BlackHat SEO News & Reviews

The Lie was told here by Udi Manber, and repeated by Matt Cutts. And I quote:

‘At Google we do not manually change results. For example, if we find for a particular query that result No. 4 should be result No. 1, we do not have the capability to manually change it. We made that decision not to put that capability in the algorithm—we have to go and actually change the algorithm.”

Contrast that with the story from 2 days ago from the official Google Blog:

“We created about 100 “synthetic queries”—queries that you would never expect a user to type, such as [hiybbprqag]. As a one-time experiment, for each synthetic query we inserted as Google’s top result a unique (real) webpage which had nothing to do with the query. Below is an example:”

There is no way to reconcile those two statements. If Google sees someone at number 4 that they want at number 1, they can remove the number 4 result with their manual spam filter, and then manually insert it to number 1.

This is not nitpicking: they have the capability and they have used it. They have used it more than for legality or for spam, they used it at the very least for their recent PR stunt.

This is on par with “Read My Lips, No new Taxes”

They lied. They were caught.

Do not trust Matt Cutts.

Do not trust Udi Manber.

DO NOT TRUST GOOGLE.

They are bold face liars.

They can and do manually change their search results. They can and do manually put whoever they want at number one: regardless of what they have said in the past.

Since the majority of people can’t seem to figure out how clickstream data could be used as a Search Engine Ranking Factor, without even scraping the actual page, I’ll give you a hint.

Actually, a pop quiz. Here’s what you know:
User 1 Visits:
http://duckduckgo.com/?q=gyhwesaa
Then immediately visits:
http://www.amazon.com/JL421-Badonkadonk-Land-Cruiser-Tank/product-reviews/B00067F1CE/

Later User 2 visits

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=gyhwesaa&x=15&y=19

Then immediately visits:
http://www.amazon.com/JL421-Badonkadonk-Land-Cruiser-Tank/product-reviews/B00067F1CE/

Later user 3 visits
http://www.redtube.com/mostrelevant?search=gyhwesaa
Then immediately visits:
http://www.amazon.com/JL421-Badonkadonk-Land-Cruiser-Tank/product-reviews/B00067F1CE/

Later user 4 visits

http://www.implantinfo.com/photocenter/visitors/vis_search_comment.aspx?HasComments=y&Comments=gyhwesaa

Then immediately visits:
http://www.amazon.com/JL421-Badonkadonk-Land-Cruiser-Tank/product-reviews/B00067F1CE/

Later user 5 visits
http://www.myspace.com/search/People?q=gyhwesaa
Then immediately visits:
http://www.amazon.com/JL421-Badonkadonk-Land-Cruiser-Tank/product-reviews/B00067F1CE/

Later, you have a user use your search engine and types in gyhwesaa.

Your 20 billion page index of pages does not include the word gyhwesaa anywhere. None of your other signals reveal anything about the phrase.

What do you give the user as a top result?

This was pretty surprising to see:

Dear ePassporte Account Holders,

Please be advised that, at 12:00 PM PDT today, September 2, 2010, we were notified that effective immediately, Visa International has suspended our banking partner’s (St. Kitts Nevis Anguilla National Bank) ePassporte Visa program. The ePassporte e-Wallet program continues to be up and running, except funds cannot be transferred between your Visa Account and your e-Wallet. At this time ePassporte can no longer issue Visa Cards, and the ability for our Account Holders to make point of sale purchases and withdraw funds from ATMs has also been suspended.

At this time we do not know why this drastic action was taken by Visa. To us, it is unconscionable that such action would be taken without the opportunity for ePassporte to fully understand Visa’s reasons and to be able to take all steps necessary to keep our program running the way it has so successfully done for over 7 years. But that is what Visa has done.

As soon as we have more information we will be in contact with you.

In the meantime please be assured that your funds are safe.

We are very sorry for the short notice and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. The ePassporte team is working diligently to rectify this situation.

We kindly ask you to bear with us while we work through this issue.

Please feel free to contact us via the message center or at our call center, should you have any questions, comments or concerns.

Thank You,
Christopher Mallick

Pretty amazing the did that all at once like that: leaving epassporte high and dry.