BLOG Interuption: Letter to the Editor, Wall Street Journal

Letter to the editor, Wall Street Journal Feb 27

GOOGLE Algorithms Won’t Stop the Gaming of the System only People Can

Google Revamps to Fight Cheaters (WSJ 2/26/11) gave me hope, but when I read that all Google is doing is modifying their Algorithms I realized that they don’t really want to clean up search. Taking the low road is more profitable.  Trying to stop the gaming of the system by real companies like JC Penny and Overstock.com is not even the core issue.  It’s the bogus shopping sites and content mills that steal original content and hawk products via the accomplices at Amazon.  Google and Amazon have enabled this gaming of the system and profited magnificently from it.  Companies bid up search words, SEO becomes a huge industry and Amazon cleans up by providing commissions to pirates.

If Google truly wants to clean up their search and make page 1 relevant again here’s how to do it in 90 days:

1. Staff a group of entry-level interns into a department to root out and black list content and information piracy.
2. Create a system for legitimate companies to submit to Google content pirates and sites that create neighboring urls to divert traffic. It will take a new hire 5 minutes to know that www.grillgrates.org is ripping off my company www.grillgrate.com.  Weber (the king of grills) would have a list 2 pages deep of leaches drafting on their brand! 
3. Contact the offending firms and the reporting firm of your decision and allow rebuttal. 

An algorithm can’t do that and I doubt Google will either.  Fortunately the market is sending loud signals to Google themselves to stop gaming the system by enabling and rewarding pirates to steal content, divert traffic, and reap commissions from affiliate sites such as Amazon.  I’ve always viewed Google as a high road company, but now that my livelihood depends on ‘being found’ on the Internet my perspective is a lot different. It truly is Somalia in cyberspace and the pirates are everywhere, and they could be banished in a few clicks. 

We now return to Great Grilling with GrillGrates!