The end of SEO, powered by Google

Written on May 26, 2008 – 3:37 pm
Steven Carrol, Next Web WebTipr France

So you have just launched your fancy new Web2.0 site, you are sitting on a brand new domain, you have no history to speak off, no links to your site, no one talking about you on blogs, and you have absolutely no traffic. That’s when you figure it out! You need to be at the top of Google when people search for ‘red widgets’.

But you have a little problem see, a couple hundred thousand other people also had the exact same idea, only they had it years ago. So now you’re at the back of that cue and there are no prizes for last place in this game.

Never fear, while Google penalize new domains for important search terms for two years, in the mean time they offer a solution called Adwords. You can pay them a few bucks a click to get featured at the top next to others who also bid for a spot in the paid listings. If you have enough cash you’re laughing. You can simply pay to get your advert in the search results AND on all related sites where others can share the profits with Google.

This system is almost perfect but there has been one little thorn annoying Google for a few years, it’s these people calling themselves SEO’s. They claim they can game the SERP’s (results) thus getting companies to the top. Google have been fighting a war on this front for years and with this latest update it looks like they have finally cracked it.

In the previous to last update we saw the Google hammer come down on paid links, Google reduced the Page Rank and trust of sites offering paid links which were skewing the organic results. In this update we have seen the effectiveness of normal SEO ‘tricks’ officially scuppered. There are no secrets anymore, even Google know how the tricks were done and they are not laughing!

The End Of SEO

This new algorithm changes everything, effectively casting the professional SEO agencies out of business. Google have studied the art carefully and now add penalties to anyone they find who they consider are optimized too professionally. Now there are hundreds of little alarm bells built into the algorithm which automatically applies penalties to a site if they consider it to be trying too hard.

Game Set And Match

In the future if a site wants traffic they will have four choices:

1) Google paid listings on search

2) Google paid listings on similar sites

3) Paid listings with others

4) Buy the competition

Online Advertising - The Future Is Electric

This means it is going to be a bumper year for Google and others in the online advertising market with inventory to sell who will be able to exploit that now more effectively than ever before!

apt-get install Google Electric…

I hope you like that post!

The Next Web Blog covers start-up news from all over the world (not just the Valley), exciting new technologies and inspiring entrepreneurs. If you're new here, you may want to read our 'About' page and subscribe to our RSS feed.

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google, online advertising, seo

About the author: Steven is a web applications developer, living in south of France, originally from London. His current project is Myplaylist.biz. In the nineties, he was a designer / director of a highly successful design, manufacturing and distribution company (Intimidation).

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39 comments/trackbacks to “The end of SEO, powered by Google”

May 26, 2008: SEO Page 1 Blog » Blog Archive » The End of SEO? Umm…I don’t think so… | SEO | Search Engine Optimization | Nashville SEO | Memphis SEO | Tennessee SEO
[...] ran across this post speculating about the end of SEO, courtesy of Google. This article is written with the premise that SEO consists of simply paying [...]
May 27, 2008: links for 2008-05-26
[...] The end of SEO, powered by Google (tags: seo, google) [...]
May 27, 2008: The Escape Blog : Blog Archive : SEO - dead as we know it?
[...] am interested in this viewpoint about SEO from NextWeb and I have to say I agree. All of the knowledge is out there - at least enough for us [...]
May 27, 2008: Oliver's Stuff » there has been one little thorn annoying Google for a few years, it’s...
[...] front for years and with this latest update it looks like they have finally cracked it. — The end of SEO, powered by Google May 27th, 2008 / 0 Comments / Tags: seo / ‡ / [...]
May 28, 2008: De toekomst van zoekmachinemarketing (SEM,SEO)
[...] wat is de toekomst van SEO? Volgens dit artikel op TheNextWeb zouden dit soort professionele bureau’s het weleens moeilijk kunnen krijgen in hun [...]
May 29, 2008: A summary of Seattle SEO links | Curious Office
[...] Whenever I see a good discussion on SEO I tend to think its a good idea to share. In this case, we saw a very good dialog about SEO resources links on the “SeattleTech” email list which was initially kicked off by a post by Bill Bryant titled The End of SEO. [...]

By Maro on May 26, 2008

You didn’t cite the source.

[Reply]
By Steven Carrol on May 26, 2008

@Maro, do you work for wikipedia by any chance?

[Reply]
By Sebastian Moeys on May 26, 2008

Not a very deep article. It’s also a bit narrow minded to call SEOs a thorn in Google’s eye.

What we’re seeing is a shift in balance. Earlier, the search engines depended on SEO to make content visible and indexable. Partly thanks to SEO techniques, search engines and particularly Google have succeeded in building the service they are today with the efficiency we have come to expect from them.

With that success comes power, and today, when a lot of SEO techniques have become obsolete due to algorithms getting smarter and smarter, the useful role of SEO is getting less visible, while the share of spammy SEO techniques is growing.

There sure is a development going on, but to define SEO as a purely evil practice is far from what it is, and in particular from what it has been.

[Reply]
By Joop on May 26, 2008

Nice post, although I disagree. Don’t get me wrong. You seem to confuse SEO with illegal activities such as cloacking and setting up link farms. You see, Google hammering down the requirements will raise the bar for SEO, not put SEO consultants out of business. Google changes it’s algorithm more then 365 times per year! It’s a cat and mouse game that has been going on for years now, this is nothing new.

Let me ask you, if you were a new company on the market, and you have no IDEA how to get mentioned on Google, then SEO experts will come in handy. However, I like the last point buy the competition.
Every algorithm change could be a new assignment for SEO’s, there might be a businessplan in this field. Thanks!

[Reply]
By Steven Carrol on May 26, 2008

“There sure is a development going on, but to define SEO as a purely evil practice is far from what it is, and in particular from what is has been.”

I never defined SEO as evil!
But it is fair to say that the majority of the practices of SEO’s have long been considered by Google to be a thorn in their side. Thus the recent waves of penalties and Page Rank reductions.

Some references for Maro:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/.....backlinks/
http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/017166.html

[Reply]
By Sebastian Moeys on May 26, 2008

Agree with Joop. Genuine SEO is not very different from improving all round usability. Both require making your content and site structure visible and understandable.

“But it is fair to say that the majority of the practices of SEO’s have long been considered by Google to be a thorn in their side. Thus the recent waves of penalties and Page Rank reductions.”

I think the thing we’re witnessing is an increasing share of black hat SEO, because genuine SEO practices such as meta tags have become practically obsolete.

I agree with your point that these SEO malpractices are a thorn in Google’s eye. In the battle against it, some genuine SEO practices may even go down as collateral damage, but to classify it as the end of SEO, no. Not yet anyway.

[Reply]
By Steven Carrol on May 26, 2008

@Joop

“You seem to confuse SEO with illegal activities such as cloacking and setting up link farms.”

No, I’m simply referring to paid links (non organic) and all such online SEO ‘best practices’, even such as basically optimizing a page!

[Reply]
By Steven Carrol on May 26, 2008

@Sebastian

“As a result I’m seeing a tremendous growth in search engine traffic.”

1) You are talking about an old domain here
2) you don’t cite your tremendous growth nor sector.
3) For competitive search terms you will get nowhere near the top 6 results (where the traffic is) by simply optimizing. But you can always prove me wrong!

[Reply]
By Sebastian Moeys on May 26, 2008

@Steven:

Paid links (when not nofollowed) are in fact illegal.
That’s different from real `best practices` such as having a good internal link structure, having a sitemap, making every page accessible in as few clicks as possible. Those practices all benefit both human usability and SEO.

By the way, don’t get me wrong: I think it’s good you’re adressing this issue because it’s an important thing going on; I just don’t totally agree with the way you’re sketching the situation.

[Reply]
By Sebastian Moeys on May 26, 2008

@Steven:
1) True, pretty old for my niche. Summer 2005.
2) Casual flash game website on the French market, compared to what I got from search engines before optimization the growth was good.
3) The growth in traffic wasn’t a result from an increase on my main keyword (the french ‘games’, highly competitive), although it also helped there. It was a really a result from getting reasonable rankings on hundreds of more obscure keywords. Taken together those can make a great difference.

[Reply]
By Steven Carrol on May 26, 2008

@Sebastian

“That’s different from real `best practices` such as having a good internal link structure, having a sitemap, making every page accessible in as few clicks as possible. Those practices all benefit both human usability and SEO.”

All these points are fine but without history and trust,
1) Google wont index your pages
2) Google wont rank you for competitive search terms.

Lets face it, blogs like wordpress, etc, and most proper CMS these days automatically optimizes pages. So its not a question of bad internal linking, but rather that google finely have the upper hand.

[Reply]
By Steven Carrol on May 26, 2008

@Sebastian

As you say old (flash) site that Google just worked out what it was about I’m sure it would help get some traffic, but I’m really referring to really competitive areas like real estate, jobs, etc. Where the players are well past the Flash problem and have been ‘competing’ for years.

The long tail is important but the main targets are worth 20K+ searches a day. At this end you wont see any Flash sites in the top results.

[Reply]
By Sebastian Moeys on May 26, 2008

You’re getting me wrong, my website isn’t in Flash, only the games are. My website has over 3000 games. I can tell you that SEO is very important when structuring and building a site that contains 3000 games, descriptions, controls, comments, etc. so the Flash problem you’re referring to is not relevant in my case.

Also, I’d call “games” a competitive keyword. I am getting a lot from search, of which around 15% is from my main keyword at this moment.

[Reply]
By Tom on May 26, 2008

I think its a bit narrow minded to say this change in algorithm will mean “the end of seo”. This change simply meant that pages who sold links to increase pagerank saw a drop in their pagerank, most sources didn’t note a drop in search engine traffic so it is hard to say if trust is affected by this meassure.

There are tons of other important factors to consider for a proper seo strategy. Comming into the top results for top keywords is nice, but those are just a small part of the potential keyword base. Many searchengine traffic comes from the more specialized keywords.

People will always find new methods to game the system, just like spammers bypassing the best spamfilters around. Also the ‘good’ seo’s will find business because there are tons and tons of businesses who don’t have the knowledge or technology yet to make their content even indexable, think flash sites or sites implemented with poor CMS.

The end of seo? Definitely not. Google having the upperhand? Maybe for a little while till people find other ways to have a competive advantage, and they will.

I also wonder how many ‘web 2.0′ sites actually need to rely on search engines. Most ‘web 2.0′ sites are ‘inovative’ by nature (and most are useless too, but thats another issue), thus people generally don’t know they need it till they see it. Of course there are exceptions (basecamp clones), but I think the major new ‘web 2.0′ sites are big now because of word of mouth and not search engine listings.

[Reply]
By Steven Carrol on May 26, 2008

@Sebastian

OK just you mentioned Flash. Still the main point I make is you are on an old domain. That you say was badly designed to start. My point is > if you’re on a new domain then your buggered. Maybe I should have referred to this specific aspect more. See Google have enough data and domains now to compile good results, they know the money is in new domains who are eager to get results and therefore maybe I should have said, that the days of SEO is over for new upstarts who want to be aggressive in SEO to drive traffic for competitive terms.

[Reply]
By Sebastian Moeys on May 26, 2008

@Steven: that’s a good point. What Tom says about most web 2.0 services relying on word of mouth will partially cover the lack of ranking possibilities though.

[Reply]
By Steven Carrol on May 26, 2008

@Tom

“Google having the upperhand? Maybe for a little while till people find other ways to have a competive advantage, and they will.”

I’m not so sure. did you know Paypal was gamed for years and they spent / lost over 100 Million USD to fraud and learning how not to be gamed. There losses to fraud are no longer a major issue! They learned the hard way!

As have Google.

[Reply]
By Steven Carrol on May 26, 2008

@Sebastian

We have currently easier access to developing Web2.0 sites than at anytime before in history (lets face it everyone has one). In order to kick start these sites you either need a serious budget.

Getting blogged about by all the major press will help but I can assure you that the hardest job of MA of TC and others in the position are:

1) They are inundated with more sites than you can possible imagine, the VAST majority never get covered.

2) The spikes are generally no more than 2 days long and no one then cares anymore.

This is no longer 2005 where you could launch Youtube or Flickr and really make a difference!

[Reply]
By Dale Harvey on May 26, 2008

In the future if a site wants traffic they

1. Create a product that people like to talk about and link to
2. Market traditionally (should be done anway)

in other words, nothing has changed for legitimate businesses?

[Reply]
By Steven Carrol on May 26, 2008

@tom one more thing
You confused 2 things, you state that although many with paid links did not loose their traffic (that’s not the point), they did loose their ability to pass on PR to others. The links to them that gave them trust were probably not paid thus they continued to enjoy the trust and the results.

@dale
1) Most people are not inventing the wheel…
2) Marketing traditionally? Like paid search for example?

[Reply]
By Steven Carrol on May 26, 2008

I can see this is an emotive issue, so rather than arguing the points by point, I will dare to give you an example to prove my case.

I will give you a page that breaks every SEO rule in the book but that is ranked very high for one of the most important search terms currently on the collective worlds mind.

The search term is “global dimming” and the result I am referring to which absolutely has zero SEO, is this:

http://www.documentary-film.net/search/sample.php

http://www.google.com/search?h.....0&sa=N

It is now up to others to disprove my claims, that:
1) General ‘good practice’ SEO is no longer what was
2) That you can game Google with any form of SEO on a new domain.

Enjoy the doc btw.

[Reply]
By Tom on May 26, 2008

“I’m not so sure. did you know Paypal was gamed for years and they spent / lost over 100 Million USD to fraud and learning how not to be gamed. There losses to fraud are no longer a major issue! They learned the hard way!

As have Google.”

You cannot compare Paypal to google. Google has a continuesly improving search algorithm. Not only do they have to fight searchengine spam, they also have to improve their ranking algorithm to provide the better results. Also Paypal may have resolved the fraud issue, but if you read the famous paypal horror stories these measures affect the honest customers. See all sites on:
http://www.google.com/search?q.....or+stories
Obviously this is not a route Google wants, and is going to take.

So, no this is not the end of SEO.

“@tom one more thing
You confused 2 things, you state that although many with paid links did not loose their traffic (that’s not the point), they did loose their ability to pass on PR to others. The links to them that gave them trust were probably not paid thus they continued to enjoy the trust and the results.”

No, I think you misunderstood what I said. I said sites selling links for pagerank lost their (or some) of their pagerank, and thus be unable to pass it on. I also said, to comment on a point you made, that there is no clear indication that the sites lost trust (which you mentioned).

“Google reduced the Page Rank and trust of sites offering paid links which were skewing the organic results”

” The links to them that gave them trust were probably not paid thus they continued to enjoy the trust and the results.”

They keep or lose their trust? As far as I know, they don’t as you corrected yourself.

[Reply]
By Steven Carrol on May 26, 2008

@Tom

To make it simple for you.
1) Google allocate a trust rank to a site
2) Google allocate a leakage of trust from that site to another.

They are not one and the same. Two separate values.

[Reply]
By Work Post on May 27, 2008

Isn’t good SEO all about making useful content available to the search engines? Has this changed? No.

[Reply]
By MarciDesign on May 27, 2008

I totally disagree with your article especially the part about “the end of SEO” and and I have the research and proof to back up my comment to you. I would like to know where your information is coming from, or is this just YOUR opinion on the subject?

Nice try!

M-

[Reply]
By Doron on May 27, 2008

Exactly. SEO is all about making sure that major search engines are able to easily locate and index the content on your site.

“In the future if a site wants traffic they will have four choices:”

5: Create valuable and relevant content!.

Personally i think this will always be the most important thing to build traffic.

[Reply]
By Justin on May 27, 2008

Nice linkbait ;). SEO is not dead. There was no killer last update that wiped out all SEO efforts. This article is totally bogus, anyone who keeps up with the SEO industry or has sites that are ranking knows that.

[Reply]
By RickH on May 27, 2008

Your general claim (that Google has finally figured out how to identify SEO “tricks” and eliminate their effectiveness) is much too general and sweeping to be of any serious use. Whether you are correct or not depends on knowing exactly what you are talking about. If you are claiming that normal good SEO practices - like clearly defining your subject matter in terms of target keywords and organizing your site accordingly - do not make a difference to your search engine results then you are clearly wrong. SEO in this sense continues to be important because so many people are clueless about even these most basic principles.

[Reply]
By Roel Willems on May 27, 2008

@ Doron: So true! (as most of the comments made ;-) )

In my opinion good SEO-guys have never tried (oke, maybe only a few times) to manipulate the search results and rankings using blackhat techniques (I don’t see the benefits of ranking om #1 on 200 keywords when the site is completely crap). Optimizing the experience for the visitors of a site is far more important. Good content, browser and search engine friendly source code and good navigation is king. This generates far more conversions, links and makes visitors ambassadors of your site/company.

Personally I really like to see the web evolving to more userfriendlessness. If Google can have a part in this it’s good with me.
I guess you could call me a SEO guy, but I see my work more as VSO (Visitor Satisfaction Optimization).

[Reply]
By SEO in Nashville on Jun 5, 2008

There is so much that is wrong with this article, I really don’t even know where to begin…Google doesn’t want to rid the world of SEO. Matt Cutts has even said himself that Google is not against SEO. They are simply against black hat spam techniques that try to cheat the system. Quality SEO is simply spreading the visibility and influence of a website online. That concept is what fuels Google itself.

[Reply]
By moserw on Aug 12, 2008

While I disagree with SEO being dead, I do have to state that unfortunately everything to do with SEO has become all business and its all about link buying and exchanging to get better ranked rather than content itself. I do agree with the action Google is taking to set right the wrongs committed by so many all to garner better rankings at the cost of even content.

[Reply]
By mike.. on Aug 18, 2008

not much to say…i always believe with seo

[Reply]
By stacy on Aug 19, 2008

like me too…i always believe with seo

[Reply]