This question invites many responses from all perspectives. Google is an Internet monolith, a pyramid, a ziggurat that manages the expectations of millions of people’s lives without ever being invited. It created a tool many today never thought they needed.

As with all corporates, there are internal companies policies for the staff and external policies that are for the customer’s benefit. Likewise Google Guidelines have been created to benefit… well, this is the debate. Just who are the Guidelines written for? What does the word Guideline mean to you?

The following 8 points are taken from Google Quality Guidelines.

1. Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
2. Don’t use cloaking or sneaky redirects.
3. Don’t send automated queries to Google.
4. Don’t load pages with irrelevant keywords.
5. Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
6. Don’t create pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other badware.
7. Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
8. If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

Let’s start with point 1. They are using the term ‘Avoid’ rather than ‘Do Not’, therefore this is fairly loose. What if you want to place the transcript of your video within your page therefore allowing Google to know the content of the video, but you don’t what this visible?

Point 2 mentions cloaking, however this method again is allowed by Google to display different content to different geolocations.

Point 3 is abused continually. How do I find the ranking positions of my clients keywords? Automated queries.

Point 4 is laughable. My website, or my clients website is owned by us, not Google, therefore we can place whatever content we wish, even if it’s perceived as trivia or irrelevant.

Point 5 is fair point however how many dup DMOZ directories are there still ranking? How many affiliate sites do you know work solely on this principle?

Point 6 shouldn’t be within the Guideline. Reasons to follow.

Point 7 works fine for long tail phrases and some extremely competitive 2 keyword phrases that rank VERY well.

Point 8 is very much like beauty – it’s in the eye of the beholder – likewise adding value to your site is beneficial for whom?

Please note, I’m not advocating BlackHat, but these are only guidelines, not rules and regulations.  If Google were to create some, they would only need point 6 along with their own ‘Don’t Be Evil’ policy. However, these three ostensibly calming words create more discontent after further  thought.  Hitler himself considered everything he was doing was NOT evil.  Remember Martin Luther King once said “Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.”.

So yes, they are just guidelines, and in some ways they are self-regulatory, but Google must adhere to them too.  If I place within my website T&Cs a request for Google not to scrap my content, would it adhere?

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