I have been thinking about this topic on and off for a while. Is manipulating Google search results ethical?
Here is what I am thinking about”
- Do the Google Terms of Service apply to me?
- What is Ethical SEO? What makes something ethical?
- What exactly do the terms of service say regarding SEO?
- Is self-backlinking unnatural?
- Is self-backlinking immoral? Is it illegal? Is it against Google TOS?
- Does Google have a right to govern the Internet? Does it have a right to dictate how a website owner behaves?
- Is Google’s position practical? Does practicality affect what is right?
There are a lot of questions, and I will have to think a bit to make this a coherent post. I will start off with the easy questions and easy points. This is an exploratory process.
Do the Google Terms of Service apply to me?
What I mean by this is whether the TOS apply to me as a webmaster? As a site owner, do I need to follow the Google TOS and Webmaster Guidelines?
As a site owner, I may or may not have submitted my site to Google for inclusion in the index. Does it constitute use of the Service? I don’t know the answer to this.
But I still don’t see that having a site listed in Google’s index is actually considered using the service. I did read through the terms of service. Google is offering an information directory service. They collect publicly available information, rank and classify it, and display it.
Does anything in Google Terms of Service talk about SEO (or manipulating search engine results)?
There is a line – “5.4 You agree that you will not engage in any activity that interferes with or disrupts the Services” which someone could construe to say that SEO is interfering with the Services.
Do the Google Webmaster Guidelines apply to me?
I don’t know. Google can say that by agreeing to be listed, you are agreeing the follow the guidelines (no paid links, no link schemes, etc.. as listed in the guidelines).A webmaster may say that it is Google’s choice to list or delist my site (and their responsibility to reward sites following the guidelines.)
So – what are the guidelines? Are the guidelines an explanation of Google’s strategy for how they intend to rank pages, or rather an edict from Google to webmasters who wish to be part of the index? What I mean is that Google can do a few things. They can say that “you may build your site how you wish, but this is our recommendation. It is up to you, but we attempt to reward sites following our guidelines (and punish sites for not following the guidelines).” Or Google can say that “You must follow the guidelines. Violation of the guidelines is a legal and moral issue. Yes, we will attempt to punish you in the rankings for not following the guidelines, but you also are cheating us, and committing an illegal and unethical act.”
Just to make it clear, I am trying to approach this from the moral viewpoint, not how effective an SEO tactic is.
On these first two points, Google cannot impose an agreement. Someone cannot say, “I have included you in my directory (or my club, or my political party) and you must follow the code of ethics or guidelines governing it.”
Google has an agreement if the webmaster has agreed. For example, Adsense Terms of Service says, “You shall not, and shall not authorize or encourage any third party to: (i) directly or indirectly generate queries, Referral Events, or impressions of or clicks on any Ad, Link, Search Result, or Referral Button (including without limitation by clicking on “play” for any video Ad) through any automated, deceptive, fraudulent or other invalid means, including but not limited to through repeated manual clicks, the use of robots or other automated query tools and/or computer generated search requests, and/or the unauthorized use of other search engine optimization services and/or software;”
furthermore “(viii) act in any way that violates any Program Policies posted on the Google Web Site, as may be revised from time to time, or any other agreement between You and Google (including without limitation the Google AdWords program terms);”
Without being a lawyer, I believe this means that when you use Adsense, you agree to all Google terms. But what about Webmaster Guidelines, is it a dictate from Google, or a suggestion? Why does Google use the word illicit here? “Even if you choose not to implement any of these suggestions, we strongly encourage you to pay very close attention to the “Quality Guidelines,” which outline some of the illicit practices that may lead to a site being removed entirely from the Google index or otherwise penalized.”
SEO practices as ethical. as an The terms “illegal seo” in phrase match has 13K results. “ethical seo” has around 64K.
To summarize where our thoughts have been going:
- It is not clear to me that having a website listed in Google constitutes agreement of TOS
- Nothing clearly in the TOS talks about SEO
- It is not clear to me whether Webmaster Guidelines are suggestions, or rules.
Now up to this point, I have been dealing with the issue of the ethics of SEO from a legal point of view. Ethics itself is a complex definition, so here is what I mean when I say, “Is something ethical?”
- Does it abide by law?
- Does it abide by common moral principles?
I know this definition is a bit unsatisfactory, and laws may not accurately define ethics (ie a law may be morally wrong). For some, ethics are not defined by actions, but intentions.
But going back…in the first part, I am trying to see whether Google TOS or Webmaster guidelines say anything about SEO, and whether we are obliged to follow them.
Let’s talk about SEO in absence of Google guidance. For example, let’s say Google gave no guidance. Google was silent, or said, “have at it, link spam, forum spam, black hat, whatever…in the end, our algorithms will win.” Of course, we are not at the end, and for now these tactics win.
Let’s go to an example by Matt Cutts and the search term “radiosurgery” (opens in new window). Matt writes, “I hope you’ll agree that you wouldn’t want a serious medical search for brain tumor treatments to be affected by inaccurate or uninformed posts.”
Yes, I agree.
What are the perfect search results for such a term? I don’t know. Is it Google’s responsibility to return perfect results? Let’s say that no-one meant harm and optimized for this term, but an inaccurate link got through into Page 1…I guess it is Google’s fault? I don’t want to be mean. May God protect us from all sicknesses.
What about a relatively less serious term? Acne…or back pain? Is it morally wrong to optimize for such a term?
What about insurance quotes? I don’t think anyone would say it is morally wrong to optimize for such a term. It’s business, after all 
Even if the site is just an affiliate site that directs your insurance request to other companies?
Mode of optimization? Are certain SEO practices ethical, and others not?
I believe the answer from Google is yes. Google has a nice PDF on SEO, and also has this link regarding SEO firms.
Google’s intention is to create a high quality directory of information, and relevance is a measure of quality. Google wants its index to be relevant. That means satisfied users. It is in Google’s interest to promote SEO practices which allow its algorithms to effectively evaluate relevance.
Google has also said that using duplicate content to manipulate the SERPS is bad, using link schemes is bad, and paid links must be no-follow.
But what about users? There are three parties involved…
Party 1 – Google
Party 2 – The site from which you are obtaining a link
Party 3 – The end user.
Where do comment linking, profile linking, forum linking, article syndication, RSS submission, directory submission, tweeting, etc… fall? What about article spinning? (By the way, Jon Leger has a very good article on the ethics of article spinning and another on the ethics of backlinking). Is the golden standard simply quality, or adding value? If I add value to the web, is it OK? How much value? Does syndicating my article add value? What about converting the article to PDF? or to a video and also getting an MP3 out of it?
What about autoblogging? Is that evil, or just using syndicated content? Mind you, I am not talking about using articles without permission or copyright, I am talking about following EzineArticles publishing guidelines. Did I add value?
Some of this falls into user intention now. Value is subjective. What if I intended to add value, but I didn’t. Am I evil? What is my moral responsibility to keep the Google index high quality?
Here’s what I have learned:
- Google’s index is private property. They can include or exclude me. For any reason or no reason at all. I don’t think that Google’s service is a public utility (like water or electricity)
- If I use their services, like Adsense, I need to abide by their rules (and it would be good if I abide by their “guidelines”) Does it mean that if I use them as a search engine, I need to abide by their webmaster guidelines? Not sure, but I don’t think so.
- Google does benefit from people following the guidelines. It makes it easier for them to rank the web. Would it be beyond Google to raise false ethical issues so that people follow SEO practices in Google’s best interest?
I am going to conclude the post, though my thought process has not reached a conclusion. It certainly seems that the easy approach to this is to treat Google not as a public information service, but as an advertising medium. Yes, Google has built its value by relevance. Google gains nothing by unnatural SEO efforts – they are detrimental to Google’s ranking. However, a webmaster would seem foolish not to put his best foot forward to Google. On their end, Google will need to investigate better methods of ranking that are less prone to manipulation. User behavior, or human reviews…
Thanks for reading.
