Is Google's data blackout opening the door for easy SEO scams?

[finalstep]

For anyone who has not heard the news - http://www.businessinsider.com/google-ended-free-organic-search-keyword-data-2013-10



So my first thought was this will cripple the SEO industry, which it will. Now after thinking about it some more, I see another major problem. Now consumers / website owners will have no idea whether their SEO work is delivering what the provider says it will, since they won’t know how much traffic it’s getting them and more importantly which keywords are delivering it. In my opinion this opens doors to scammers who can just claim they are experts, since the average joe will not be able to tell if their work is actually doing what they claim.



Bad move on google’s part imo. Thoughts?

[turnkeyz]

You never know whats written in future of SEO. Well, it is being said that everything will rely on social interaction , be it a blog or any kind of website.

[thepromogirl]

Google has already made several public statements saying nothing is changing as far as SEO. It’s still a big part of the industry. Google’s statement: There’s nothing new or different SEOs or publishers need to worry about. Guidance remains the same, it says: have original, high-quality content. Signals that have been important in the past remain important."

[finalstep]

That’s true technically, but not practically. They took away data driven SEO analysis. Obviously that’s not something Google wants people to use, but it is still a tool used by virtually every agency, so it’s a huge loss for marketers.



And that still does not address the issue above.

[projectasylum]

While I do understand the problems currently exhibited by keyword searches (including unintelligible, unrelated, and inappropriate terms used to dragnet traffic to a site), there is still very much a problem if you can’t tell what’s working and what’s not, even if the guy doing your site and running it has not only the knowledge of what’s working and what’s not, but also the keywords he’s using – some, a lot or all of which you wouldn’t think of approving, let alone using. Why would a kiddie day care center want to use “porn” or “pron” as a keyword, or a porn site use “kiddies” as a keyword?



A major part of the problem, as I see it from being in computers and tech stuff since having my first programmable computer – the Odyssey 2000 way back in like '81 – and watching how society evolved since the 70’s where it revolves around computers, is that since the late 90’s, there’s been a dramatic shift in personal skill levels based on age ranges.



Think about it. When I was in 6th grade, we were decomping Ataris and NES game cartridges and making our own games. By high school, most of the kids I knew either had internet (at least a dialup, if not getting into Ether or T-1’s, though that was more around the end of high school, start of college, 1994 or 1995, give or take), had a pretty comprehensive website they completely designed and programmed (and keep in mind, we didn’t have anywhere near the amount of bandwidth or storage quota you guys do now, nor did we have such a Herculean library of code languages to integrate), and several of them even let me play text-based RPG games they programmed into their TI-81’s in five minutes.



Flash forward to the end of the 90’s, when MySpace started. That’s where things started to change. Yes, a bunch of young adults made and built MySpace and started social media. But then those adults, and the adults that monitored and ran it, essentially said “Okay, we’re done, that’s all folks” while the kids (even as young as 8!) looked at the new toys we left behind for them and reverse-engineered not only the site’s abilities and code, but how to tweak, manipulate, augment, and compromise the security of it with great ease and profits.



Over time, the over-18 crowd perpetually would move on from doing the tech skills to “something more practical”, because they were told over and again at the end of college and start of their professional careers that computers wouldn’t make money and that it was the domain of kids. And the kids, completely on their own, unmonitored, unmentored, and learning they were also unlimited in what they could do and get away with, filled the expansive void.



So much so that if you ask anyone over 25 how tech-savvy they are, the older they are the more they’ll likely say “not very” or something of that extent. But ask any kid college-age or younger, and they’ll pull out an extensive CV of apps, games, sites, etc. that would either impress the heck out of Steve Jobs or scare the crap outta him, if he were alive still.



My point is, finaljoe’s concern about these scammers being able to take advantage of the everyday person because they understand how SEO works and what their customers are and aren’t able to figure out on their own, is very real. But the biggest part of that situation is not that someone wants to do it, but that there’s been a complete abdication of learning and understanding (being an educated technopulus), by the very people who started it in the first place – before some of these scammers were even born!



So the question then becomes, okay, I know we Founders are way behind on the learning curve (of which, even though I do a lot of tech stuff myself and understand it, I totally throw myself in with), but how do we get ourselves to quit complaining about the kids taking advantage of our self-inflicted Luddite philosophies, and get back to being what we were when we were in school? Yes, there’s a crapload more out there to learn than even we thought possible in the days of COBOL and BASIC. But dangit, WE wrote the rules, WE need to make sure that those that follow us understand the reasons behind the rules and the consequences they seem to be perfectly fine with (NSA, Stuxnet, CISPA/SOPA, complete national shutdown of internet in Egypt, and potentially in the U.S. if the EO were given, etc.)



What are your thoughts? Am I a crackpot? I know I’m really old-school at 36, but you tell me if I’m off on my techno-societal shift. I think that’s the first place we need to hit. And make sure to leave a mark you can see from space.



-PA

[Guest philos]

I’m a marketing director and when i read the google blackout article my thought was this will hurt the seo industry and it will affect every gig on fiverr that’s related. Techies will find new ways to get around this very soon and start search engines if they haven’t already. Do you not agree?

[jasveena]

WOW, I just got to know about this! and this is certainly BAD! how about google alerts then? and the information we still get to see on other Google Products such as blogger.

[finalstep]

Reply to @philos: yes i’m sure people will figure out a way around it, but that wasn’t the point of my topic