Google chips away at its own credibility
It's no secret that I lost faith in Google some time ago. I guess that's because, in my opinion, Google has taken up the position as the defacto law maker of the web. Judge. Jury. Executioner. Google has the power to make or break businesses and start-ups. The problem with Google is the lack of transparency and the inconsistent application of their 'rules'.
To further highlight my disenchantment with the Google monster, today I discovered I'd been on the receiving end of some more content theft. Last October I wrote a post on how to make money from the global financial crisis. Keep point here is "I wrote a post", as in me, sitting at the computer, typing stuff that spewed from my brain. Maybe it's not the greatest article ever written, but at least it's mine.
Now today I discover that the same article has been posted on another blog. Although credit where it's due, at least the plagiarist changed the post title and included most of his/her own affiliate links. You can view the highly creative piece here, Plagiarised Post (I added the nofollow attribute cause I'd hate Google to further penalise me for passing link juice to copied content).
So, in summary, I created the content, therefore I am the source. Now, as it happens, Google has previously bitch slapped me, and I lost my PageRank. Remember Google's definition of PageRank:
PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results.
My blog, the original source of the content is PR0, while the copycat's blog is a PR2. Therefore, Google apparently view the plagiarised content as being of higher importance than the original source. The plagiarised version will appear higher in the organic SERP's as well. How is that fair? How does that provide Google's 'customers' with a better user experience?
It seems as though in Google's eyes taking a paid post opportunity is a far worse crime than the infringement of copyright. Why on earth could that be? Might have something to do the advertising dollar.
What do Google lose in my plagiarism example? Nothing... well, besides some credibility perhaps, but then I'm sure they aren't too concerned about my opinion. And paid posting? Well, if you were a major player in the online advertising game, would you really want to make it easy for competitors to enter the market and chip away at your market share?
p.s.
To the 'content scab' - please don't cut and paste my stuff directly. I don't like it. Thank you.
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Tagged: google, plagiarism
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2 Responses to “Google chips away at its own credibility”
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Be nice. Keep it clean. Stay on topic. No spam.
It’s seems like you’re doing a good job of working around the Google bitchslap. Looks like you’re still getting good traffic and you’re if you’re article’s good enough to be creeped, you must have done something right.
My newest gripe is Akismet filter and when some joker gets your url tossed in the spam sites, have fun trying to comment on any blogs using the filter.
I’m sorry to hear about your content theft issues on this one and understand well your frustrations with Google. I too was the subject of a PageSpank some time ago, but that was due to my blogroll, not paid posting.
Regardless, I took a look at your plagiarist. As if to farther increase the irony meter here, the site is hosted on Blogger, a Google product.
The good news is that I can help you get the content removed, it’s trivial to file a DMCA notice with Google and get them to pull down the work. Also, if you want, I can recommend a few sites/services to track where your content is being used.
Let me know if there is anything I can do to help, just drop me an email.