake. Whether one finds it relevant or not, it is totally at the discretion of the readers. But bear in mind, this is still information. It is still true there is a French restaurant at No.5, Google Drive. Nobody can dispute that it is flawed information.
I read through the ’spammy’ blogs mentioned in Mr Cutts’ post, as a reader, I do not see what is the issue. The bloggers concerned never proclaim they are medical representatives and directed their readers should they are interested to the main medical site address. They are merely telling people there is such thing as Gamma Knife and if you want to know more, read up from the main site. Is that spammy?
Once again I have to say whether it is spammy or not, it is true information there is such thing called Gamma Knife out there. We always talked about the integrity and responsibility of bloggers, webmasters and websites that use money to buy paid posts. I think the common sense factor left out in this equation is the responsibility of the net surfer/readers themselves. Everyone has to make a judgment call how much credibility they choose to attach to what they read over the internet.
No, this is not a call for Google to make. A search Engine provides information. Whether the information is relevant or credible it is totally up to the individual’s discernment. This is their call. I know, many people say PR is something that belongs to Google therefore they have a say in how they want to rank the sites.
If you want to put it that way, I have to agree. Big G can do what they please. But please don’t say it is for the betterment and preservation of ‘useful’ search result. It is not. Everyone has a part to play. Search Engines should provide information as it is and readers/surfers are responsible to themselves to filter what is relevant and what is not. Just type ‘John Chow‘ in Google search and you’ll get John Cow up there in the no.1 search result.
Now, tell me is this what relevant information is?
