Google Reconsideration Request Language Modified Again

Kudos goes out to Matt Cutts, again. πŸ˜€

The changes to the language in the Google Reconsideration Request (formerly known as the Reinclusion Request), that were discussed on SEO Scoop back on December 3rd and here on Smackdown again on the 18th, have finally gone through. Essentially, the changes have to do with

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Matt Cutts: Industry Leaders Are Incapable Of Performing Editorial Discretion

For those of you who have missed the stories behind Google making Donna Fontenot jump through hoops and taking her prisoner of war, where’s a brief rundown. At one time Donna accepted money for advertising (fully disclaimed as such), and some forms of those adverts involved the client getting a link back. Google pimp slapped Donna back in October. She went through and changed everything she could find that might be the problem, and filed a reinclusion request back in December. As of yesterday

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Hey, Donna… Your Lips Tired Yet From Puckering That Long?

Donna, I admire you. You sure do have some stamina, the way you’ve had them Louisiana lips of yours puckered so firmly to Google’s evil ass this long.

I dumped text link ads. I nofollowed paid links. I javascripted links that might be mistaken for paid links. I canceled my sponsored review accounts. I switched to a different method of monetization (Scratchback) that serves Google-friendly, nofollowed links. (And btw, Google, that put a huge dent in my revenue, just so you know). – Donna Fontenot of SEO-Scoop.com

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Wired Says Screw It To All Search Engines After SEL Inspired Spam Attack, Disallows EVERYTHING With Robots.txt

So, it looks like after the mishap this past Friday, where SEL accidentally exposed the Wired How-To wiki to spammers, Wired has instituted their new spam deterrent measures. They seem to have gone just a tad bit overboard, if you ask me.

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All Humor Aside, Here’s Why Matt Cutts Statement About AdWords Above SERPS Is BS

Sometimes, as geeks, we forget how the non-geek mind works. Things we take for granted as being obvious aren’t always so to the untrained eye. Yes, when most of us who live on the Internet perform a search on Google, we know without even thinking what is sponsored and what is not. Most of us probably won’t even see the ads in front of us, aside form the habitual scan for competitors when performing queries that might relate to our own sites.

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Matt Cutts Says: Paid Ads *Are* A Type Of Search

As many of you know, Andy Beard has been out of the posting loop lately, due to being preoccupied with moving. Luckily he did manage to get in a much needed review of Matt Cutts post on paid links.

I stumbled across the post last night, and I saw a quote by Matt Cutts that caught my attention a bit:

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Matt Cutts Comes Through! (Well, Mostly…)

Way to go, Matt! πŸ˜€

Although he said that it could take a while, it looks like the changes Matt mentioned he started the ball rolling on, that DazzlinDonna posted about back on Dec 3rd, “Admission of Guilt Will No Longer Be Required For Google Reconsideration Request“, have indeed gone through. For the most part, that is.

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Did Matt Cutts Say It Is Illogical To Think Google Would Penalize Sites Just For Buying Links?

Donna wrote a piece today entitled, “Less PageRank Floating Around In SEO Niche“. The post was based around a comment Matt Cutts made on SEOmoz having to do with the fact that certain sites seeing lower PageRank had to do with the fact that “there’s less PageRank flowing around in some areas (e.g. search and SEO)” and not that those sites had been penalized. Her conclusion from Matt’s statement is that she thinks most people were wrong about the recent visible PageRank penalties being just visible, and that the the penalties were probably also behind there being “less PageRank” in the SEO niche.

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Ok… Who’s The Smartass That Spam-Reported YouTube?

Or, I guess more to the point would be, who’s the dumbass that didn’t follow up the report by manually checking before applying the penalty? I mean, c’mon now… you guys aren’t going to going to try and still claim that this whole mess is about penalties, after screwing up the PageRank of a company you actually own, are you…?


(Dammit, just before my TLA on the homepage was supposed to go live, too!)

Well, I’m not gonna blame THIS one on Rand! πŸ˜€