The fact that my statements coincide with Google's is due to one simple fact. What I'm seeing out in the wild confirms that NSEO is possible, but difficult. It requires prolonged, structured effort to stand any reasonable chance of success.

Based on what I've observed in the wild I reckon the above position is an accurate reflection of reality Jim.  I always keep an open mind on things, but until I see widespread and ongoing attacks taking effect I'm in the same camp as Sasch on this Jim.

Your statements in this thread have been more or less the same the Google official position, Sasch.

I don't think it's reasonable to chastise me for pointing this out. You are a stand-up bloke, otherwise I wouldn't want to know you but if you want to fall out over this, there's nothing I can say that will stop you.

Further… and with all due respect… I'm willing to put money on the fact that I've seen a great deal more NSEO campaigns than yu have…

While the follow-up support is indeed commendable, sadly it's not a factor Google could see (although perhaps in hindsight you could have leveraged this better online to make it work in your favour).

I'm sure there are plenty of affiliates still operating today off Google traffic, but they had to be very clever to avoid getting smashed by Google's algos.

Again, I'm most definitely not suggesting there was no attempt to attack your site.  But IMO your site was far more susceptible due to the inherent flaws in what you were doing and how you did it.

The company which I believe was behind the majority of the NSEO directed at us was an affiliate site and there were two other other sites (also affiliates) which also used to compete for the same keywords.

The usual scenario was to see the four of us in the top 4-6 slots for a given keyword in varying positions.

It's been so long since I checked that I can't even think of something to search for today but I do know that back then, long after my site was dead in the water, two of the others were still 1-2. I think we can rule out the business model as a factor.

I still ardently believe that being an affiliate site was central to what happened to you. I'm not discounting the attacks entirely, but believe that had you been a real seller/producer/provider your site would be ranking to some extent today.

If you were to chart Google's moves against affiliates I suspect you might also find some correlation to the drops you observed Jim. But you are quite correct – I'm not privy to the finer details.

I think Google made it possible from 2007 onwards but I only identified it as a possible issue in 2010. There's a GWMT thread from that year that I can point you to where TC's came scurrying out of their private forum to denigrate me for suggesting the notion. (You and Sasch weren't part of it)

As the years have gone on I have seen popular opinion change from "can't possibly happen" to the "can happen but it's hard".  

It's all good to have an opinion, but unless you have experienced the waves of attacks, and accompanying "damage to reputation" attempts, and watched the stats fall in unison, I don't think it's possible to speak authoritatively while ruling out NSEO.

I'm happy for both you and Sasch to have your opinions, but I think I know more about this narrow subject than most people because I had to live through it. 

I remember the night you referred to well and I have used almost every suggestion in a plan to be used if I ever get around to applying resources to those sites again.

It's not about my sites any more. I will not cease campaigning until Google does the right thing and fixes their mistake.

I'm highly confident that when Google introduced Penguin they did so in the full knowledge that it could be abused.  I'm also very confident they built in various techniques for identifying and limiting such abuse.  I do believe this abuse is absolutely possible, especially to determined and patient attackers.  However, I do not believe that Google sets any absolute thresholds on the volume of good links a site can have.  In my opinion Google still does not have the power to identify absolutely whether any specific link is natural, and that they use aggregation of link profiles to calculate all Penguin scores.  The volume of links doesn't matter IMO.

I very much doubt that Google selected this particular direction without some sort of very valid justification.  People are free to disagree with Google's choice, but outsiders never have a full picture of what is going on.  It may be that Penguin was the least worse choice available to tackle a specific problem.

I'll nail my colours to the mast now and say that I think Google should have simply reset sites caught by Penguin, so that they would be free to start again instead of penalising them for such long periods.  Doing the latter was a mistake IMO, and while resets may have allowed spammers to rebuild more quickly, we've seen that it's regular site owners that are most affected due to the difficulties of rebranding.  Meanwhile, spammers can just churn and burn.

I've only seen a very small handful of cases where, what I'll term, "low authority" sites may have been impacted due to links placed by third parties.  My guess is that as authority increases it becomes exponentially more difficult and time-consuming to impact a site through NSEO.

Now the bit I'm not looking forward to.

+Jim Munro obviously I have a lot of respect for you, and I feel that you've long laboured with the issues you encountered on your site, but I also remember joining a hangout where a few people tried to analyse what might be happening.  We found a lot of on-site issues, and if I remember correctly the site was basically a large listing of affiliate products (correct me please if that's incorrect).  IMO what happened your site was far more to do with the site itself falling out of favour with Google, and Google's absolute disdain for affiliates.  Links may have contributed to this, but I honestly do not believe that the reason your site died in Google was NSEO.  That's just my opinion, and I'll admit I have very imperfect knowledge of what went on or how things worked, so I apologise in advance if anything is inaccurate.

I'll leave it at that.

I posted in this thread first, I know what I am talking about and I take it personally.

>> I also know that TC's are obliged to follow an official stance.

That was never the case when I was a TC.  You were obliged to follow some rules when it came to posting in the official forums.  But these were the same rules that were applied to everyone who posted TBH.

When I say "I will not take party-line over personal ethics" I mean it. And you of all people should know how seriously I take that.

Maybe we should have another DSEOQ Hangout to discuss the matter further, because I do believe that some thing have gone unresolved/answered following the last session. 

That's not in dispute.

What we are arguing about is this ethical mess that Google has blundered into. I say it is easy, you say not, but let's just wait until ever-increasing prevalence will make it more obvious.

Until such time, let it be known that any opinion I set forth is my own, not Google's.

I stand on my reputation…

I said a few comments above that I understand and accept that but that doesn't mean that you have to be at odds with a mate over it. There's no sign on the wall that says you have to lead the charge.

I've never thought you had a big dick, seo or otherwise, but I'm glad to be a friend of yours.

Please stop repeating Google propaganda. You know that I will refute it until the cows come home.

Damaging an competitor's Google rankings is a mathematical certainty. For every site, Google calculates a unique upper limit threshold above which additional links are debits rather than credits. Google is the only search engine which penalises sites like this.

Other search engines like Baidu, Yandex and Bing have more sophisticated algorithms to deal with spurious links and simply ignore them. Google's official stance is that they do this too, but it must be a lie otherwise it would not be so easy to damage a competitor's Google rankings. 

I actually make substantially more money from my own sites than I do from consulting. What's more, I don't actually consult for the money; I consult because I love the Massive Game of Chess aspect.

Unlike so many others, I don't need to go around telling the world how big my SEO-Penis is, because my results speak for themselves.

The way you make it sound, anyone can just shoot down any competitor on a whim. That is simply not the way it works in the real world. Let me quote myself again: "NSEO is not nearly as simple as everyone makes it out to be."

"if only those who are willing to criminally damage a competitor's site are always in the top 10"

Jim… That question is not only false/misleading, it's also patently absurd. Frankly I'd expected more from you. If it was like really like that, operators like myself, and others who play by the rules and promote sites ethically, would be ranking nowhere. If NSEO was as simple and panoptic as you declare it to be, I would expect to see the Internet in a different state when I look at my own results and at those of my esteemed colleagues.

Once again, it comes down to there being a difference between having a valid point to make and engaging in sensationalist hyperbole.

I don't give a crap who you are, you can't Party like it's 1999 anymore, so I don't try.

If you don't mind I'm going to use that in my current site audits (without attributing you of course).  If you do mind, that's tough titty.

From the teaser it's unclear what he wants Google to do. What actions should Google take? Should Google have not changed anything? The narrative looks that of being victimized and dealt unjustly in broad and general terms by Google, without pointing to specific and actionable items such as the acceptable degree of collateral damage, thresholds, frequency of updates, etc. So if you buy into the narrative, what people should do? Stop using Google as a search engine?

Google search engine's primary role is not to support businesses: it returns results to satisfy the needs of the searcher. As long as it does that, Google doesn't care – and it may even be argued that it shouldn't care – what businesses fail because of its actions. And more importantly, searchers won't care.

Basing a business model on something as unstable as Google is business suicide.

There's a mile-wide gap between having a valid story and being a self-serving sensationalist at any cost.

At least I have some standards…

They can't see past Google.

There are 10000 other ways to market a business, but they can't seem to grasp that.

Attempting to convince Google to fix their self-created negative SEO mess has been a waste of time so far. They won't do it because they do not care about the damage they are causing. They do not see it as their responsibility.

Agitators like this guy might eventually make enough Joe Publics aware of the problem to the extent that Google's reputation might be affected.

Maybe once their metrics begin to be impacted Google might do the right thing.