Inquiring Quorites want to know:
Is SEO immoral?
We search for relevance via the search engine. By learning and manipulating the system to accomplish its goal, SEO makes it more likely that you will come upon a target that is irrelevant. Thereby, wasting the user's time and resources. It could be considered advertising in the form of a search result.
Is this misleading and counter to the public welfare?
Normally, I'd just leave a response on the Q+A site itself, but in this case, I felt the topic warranted some broader coverage. Let's start by dissecting the points of the question, then tackle the overarching theme.
"By learning and manipulating the system to accomplish its goal, SEO makes it more likely that you will come upon a target that is irrelevant."
This statement strikes me as fundamentally untrue. SEO, like any form of influence humans can have on one another, can be used for good or evil. The great part about SEO, in particular, is that using it to promote irrelevant results is, generally speaking, a fool's errand. I'll illustrate why:
SEO is almost never applied to make non-relevant results rank for unrelated queries. And, I'd go one step further, arguing that if white hat SEO didn't exist, millions of search results would be far worse, as fewer high quality, relevant results would make their content accessible to search engines and well-targeted toward queries.
Complaining about SEO in this fashion seems akin to complaining about demographic profiling in brand advertising. It may irk you that when watching Jon Stewart on the Daily Show, clever advertisers have figured out that you enjoy the delicious, salty cheesiness of Cheetos® snacks* and thus, interrupt Jon's witty banter with pictures and sounds about their product. However, a world without ratings metrics, profiling and advertiser savvy would almost certainly show you far less tempting commercials.
The practice of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) attracts billions of investment dollars and massive amounts of marketers' energies to accomplish three key goals:
- Determine what people are searching for and create content that serves them well
- Make sites, pages and material accessible to search engines so they can display it when relevant searches are performed
- Improve the ranking of already accessible pages so they draw in greater quantities of visitors
The beauty is that in an open, commercial market, those who do the best job creating useful content and marketing it in smart ways earn links and references that lead to higher rankings and greater traffic.
"It could be considered advertising in the form of a search result."
That strikes me as an extremely astute statement, and one that has a host of logic to back it up. Search results are like advertisements, in that you can show to ignore them or engage with them. They require far less time/energy than a traditional brand advertisement, but they also carry no greater weight or special impact. They're merely opportunities to click and discover if you've found something useful + relevant.
I also like the advertising analogy because in SEO, as with advertising, the goal isn't simply to show the ad, it's to inspire action. A terrible ad for a great product is just as useless as a great ad for a terrible product (perhaps worse). Thus, showing irrelevant results or attracting clicks that won't convert or take action is futile. The ad only works if the product can close the deal.
"Is this misleading and counter to the public welfare?"
If SEO is misleading, then so is every other form of influence and marketing (and in many cases, SEO less so than the others). Human beings who were born in the 20th and 21st century recognize marketing and know what it means, how it works and who it serves. I had a good Twitter discussion with Paul Martin of Epiphany on this subject today:
Admittedly, my responses are terse and not as TAGFEE as they should be (challenging to achieve this and provide content in 140 chars. but worth trying harder in the future). But, I'd stand by the general assertion that Google doesn't need a warning label, nor is their sometimes less-than-exemplary fight against content farms cause to abandon hope of good search results or paint them as immoral/unethical. If a site is producing bad content, fight fire with fire - make something better and/or link to something better. I'll start - this is how to make Sardine Spaghetti. Now it's more likely that those querying for a delicious dinner will come across that great link vs. content farmed junk.
Oh man that looks good...
Let's wrap up by talking about the central tenet of the question - Is SEO Immoral?
I believe it would be hard to find a human being on the planet who believes that all three aspects of SEO - researching and producing content people want; making content accessible to machines and promoting already accessible content - are a violation of generally accepted moral principles. There are certainly those on the web who take offense to the manipulation inherent in SEO, but I believe that to be intellectually honest, those who do must also accept that this same manipulation exists in all forms of marketing and promotion. From polishing apples in grade school to writing college applications and resumes to optimizing our Facebook photos to ensure that ex-boyfriends/girlfriends see only our good side, life involves marketing.
It's the "how" that determines whether a marketer or a search engine passes vs. fails the morality litmus test.
p.s. Credit for the inspiration goes to someone made anonymous by Quora; thanks to Outspoken Media for their recent coverage of the site.
* Cheetos® is a registered trademark of a bunch of geniuses who put addictive chemicals in plastic bags.
I think that the question "Is SEO immoral?" is based on a false syllogism, like the three examples above.
But the line between ethical and unethical can be very thin... so, for me, the real question is based on a more complex (again) syllogism:
SERPs are dominated by bad/spammy sites, these bad/spammy sites are dominating thanks to the use of against-the-rules-tactics; therefore, if we have a wonderful website with great content and useful, do we have to use against-the-rules-tactics to dominate the SERPs?
Finally, about if Google should have to advice or not users about the spam nature of a website ranking in its SERPs... bad and naive idea:
SEO is a technique, techniques are utilized by humans to achieve some sort of goal. As you expressed, guns don't kill people, the people that pull the trigger kill people. In that respect, SEO is not immoral, the people that use SEO are the ones that are sometimes immoral.
I couldn't agree more.
SEO is "manipulating" the SERPs, to manipulate is unethical, therefore SEO is unethical
If your premises were agreeable, then this would be a cogent argument.
Ahhh that old chustnut, is SEO moral.... well here goes:
Lets break down the term first, Search Engine Optimization, with the stress being on that last and important word "Optimization". As professional search marketers our primary task is to optimize the placements of our websites around key terms that are relevant to the searchers intentions.
If the person making the google search is trying to find the optimum recipe for sardine spaghetti, there is very little point in 'optimizing' your generic cialis site to appear for that query. Its not going to do anyone any favours and short of the occasional SEO contest with two random words being the term, or the even more occasional google bomb to prove a point about Mr. GW. Bush, you very rarely see anyone bothering with stuff like that.
SEO - like all of forms of advertising is not free, it requires time (money), technical implementation (more money), content creation (yet more money) and linkbuilding (dare I say, more money again).
If the a person is charged with optimizing a site to appear for a certain term, you can pretty much bet the house on the site already being relevant for that search term. Otherwise it would be a pretty pointless exercise.
So - is SEO moral? Its just as moral as any other form of advertising.
Its also a damn site more moral than many, many other forms of advertising (have you seen the amount of sweet (candy to our US chums) manufacturers that sponsor sporting events? Surely thats far more immoral than trying to get your relevant website to appear in a preferential position for important search terms...)
I agree by the 140 characters...tricky to express points fully!
The point I was trying to get across is not so much about the morality of SEO, rather a duty of care from Google. I agree that SEO isn’t immoral otherwise I wouldn’t be in the business. I think we may be debating different points. I’ll try and expand on my stance here;
We are all in a privileged position to understand Google and most of its workings, however Joe Public are not, and so blindly trust what Google shows them as the best and most relevant content; after all, that too is Google’s aim, to deliver the most relevant content to match the users search query.
Therefore, if I am looking to rewire a plug, is an eHow article written by a spotty teenager with no DIY skills whatsoever the best content for me to refer to, or is it an article by a handyman who does this for a living?
With my recent trip to the doctors and finding the nurse referencing eHow via Google to diagnose me, it got me thinking about the consequences of Google’s results. What if that eHow article was medically incorrect? I know this brings up the bigger issue of what the hell the UK’s health service is doing turning to Google for advice, but the point is still a valid one.
In the terms of the plug rewiring; what if that article was incorrect and I ended up doing it wrong and getting a shock?
Google is in a very strong position to control what people read and see on the internet. To quote Spiderman, “With great power, comes great responsibility” and with such a high percentage (can’t put my finger on the stats now but maybe someone can reply with them) of first time website visits originating from organic search, specifically Google search, there are certain morals that come into play that Google really has to address.
“If a site is producing bad content, fight fire with fire - make something better and/or link to something better”… While I agree with that in principle, out ranking eHow on an identical topic will be very hard given the vast amounts of money, time and effort they put into their own SEO in-house.
I would stick my neck out and say that the only reason Google are not acting on content farms such as eHow, is due to the vast amount of money they generate from them via AdSense.
Double standards are at play I think!
PS Really glad I didn’t have a more embarrassing Twitter avatar!
While I understand where you are coming from PaulMartin, I disagree with a few of the points that you brought up. First, I think you are discounting the responsibility of the individual to evaluate the information that they read. To me, your argument highlights the need to educate people on how to effectively use the internet as a resource instead of blindly believing any content that they come across. We teach kids how to evaluate printed sources in school. We should absolutely be teaching them to evaluate online sources as well coupled with the idea that anyone can publish anything on the internet.
I do agree that it would be ideal for only the best information to show up first, but this seems impossible to ensure and, to me, is not a moral issue. Google is a company selling search as a product. It is in their best interest to refine their algorithms and get it as "right" as they can. If someone else provides a better search experience, customers will move elsewhere. In my mind, Google's need to improve search results is all about improving their business.
The internet cannot be run by experts. And many non-experts have a great deal of meaningful and useful contributions to make to most of the discussions happening online. I think we need to teach people how to be more discerning consumers of content. There is a ton of useful information out there. You just have to know where (and how) to look for it.
The problem that I have with Google "regulating" is that it also becomes responsible for what is "advertised" in the organic results.
Then "How To setup Google for a law suit?" may become a highly competitive term to rank for and I believe you want exactly the opposite with the eHow quest?
I do side with you Paul on some-e-how protecting the internet, but I don't feel -moral or in facto- that Google should be the one overseeing it. We have too much to lose and little to gain.
Yeah, I do feel a little like my choice of words in terms of 'moral' was maybe incorrect (I did tweet it on my iPhone whilst getting dressed running late for work!)... and I feel Rand may have coupled up our debate in with the Quora issue a little unfairly as that wasn't really my point!
...but still good to hear people's views on it!
I did tweet it on my iPhone whilst getting dressed running late for work!
Next time remember to tweet in a quieter moment ;). Remember: spoken words fly away, written ones persist... especially if they are public as in a Twitter timeline and written to someone with 24,000+ followers :)
I think of it in much more simple terms.
Google has a monoploy and with it comes a responsibility to not abuse the power that a monopoly grants. It is true that everyday people don't understand the complexity of the way search engines work and they just assume the top results will be the best ones.
Google is ruled by the bottom line and that is what is causing rumbles of anti-trust across the globe.
Which brings us to the next problem, Google makes a profit (a very large one) off the ads shown on thin, made-for-adsense content sites, so how motivated are they to get rid of them. That could be considered immoral?
While I'm sure "Google has a monoploy" was a typo, the word-nerd in me took it to heart.
Mono-ploy: a single entity taking calculated action to gain a competitive advantage indirectly or deviously.
Seems an appropriate definition for the thread...
Paul - First off, your twitter pic is, as the kids say, ADORBS. So lucky break there, because Rand has it pretty prominently displayed on this post (seriously, Rand. You are sooooo lucky Paul isn't ugly).
That being said, there's one thing that neither you nor Rand brought up in the course of your discussion. Frankly, that Google can't (and shouldn't) be censoring the internet on an arbitrary basis of "not the best resource, ever." If we allow Google to move beyond simply tossing out the occasional spam site here and there, to actually providing editorial criticism on sites, not only do they open themselves up to libel suits (as is mentioned below) but we as the user become vulnerable. Imagine using a search engine where a vast majority of the sites returned have some sort of editorial warning. It could lead to Google becoming editor-in-chief of the internet - censoring things they didn't like or didn't want us to see. The potentional for abuse would be great. Results would become unreliable. And subjective. Google's credibility would drop, and people would stop using it as an engine because they'd want what they perceived to be "real" results, not Google's filtered version of them.
Besides the whole Big-Brother-slippery-slope concerns (which I admit, seem a bit melodramatic) there's also the issue that Google shouldn't censor results because what's junk to one user might be gold to another.
Case in point? Sigh. I guess I have to confess it: I have found ehow to be useful.
Yeah. So, ponder that. :)
Haha ADORBS...
ADORBS?! What's that? I'm not down with the kids these days... I'll take it as a complement though :-p
SEO is another form of advertising and that's cool with me.
For an SEO to be judged immoral you'd have to start on the premise that search results (and engines) are moral in the first place. They are businesses, not moral institutions despite how they choose to portray themselves at times.
I like Rands metaphor of ex’s. As human beings we are all involved in marketing, we market ourselves!
Important point here. Whenever I read a question like this ("is SEO immoral?!") it seems to be based on the false premise that search results are pure, sacred and always right. The fact is that organic search isn't really organic, it isn't perfect, and the profit motive of the engines is ultimately the driver.
Yes, you are so right. The "organic" results, at least first 1 to 10 in SERP, for some domains in Romania, are not really "organic", also. There is a lots of SEO efforts to bring those urls to first page in SERP.
They are businesses, not moral institutions Excellent point Rodney. The key point being that Google is a business.
One could make the rational argument that everything civilization produces is immoral. Derrick Jensen does, quite eloquently.
One could make the rational argument that use of technology that produces waste is immoral -- especially if that waste hurts humans, society, or the environment. Using the iPhone for instance.
The argument that SEO is immoral could make sense if the argument were based on the principle that SEO produces harmful waste. But not all SEO produces harmful waste. In fact, I'd say the majority of it produces just the opposite -- it saves people time, saves them from visiting irrelevant pages, helps them find what they're looking for.
Of course, there are some folks who would use SEO to create harmful waste, a.k.a. spam. Like Rand pointed out, SEO can be used for good as well as evil. The fact that some folks are greedy or sociopathic is irrelevant to the conversion about SEO itself.
Anyway, I do think it's good to think about the morality or ethics of one's work. So I approve this message.
I'm new to the SEO Marketing side of things, coming from a background in Philosophy, so this particular blog post caught my eye. I think SEO is moral (otherwise I wouldn't be working in the field) as it mainly assists users with finding content that is related to what their query is in Google. That being said, as with anything else on the planet, people find ways to abuse the system. There are those who boost SEOs and Google rank by giving out poor customer service and although Google has addressed the problem, there are still a lot of "loopholes". With anything else on the web, there is a trust element here.
As many of you pointed out, there is a good and bad side to everything and many people are naive and just "trust" Google. To get all Aristotle on you, he has a famous quote where he says, (and I'm paraphrasing) "anyone can get angry, that's easy; but to get angry at the right person, at the right time, to the right extent, for the right purpose and in the right way...that is difficult and should be praised" The reason I bring it up is if we look at SEO, and the morality of it, we can break it down here:
Who are we targeting: Are we spamming people who don't care about our content or researching those who actually need help with this query?
When are we targeting and how often: Is the spam going on at non-product times (no one searches for Christmas in March)? Is there a seasonality to our users that we choose to ignore?
Right extent is just another way of saying "What's our motive?"--if our motive is to deceive people, we shouldn't be praised because we are being immoral. I liken this to posting photos on Facebook to make someone jealous...not really the most moral of actions but many people do it.
Right purpose: In combination with extent, our purpose should be to find a solution to a problem. With anger, we should bicker for the sake for bickering; with SEO we shouldn't embedd loads of terms to boost our rank if there's no content to help. The content needs to be there for the User experience....if we ignore the user, we have ignored our purpose.
Right way: How sneaky are we? Have we lied to get a link attached? How honest are we? Did we follow the "Google guidelines" to make sure our company is succeeding without misleading?
Although many people don't see philosophy as having anything marketing and SEO, I think looking to Aristotle (and not Locke who's all about the Benjamins!) may help us all. SEO can be moral and it can be immoral; it's all in the person who is using the technique.
"Did we follow the "Google guidelines" to make sure our company is succeeding without misleading?"
Should we take Google guidelines as law or (worse) as a rule for what is moral and what is not?
I don't think should take Google guidelines as law because there have been those who have slipped through the cracks. Like anything else, look to Google to see how things have been done (there may be some wisdom in there and some improvment) and see how we can build on things to improve the quality of our own work. People always say you look to history to learn from the past...that's all I meant by that.
I know and, generally, I agree with you.
However, I think we should always remember that Google's guidelines are rules written by a company. What I mean by that is that we should always take things critically. Considering how Google is important for all of us, I think we tend to see them as the authority. I just think it's good to keep in mind that they are for profit private company. In the end, Google's guidelines/interests are not always equal to the the interests of the user.
Is SEO Immoral?(The answer from a very nerdy perspective)
The way I see it is that SEO is a technique just like a martial art. Just like in Marshal Arts we are all from different schools. What is your Shaolin Style may I ask? Drunken Master, Dragon, Tiger, Iron Monkey? The evil resides in the one that is practicing the technique.
SERPS are like the universe and the Algorythm is the force. We SEO craftmen/women are Jedi Masters. Some of us succomb to the dark side, and when that happens there is a disturbance in the force.
An SEO expert is like a lawyer defending his/her client in the Google court system. A Good lawyer with the right connections, the right ethics and the right experience will defend you through the system and well get you the justice you deserve. There are the Cochranes who will get you out of anything by all means necessary. You will be like OJ, you are free but everyone knows you did it!
Is SEO Immoral?
No but there are a lot of immoral SEO experts out there who for their own sake and for that of their clients diverge from the ethics (sometimes they do it because they do not want to take the time to learn, and they are in a rush). The challenge is that businesses have quaterly profits to deliver upon and unless the company has a long-term viability optic and upholds itself to ethical standards, some people can be tempted to use black hat techniques.
Just as in Star Wars and in Old Kung Fu tales, black hat techniques may get an initial bump (sometimes for a while), but it is not the way to go.
My last point:
Just as lawyers in the legal system, we can find ways to win in the system, if we however abuse our powers and the judicial system collapses, we all pay the consequences. The last financial crisis is a good example of that. Some financial experts in back rooms made some deals on toxic assets and made them appear valuable and we all bought into them. The day they came due we all paid for them. An abundance of poor quality SERPS due to bad site rankings over relevant content ones will be the end of us all. [insert doom music here]
(Now let me go get my lightsaber....)
haha, nice!
Interesting discussion you had with Paul... I agree, many eHow pages shouldn't rank so high, but Google also has other problems.. I think they've been discussed here also, regarding the search pages that Google says they don't rank and actually there are thousands of pages that appear high in SERPs... but what can they do? To deindex every page that has search parameter in the query string? not a good idea. To filter them? This would be a sort of discrimination. The only thing they can do is to lower their authority and don't rank then over a topic-specific page. Regarding the moral/immoral... You are right about the whole marketing proccess... Showing a nice product on the etiquete, maybe even photoshoped and when you look inside you see that it has nothing to do with the product that's displayed.. that's a sort of immoral, right? Or saying low credit rates and there, in the lower corner it's a little star that says you have to sell your soul to the devil for that :P I think optimizing your site and do whatever you can to rank first isn't necessarily a bad thing, especially if you condisder that your content is useful and helpful and deserves to be up there so people can find it... But what spammers do, like invseo said in it's article https://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-organized-crime-is-taking-control-of-googles-search-results, well, that's immoral. So, bottom line.. if your site it's relevant and useful, it's nothing immoral in promoting it to rank high.. if all you're doing is to rank high to scam people and take their money and you don't offer anything, that's immoral
I agree, I guess that it becomes a moral issue if the intent is immoral (e.g. criminal)! Simply trying to outrank your nearest competitor is not immoral or moral its just a thing.
The engine is simply a tool.
Is SEO moral? Well first of all, I think that is an improper question.
Here let me give two example scenarios real quick.
Company A uses SEO to rank for key search terms in their line of business. Due to their good rankings from SEO, they know they now also need to provide great products/services, reasonable prices, and wonderful customer service as well so that their hard/expensive SEO work will not be for naught. Is this moral? Company A is obviously using SEO to help deliver people the wonderful experience they were hoping to find. I don't see how it couldn't be moral.
Company B uses SEO to force their way into as many unrelated rankings as possible. Their entire intent is to do a "smash and grab" type approach... that is, attract as many people as possible quickly, grab their money, and disappear. They do not intend to offer a good product. They do not intend to follow up with exemplary customer service. Is this moral? I think everyone would agree it certainly is not.
Now there are of course grey areas between Company A and Company B, but the basic premise of it all is this: SEO is neither moral or immoral. SEO is a tool. The people who use the SEO are the ones who are (im)moral.
This whole argument can be carried over to Google itself to further the example. Is Google immoral because they display immoral websites in their search index? Or are they inherently moral because they try to keep only moral websites to the top of the rankings? Even in this instance I get the feeling that Google is a neutral tool in itself. The search engine is merely trying to accomplish the role it was designed for.
Just as SEO is trying to accomplish the role it was created for. The way that the SEO is actually used is where the key to this moral/immoral debate lies.
SEO is a tool. Simply a tool.
As french veteran SEO, I appreciate, as often, the sharpness of your analysis but I think, that for once, you missed one or two key points:
1°) Google is less important than SEOs and content publishers
SEO are not only influencers or manipulators, they help structure the information that is published.
We do serve the client who pays us but we do also serve the community: Google understands almost nothing of the content it discovers as the web is, by essence, unstructured and very difficult to understand for robots. Google needs sonars (tags) to very, very, very roughly understand the main keyword of a page (I am not even speaking about the meaning of a page).
Who inserts sonars (KW, tags) on web pages ?
SEOs
Who inserts sonars (links) out of pages ?
SEOs.
Search engines need more free content publishers and information structurers (SEOs), that publishers and SEOs need search engines.
Doubt that ?
Scenario 1:
Google stops indexing the web
=> 10 other search engine replaces Google and the web goes on running, may be better as there will be space for innovation.
Scernario 2:
All free content publishers publish information for members only.
=> Google sees nothing anymore. The web stops
Scernario 3:
All SEOs stop structuring the information
=> the web still runs but Google spend more time to find relevant resultats as he cant find relevant keywords in h1, title, em... anchor texts... and internet users spend more time search through less relevant SERPs.
Last but not least, dealing with moral.
2°) What do we promote ?
This is a not a question adversting/sales professionnal want to hear about.
But dealing with moral, may be you can ask yourself a litterally essential question: is our SEO time spent usefully ?
Do we make money promoting XXX web sites ? Gun manufacturers ? Products with high CO2 emissions ? Products that are manufactured by people who are paid $0,5 dollar per hour ?
I think that moral judgements about SEOs are more closely linked to the products/services/ideas we help get visibility more than to the amount of twists we insert in Google processes
Doctors, policemen, firemen, teachers are essential to the community.
We, as SEOs, are not essential, just as all advertising/marketing professionnals.
So may be, we can increase the morality of your job by concentrating on products that improve the world...
Here is some breaking news: It has been reported that Blekko has blocked eHow.com from its search results!
That goes to show that people, and other search engines, feel the same way. It also asks the question that, if its not because of the money generated by AdSense, why haven't Google done the same?
I get the feeling that Google's stance on issues like this are rather neutral. They likely feel that unless a website is maliciously trying to affect their users, or the website is using exceptionally backhanded and misleading means - then everyone should have a chance at the index.
Is eHow the best source available for the infromation they publish? I personally don't believe so. But at the same time, they aren't intentionally trying to 'hurt' anyone, and they are at least providing potentially useful information.
Sadly, for the moment at least, it's a grey area that no one can actually give a concrete answer for. Only the individual search engines can make their stance on the issue known.
Hmm, I'm not sure.
Matt Cutts has avoided the 'eHow' question before, while in the same breath shouting down content farms and the levels Google are willing to go to to get them out of the index.
Therefore turning a blind eye to eHow can only be explained by a purley profit driven motive. Although I'd welcome Matt to prove me wrong...
I like eHow. They are on my Google TV also. Great basic 'how to' videos. I have been on their email subscription list for a long time. I have read tons of awesome stuff that I did not know about previously. I wonder why so many hate them.
Point 1: promoting irrelevant results is pointless. Yes, that is a given, but is a bit 'off-topic' since that isn't what is potentially immoral about SEO. What SEO can be used for, very effectively, is getting one /relevant/ result more exposure than a /more relevant/ result.
Point 2: seems to be that SEO is much like advertising, so that's ok then, and even if it is a bit dodgy, people are wise to it. Firslty, I would argue that being like advertising is no great argument in the morality stakes. Secondly, if people were not influenced (rather than just informed about choices) by advertising, it would not be the industry it is (getting of for $300Bn/year in the U.S. according to a quick Google).
Certainly SEO can be moral. It is a tool and can be used (like advertising) to help people find the most relevant and valuable result for their query, but that is not its only use. Like advertising it can be used to override the interests of one person (e.g. the consumer, or your competitor in the market) in favour of another - you.
Human beings are remarkably prone to finding ways of justifying self-serving behaviours. Tell tale signs: "if I don't do it then someone else will" and "but its no worse than xyz (e.g. advertising)", and of course focussing on the good points is another way we can convince ourselves that its ok.
Am I alone in adhering as strictly as I can to white-hat SEO? I don't pretend to never adversely affect a 'better' result.. Its never black and white. Link building for example is overriding the organic growth that a good website might have seen over time - before the days of link building that is. These days, in most markets, I think its necessary for even high value content to be boosted with active-SEO or Google will likely overlook it indefinitely.
What I would like is for SEOs to be honest with themselves about where they stand, and not pretend that this isn't a grey area, and that its all too tempting to stray into the dark grey if its an easier option than improving the quality and relevance of the service you are promoting. Ultimately that is SEO too, and its the bit I enjoy most too!
Mark (in London)
It has been a while since I have had the opportunity to discuss this issue, but it is actually the first one that brought my attention to SEOMoz years ago. SEOs, in my opinion, have an ethical responsibility based on a model of consent. If you solicit something from another individual directly, they must consent to it's acceptance. This rules out things like link spam (which essentially vandalizes another webmaster's site) and cloaking (which deceives users who see one title and description in the search results but find an entirely different site). I do not, however, think there is a moral or ethical obligation towards the search engines themselves because they do not follow a consensual model. Bots ASSUME consent (both for indexing and caching of content), rather than require it. An unknowing webmaster who does not include a robots.txt or proper meta tags will have his/her content spidered without direct consent.
I think this is a spurious argument. Consider the way it is made:
- I base my ethics on premise A (consent)
- I use this to (rather spuriously) 'convict' search engines of behaving unethically
- therefore it is ok to ignore premise A when dealing with search engines
This is just more self serving bullshit, and typical of that used by people who want to justify their own behaviour. It includes the methods I mentioned in my earlier comment. Why?
- search engines are proxies for users, one is not going after a 'bad guy' here, one is going after the users. Did they consent to you messing with the relevancy of results?
- it isn't ok to behave unethically towards a bad guy just because they behave unethically. Ethics don't apply in one situation and not in another, and if they did, is it ethical to choose when so that it suits us.
Those are two reasons . There are more flaws in this argument if you care to look at it critically and objectively (cf. that a naive webmaster does not consent to crawling by bots).
Mark (in London)
theWebalyst.com
That sentence "By learning and manipulating the system to accomplish its goal, SEO makes it more likely that you will come upon a target that is irrelevant." stroke me at the beginning. I do believe in the "good" and so it is in my opinion in the SEO world, too. We try to rank and therefore we give the best results about that theme to the searchers. Of course we have to "obey" some rules like linkbuilding, social media presence etc. but this makes the results not manipulated - no there is more diversity!
To manipulate has two meanings depending on the context (as so many words). Literally it means "to operate manually something"... and that is the meaning I gave to it in that context...
but it can also have a negative meaning: to act on something/someone for its own advantage".
As you can see, Duality seems conditioning SEO starting from the same language ;)
Ok, SEO is immoral… yeah I can manipulate the search engine with some stupid and irrelevant information and rank myself high for the keywords I want… no matter if the keywords are irrelevant and not helping the users… yes in this case SEO is immoral but come on be honest… not SEO but everything in the world have two sides right?
The Good side and the Evil side…
SPAM (evil side) is taking over and if search engines are not going to control it they will die and some other thing will be in front helping and entertaining people and start making money… Why search engine change algorithms and upgrade their things? Just because they need to change they need to be better/smart and they need to provide as relevant and generic information as they can…. If Google is not going to do that people will start moving to bing then there is Yahoo! So I mean to say is the options are counless… so search engine like Google have to change or it will die soon!
Good side:
SEO is actually moral, the way optimize the website that is more relevant to users so users didn’t waste their time and you start getting money without any hazel. Google is trying hard… providing guide lines and much other information’s to make people realize what actually SEO is and how ideally you should optimize your website.
My Opinion is SEO is not at all evil but it’s one of the most effective way of advertising… yes there are evil people around who always in search of a way where they can manipulate the search engine… I guess right now all we need to do is to help aware the business owners other SEOs that how ethical SEO works and why this is important and let Google and other search engine do their work!!
SEO is like going to the gym. Do it right and you will get big and ripped. Girls will fall in love with your new manly appearance. However, if your personality still sucks, most all the quality girls will end up passing you by.
-Brandon
If there's an adjective for SEO, for me it's "inevitable". The same urges that make humans search for oil, better crop growing land and more money fuel the efforts that go into SEO.
Rand, you are spot on when you say SEO improves relevancy of search engine results. I dread to think what search would be like without it, but my hunch is "useless".
Isnt Google's overall goal to provide the best results possible. Clearly these are not the best results. Simple as that. Open and shut case. OHHH WAITTT, eHow is littered in Adsense? Ahhhhh, it all makes sense now.
I don't think SEO is immoral. Certainly amoral. It's marketing. It's cutthroat. And its the internet. Everything is more corrupt online.
And some "SEO practices" Like title/header text optimization are simply best practices for organizing information: if nobody engaged in them, the web would be more of a mess than it is.
True, the morality of the practices is on a spectrum. But it's still white at one end and black at the other even if we don't know exactly where the line was crossed. Just like we know beards exist even though we don't know how many whiskers make one.
I think "SEO morality" usually reflects its sector - you see the least reputable tactics in the least reputable sectors (ie penis pills). So if you're really not willing to compromise your "morals" to compete, stick with highly respected sectors who depend on pristine reputations and local-business SEO, where IMO white hat methods can be much more effective - things like building links between local businesses to reflect existing relationships and such. But frankly, if blackhats target your niche, you'll probably have to fight fire with fire anyhow. But if you're a truly staunch moralist, what are you doing in marketing in the first place?
Search is as old as mankind. In the stone age search for food was the main activity. As civilization took place and brains got more evolved man started needing the food for thought too and for that people visited libraries for knowing more and more about a certain subject. In the libraries too the data regarding books had to be organized and stored and the books displayed so that the people could easily find what they were searching for.
It is the organic search which gives the true character to the search engines if the search engines do not display quality and relevant organic search then they can be deemed as paid directories rather than search engines. Hence, search engines issue SEO guidelines help the webmasters with the required tools , videos and literature to monitor their sites so that the search engines also get the assistance and can display quality results if the SEOs follow those guidelines. So SEO in its right perspective of optimizing a site in such a way that the search engines can rank your site for relevant results is not wrong or immoral.
But , as in any sphere of life when things are manipulated for personal vested interests rather than the larger objectives then things get immoral. SEO is a subset of marketing and is not at all immoral but the way we implement it can be moral or immoral.
In fact the search engine is the only place where a multi-national company having huge infra-structure and a local company with a very modest set up can have the possibility of equal business opportunity giving rise to equality of opportunity as both the companies can rank one after the other on the same page which is possible only with SEO.
As a matter of fact I think that SEO helps in contributing to the larger objectives of the web ecosystem . My post on this topic is due to be published on SEJ sometime next week focusing on the larger objectives. If I write all that here this will become a blog post rather than a comment :)
Hence, SEO is not immoral but it is the intent behind it and the way we implement it makes it moral or immoral.
It is the organic search which gives the true character to the search engines if the search engines do not display quality and relevant organic search then they can be deemed as paid directories rather than search engines.
Google's first page of results is looking more and more like a cash grab for advertising dollars every day!
Intresting in your comparison to searching for food. Even then those that searched were careful to not eat the poison berries. I think many are too reliant on Google to govern the search world as well as monopolize it. Almost an impossible balance. Do we need a "searcher beware" label? Or do we need more common sense when looking at search results?
Maybe if Google was a non-profit company that’s goal was to provide the most relevant results, but they are not. They are a for-profit company that’s slogan is relevant results. In this case, AdWords is more immoral than SEO.
...which bolsters my argument surrounding why they are keeping eHow results in there... for the AdSense revenue!
....and what about wikipedia pages when people are clearly not just looking for general information.
Wikipedia pages only tend to appear on very general terms - when the user is most probably looking for general info. When you add a qualifier to your search query, they tend not to show. Eg "puerto rico" has a wiki page in first, "puerto rico hotels" doesn't have a wiki page in sight.
In this regards, Google have it spot on.
That's a laughable concept.
With how huge Google is, all the data centers they have to hold up, all of the information that they have to store (most of which is stored in random-access, not disks... how do you think they search so fast?), all of the many tens of thousands of employees they have to pay for, including expensive developers and marketing specialists that research for things like AdWords and AdSense, plus all of the other things that the public doesn't realize Google does and has to do to provide their imperfect yet extremely useful and widely loved search engine functionality (plus the other 80 services they offer), do you SERIOUSLY think they could survive as a non-profit organization?
Lol.
This discussion reminds me of an article that a local SEO guy I know wrote a few years back, with a focus more on the effects of SEO for reputation management on the SERPs:
"Print, radio, television ... all utterly co-opted by power and money. The internet, giving citizens the ability to search for information rather than merely have it fed to them, has such potential to break this trend - but only if that very ability to seek and find the truth is not, itself, corrupted."
https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AaqqTZRXfpwTZGN6amp2YnJfNzZkbnJ3NnYyaw&hl=en
Rand, you're a scholar and a gent. I'm not.
This is an interesting topic and I think you did a very good job writing about it. It does kind of bother me that a less-informative and borderline-spammy but well-optimized website can rank consistently higher for certain keywords than a site which has excellent information but is not as well optimized for those same keywords. Does Google "monitor" bounce rate on traffic that is sent to a website via certain keywords? If a website has a 99.99% bounce rate from traffic for certain keywords, does that eventually hurt its ranking?
"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so". -Shakepheare
I think that SEO is a tool that can be used to add value to people's lives or subtract value. I hope more people choose to add value. One problem is that there is a benefit given to individuals who pollute. As a result there are a lot of bad citizens on the web who use SEO to make money from littering.
interesting stuff
The problem is people think it is immoral becuase their are soo many bad seo's and black harts filling the web with rubbish. The thing is people can build links by hand it takes a long time, black hats and dodgy SEO use automated software to do it in a matter of hours.
I think the poblem with SEO is that it has such a bad name becuase their were soo many bad cases of it, and the only time SEO seems to get some BIG time press is when people do something really bad using SEO.
I think it is just a case of bringing SEO into something which is a more main stream marketing practise, sure enough I think over the last 5 years big business is comming more and more into the mind set that if they do not have SEO they are missing out and I think the SEO mind set is chaging.
Furthermore I do not really think that eHOW is that EVIL as people are marking it out to be (sure it is not the best quality content), just think if their was not eHows random article for a long tail post their what would be their?? My guess is that another less then impressive website would spring up...It is a never enging process once a content house is banned then another one will just pop up...
Or we could phrase it another way. Let's say you create a page that entirely outshines its Wikipedia counterpart in terms of quality (not difficult in many cases) - and then just leave it there without doing any SEO.
It will most likely sit in the digital wasteland unfound and unseen.
The subtext of suggesting that SEO is evil is to suggest that good content finds its way to the top by itself, which it absolutely does not.
Google cannot measure "quality". You could create a page full of factual inaccuracies and lies, and still get a number one ranking.
SEO is not immoral, 'nuff said (in the comments above).
A far better argument is that Intellectual Property Rights are immoral.
(What do you think?)
I am wondering if Black Hat SEO is a manipulation. Although it is not moral and fair if you spam forums and blogs from a search engine user perspective if the content is relevant it is not a manipulation.
I am not a fan of Black Hat... just my $0.02.
Yeah right, posting a blog topic under a controversial title – is sth immoral/unethical (what is the difference anyway?), and then degrading its importance, by linking it to a spaghetti dish, which apparently is more worthy than the blog post, and by the way, looks delicious... no comment :)
I most definitely agree with most of you who commented that SEO is in no way immoral. Truth be told, (as @dcpm) phrased it, SEO IS marketing.
I think the immorality aspect arises when someone's marketing something that doesn't live up to the marketing--well, that's not immorality, that's just bad marketing. In fact, here's a quote from my high school media values teacher "...the best way to kill a lousy product is to advertise it."
Lifting from it, I challenge those who use SEO negatively to continue what they are doing. Why? Because it's either search engines will catch up to their evil deeds (it's their business to deliver the best SERPs anyways), and/or they're optimizing lousy products/pages in the first place--now, whatever their reason for doing such things, believe me, it's not bright.
Moving on to the topic of filtering low quality content Google's actually on it.
And yeah, great post Rand!
When my clients question what SEO is or why certain things are done, I always use the advertising analogy.
The description is like the 30 second elevator pitch - What would you say to draw people into your page if you only had 150 characters to say it? No, stop, don't worry about keywords. Just tell me what you would say.
On-page optimization - This is the flyer that you go and put up all around town to get people to learn more about your company. Yes, we want to see keywords here, but using them over and over is like those annoying neon-yellow flyers that people put on your windsheild and you quickly throw it away. What type of flyer would you actually look at, grab the info from it and follow the call-to-action? That's what your page needs to do.
Is SEO moral? It depends on if your the neon-yellow flyer type of SEO or the "OMG, I so want to sign up for Yoga because that flyer is so awesome" type of SEO.
Forex trading, cfd trading and other similar financial instruments aren't immoral, are they? Nothing is perfect. And some people do win just because they find a way to monetize the dеformation of the system.
I think its also worth pointing out that google is well aware of SEOs, and probably takes the same view that SEO, like all things, can be used ethical or unethically. It is conceivably in the best interest of the search engine itself for good SEO to be implemented. Solid SEO strategies produce valuable content to searchers, contribute to conversations where searchers have questions, and actively seek out and engage with relevant locations and communities where those searchers are clearly looking, and SEOs are encouraged to use white hat practices because they ultimately yield better more relevant traffic. All of this activity creates more communication, more conversation, and more value on the internet. Isn't that precisely the value of the web? So how could effective SEO be unethical?
In my opinion, SEO seems to be a lot of "giving unto others"...
Good article, one which could lead to hours of discussion.
A lot of people don't understand SEO and end up reading rubbish about it, because most people who do it properly, don't publicize articles on how to do it and this leads to a misunderstanding. Great to see places like SEOmoz setting the record straight.
I'd be a liar if I did not acknowledge going through all the on-site technical and off-site link building bugaloos. That stated, the overlying message I give to all clients is be relevant, be more relevant and be interesting. Be worthy of high search rankings.
A great debate, if optimisation itself is to be considered to be immoral, then someone has to police it. If the SERPs are considered immoral, someone has to police the search engines. Go a stage further, who polices and judges the user and their morals?
As has been said, the search engines are businesses, it is in their interest to remain balanced and provide quality results for users. If they don't - users migrate to other SEs or mediums.
My first impression was that whoever asked the initial question "Is SEO moral", must not really know what the field comprises. Just the part "SEO makes it more likely that you will come upon a target that is irrelevant" is, as probably almost everyone here thinks, very much debatable.
I guess people are always afraid of what they don't fully understand, or at least very sceptical.
Or maybe whoever asked, knows a lot about it, but wanted to provoke a discussion with the question- congratulations in this case, it worked.
@PaulMartin: I totally agree (especially since you quoted Spider Man), but I believe delivering less spammy and better results is vital to google from a business and purely egoistical standpoint. Wouldn't consider it to be a question of Morale so much, but market share for google
Google's reason of existence is that it delivers high quality search results. If you practice good SEO, you aim for a high quality site for your visitors. That way, whatever way the algorythm changes, it won't hurt your position.Make sure all your content is amazing for your clients.
Of course with technical elements in mind. Awesome content helps getting links as well. I'll link to your content anytime if I am blown away.
Basically the thing that is your goal as an SEO: enterain and inform your visitors. All together not that immoral. :-)
Mmm... the main goal of an SEO is not to entertain. That is an instrument to obtain the objective: to win the SERPs and gain profit (any kind: $$, subscription, donations if you're a no profit website...). How to do it? If you are WH with optimized content (or digital assets, as we hear sometimes call it), link building and social media marketing with things that add value (entertain and/or inform).
Hmmm...Disclaimers on Google's SERPs would be as useful as the disclaimers on packs of cigarettes. The people who are too ignorant or stupid will use anything without knowing (or caring) about the consequences and these disclaimers will not change their habits. Just look at all the people who still smoke! Disclaimers are not meant to educate but merely to protect the interests of the Company and to prevent legal action against them.
“Disclaimers on Google's SERPs would be as useful as the disclaimers on packs of cigarettes."
Whoa I don't think that's a comparison you should really be making there! People aren’t addicted to Google as they are Nicotine; it is more a force of habit. Should Google vanish tomorrow and only Bing exist, people wouldn't batter an eyelid. Should cigarettes cease to exist, it would be World War III.
If Google do keep eHow in the index while disregarding other similar content farms (most probably one's that don't use Google AdSense!) then Google as the World's major gateway to the internet really should disclaim why this is the case. I think we can all agree that content farms pumping out very poor quality articles for the sole aim of generating AdSense revenue is a very poor thing to populate our SERPs with; so why discriminate against other content farms and turn a blind eye to eHow, and the Demand Media network as a whole, if it is not due solely to the income Google make via its advertising network?
This is then beginning to edge very close indeed to Google manipulating its own results for its own gain. This was touched on recently with the Harvard graduate presenting research suggesting Google showed preference for its own products (see this BBC report and the original research). While the research has some holes in it and it is not dealing with quite the same issues, it goes some way in outlining that Google are seemingly prepared to stack the game in their favour!
First, content farms, then anchor text spam...now -- WARNING LABEL??? what's next?
As the internet is getting bigger, we expect more people gaming the results, we expect more unsatisfied users, we expect bigger demands..
Google is still the best tool out there. But it seems it has trouble keeping up with the demands.. hehe..
I'm surprised how quickly G Web spam team implemented an algorithmic fix regarding content farms. And now I'm anticipating a anchor text spam fix, I'm sure Rand will be out to celebrate, lol...and of course, other white hat practitioners..
I stand with Rand on this issue, there's no need for a warning label, it's not Google's "social responsibility".. It's our discretion to browse the web freely along comes with knowing what's safe and what's not.
If SEO didn't exist, people would be a lot more likely to get random search results instead of what they want. If SEO is immoral, then I should be an evil, evil little boy... I like to give a lot of relevant content and keyword usage when I write. Sue me.
I stopped reading after this statement "SEO is almost never applied to make non-relevant results rank for unrelated queries."
Obviously this is grossly not true. More and more scam and fishing sites are popping up to steal logins, passwords, credit card info, etc. They are rampant on the internet and well publicized. Why would Google be spending hundreds of millions in marketing to tell the world that people ARE in fact abusing SEO and they are working to take care of it?
Downplaying the profound abuse of SEO does not help in my opinion.
P.S.
I do not believe most SEO professionals do business in the above way. I agree that there is an inherent ethical code for individuals that are in the SEO field. My point is that it is being abused and we must admit it and separate ourselves from the negative side of SEO.
I happen to like fishing sites.
jk!
Compared to other forms of marketing, SEO has also another huge positive feature: it reaches people who are already taking action. Maybe you want to transform a search for information into a purchase, but you're stille reaching for someone who was interested to begin with.
This is such an advantage over the old advertisement approach that makes SEO a more respectful and less annoying than traditional marketing.
And I also agree that Google shouldn't babysit user by constantly reminding them that maybe it could take more than three seconds to choose what to link in a SERP. If anyone takes a company's output at face value... well, it's kind of their problem.
/Ferruccio
Are Cheetos Immoral?: considering the excitotoxins?
My random SEO $0.02: SEO's morality stems from its very existence. Why do we need even need to worry about optimizing our content for search engines like Google? Doesn't Google strive to provide the most relevant search results by determining what is quality content for users? I think two things are at work to even create demand for SEO: (1) People acting immorally to game the system (2) lack of a common concentrated forum for users to find what they're looking for.
Regarding #1: People acting immorally to game the system. This article already highlights the kinds of misleading practices some people take. What started out as a search engine to help users turned into more of a safety mechanism to prevent users from ending up somewhere they didn't want to be - to in fact protect users from the misleading content providers. What started out as a tool for finding relevance now seems to be turning into a tool that's necessary to determine legitimacy. I see the whole reason or purpose for search engines is to provide a tool or place users can access to give them direction when roaming around the web. The internet really is dependent on sites linking to one another - independent of search engines - search engines just help expedite the roaming process.
Regarding #2: The internet is huge. Sure it's a common area for information but navigating it is a pain. Pre-search engines, pre-internet even, the way you learned about something was from mass media or word-of-mouth from someone who'd experienced a product/service or seen details from mass media. In short: pre-internet we talked to each other and learned of new things, early-internet we searched and shared, now in a more mature internet stage we share and learn. Searching is still important but holds less relevance than a referral from a (online or offline) personal connection. Social networks (pick your favorite one) lend themselves to being more reliable for users than just search results. The social networks have become the common forum to 'search and share.'
All in all, search is still important. But the practices needed to ensure your 'pink bikes' website has relevant 'pink bikes' content still feel a bit shady. Search engine results, rankings and status I view similar to karma: provide solid quality content for your users, and the rest of the details will fall into place. If your content is solid and of quality: your site will be shared, other people will link to you and reference you, word of mouth referrals will point people to your site. Search engines like Google are looking for the most basic of connections: who else says you're an authority on (in this example) 'pink bikes?' In the end it's the referrals from others who you trust that determine relevance.
Trying to fake relevance, promote relevance and - in light of many people trying to take advantage of naive users - trying to game the system will yield a bad user experience. Like in all other things, integrity is key. As far as SEO goes, integrity can have a price/cost associated with it: new customers, brand reputation and maintaining a rapport with current customers.
Wow, you completely destroyed PG_Martin.
Haha aww wow, my first negative comment! I feel honoured. Thanks for the constructive input to the discussion there Kentaro! ;-)
As far as I'm concerned, morality doesn't enter into it. Sure, good SEO is responsible for streamlined, beneficial content online, but by the same token how many really crappy, "gamed" results are the product of our black-hatted brethren? What we offer is a service to a client based on remuneration and as a result, the only moral argument we should engage in is whether or not the activity we're performing for our client is to their benefit or not.
Well, maybe not doing things that are annoying and harmful to the user and to the good name of the industry would be nice too.
"It's not about the moral side of it" is the justification used by everyone doing bad stuff, isn't it?
Doing right by your client AND the industry aren't mutually exclusive. I'm not advocating the use of anything unsavoury, we all know that doesn't benefit the client in the long term anyway. I'm just saying that if more people focussed on performing a good service for their clients, the debate as to whether or not this is a reputable industry would become a non-argument with time anyway.
Good, bad, moral, immoral
If anyone can show me the "rules" that define this, I could take this topic more seriously.
All this is is a list of opinions. It doesn't mean jack
As I read the article I wondered who it was written for, who is the audience for this article? If I was an editor would I be happy to approve this article and put it out there with my name and reputation on the line? Someone like me who didn't know what SEO was before doesn't have the knowledge to understand the question. That leaves people in the field. According to the article this is an old question. If this is an old question then you must be trying to offer an unusual take on the question or offer a new insight . Not in this article, what a shame.
The only important lesson here is to learn that the answer is unknowable, and move on.