searchmartin's comments

In your example they still show results, in mine, they do not.

Hands up... yes, it’s fully intended to get you to click through. (I wrote it)

BUT: the underlying point is still valid, these are not sear results, that come from a search engine. These are answers, from an answer engine.

(But still made you click ;) )

There’s a screenshot example. More have been found since I wrote that piece.

Best regards, “SEO scoundrel”

Well, I run that site. It’s non commercial, doesn’t have ads, and my clients are all Fortune 50’s.

Do some research before trying to put people down, it’s unbecoming.

There must be some platform issue is my best guess...

Here's a write up as to why they have made the changes. Was going to write it yesterday, but life got in the way:

http://webmarketingschool.com/no-twitter-did-not-just-de-ind...

again, no, they blocked it on WWW. only: http://webmarketingschool.com/no-twitter-did-not-just-de-ind...

Nope. No. They didn't.

What they did was some perfectly legitimate duplicate content protection.

Will write it up in a bit more detail...

I'd agree with that - on the press flaming that Apple are getting though - Im just not buying it. Really feels more like a cloud storage hack than iCloud, right?

I'd welcome the YCOM analysis of whats actually happened here, but iCloud just doesnt feel like the issue...

Yeah - agreed, Im not really against his position in as much that I realise he's stuck. If he did say "yeah, its possible, and it might screw your business up" then Google would have a massive PR problem.

I've done a fair bit of Cutts baiting in the past, but I do have absolute respect for the man, and the position he's in (we SEO's dont make it easy for him a lot of the time)

search google for mattcutts.com - you'll see another post of mine from last year, detailing some theory ;)

errrr- weird, works for me in the US - Ive just opened up the privacy restrictions on it though - try again? thanks for letting me know btw!

watch the video in the post, its only 30 seconds long. The question was "does negative SEO exist", listen to the response. :)

Thats absolutely true - Google do have the power, and often use it, to make human decisions on the quality of websites and often ban those that break they TOS. As for whether Google should take action against any particular website, its not for me to say.

Proof Im leaving? Check the date on this post on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mogmartin/posts/10151730878862337

As for pinning blame on the author?

Hardly...

Im not debating anything he said, other than calling my name out.

Its not my place to deny OR corroborate any claims against a division that I NEVER worked for, of a company that I no longer work for! ;)

Because I turned down the offer and gave him advice before he published his story.

I took the decision then not to out the behaviour - however given that Im targeted in the article I've since slackened my ethics on how to treat the situation.

I totally agree there should be one set of rules and thats it.

Thing is, there IS one set of rules already - and thats governed by the google organic results algo which looks at a sites backlink profile as a whole.

If its mainly crap links with no authority then the site will get banned. If its a big brand site with authority and reputation, its really tough from Google's perspective to simply ban that site and all its pages because there are some links of questionable authority pointed at it.

IF they did that, the search results would be a pretty lonely place, and it would be super easy to remove sites positioned above yours in the results!

Which is in no way relevant to me, other than I worked for a different division of the same company.

The only reason I got mentioned, was that I refused to pay money to not have it published, and told the author that blackmail wasnt a great idea.

If someone had attempted to extort you, and were now using your name in this fashion, wouldnt you want to respond?

FULL DISCLOSURE:

Im an Expedia employee (inbound marketing director, covering SEO), although Im currently at the end of my notice period. (Im leaving in two weeks).

Also, I worked in the B2B division, nothing to do with the consumer side that this article references.

The author of the post linked above contacted me a couple of days before publishing it, to warn me that he would publish (quote: "damning evidence of expedia spam").

HOWEVER: If I wanted him to not publish it, he would "sell the post to the highest bidder".

That was what prompted me to post this on my personal blog: http://webmarketingschool.com/big-brand-seo-spam/ and for the record, I told him to sling his hook reference to extorting money out of anyone in exchange for not posting stuff about their backlinks.

No doubt that is why I got singled out in the article. You'll notice that at the top I get mentioned as being in charge of this stuff, then right down at the bottom, he mentions that in fact Ive got nothing to do with it.

I'll let you all draw your own conclusions.