Almost Everything is Unprofitable (SEO and Startups) (opens in new tab)

If I am too ridged in how I write & then Google changes their approach in a slightly different way, then I look like the bad guy for not being 100% right 100% of the time.

Predicting the future is hard.

And since some people read your writing months or years after you type something, being too rigid in a changing ecosystem is going to lead some folks astray. This is only compounded by the verticalization of search, SEO strategies being different in different regions of the world, SEO strategies having different levels of risks vs reward for different types of organizations, etc.

Also in some cases Google has been known to have a vindictive side, which throws other presumptions out the window. You learn a new part of "the algorithm" when you are put up to vote for public lynching on a Google engineer's blog. :D

That said, they typically are pretty fair. Though there are some absurd exceptions. ;)

I am more for promoting questioning authority & encouraging testing than a static paint-by-number approach. That can make it seem like the writer is being obtuse or translucent, but that is far better than saying "always do X" and then have someone get utterly destroyed for following the tip.

Also we do run a number of sites. And our approach is based on "do what works." I may criticize Google's approach to something while testing how well it works. I don't control their ecoysystem, but I do monitor how it works and run many tests in parallel.

For the record with eHow, I don't mind them existing and am totally cool with Google being fine with them. What I do think is laughable though is the following combination:

- Google claiming they can't judge content quality when they frequently judge the intent of links (with far less information available)

- Google writing an algorithm to catch content farms which torches 10's of thousands of smaller websites while somehow missing eHow

- Google torching some people for using expired domains, but not giving a crap if eHow buys a registrar and does it in bulk (which is yet another side of "the algorithm" most people do not understand)

Ultimately I am fine with search engines doing whatever they feel they should. All I ask is for consistency in enforcement & approach. If they assume you are guilty & should be destroyed for doing x, then they shouldn't preach their moral superiority when they fund someone doing 100x or 1000x worse than what was worth torching you over.

I haven't had any sites fully torched in quite a long time, but I can tell you that the site that was penalized to the most extreme level was not doing anywhere near the same level of shady crap that eHow was doing recently. It was not even in the same league or solar system! But I know if I followed eHow's lead on some of that stuff I would get torched.

If you haven't experienced it then sure it can seem like marketing for the sake of marketing, but the fact that I was willing to shut down the site (make it bring in $0 revenue for 3 months while it was costing 5 figures a month) shows that I am not trying to maximize revenues without care toward quality...and that I am willing to invest in having a quality service.

And Patio11 has frequently highlighted on Hacker News that the best advice he got from us wasn't even directly SEO advice, but tips to help change his sales copy. That indeed came from doing a direct and personal review of his site.

If we didn't deliver on what we promise do you think I would have risked closing the site to customers for 3 months?