Google's Penguin Update: Rewards Spammy Sites With Little Or Poor Content

(Image Borrowed From http://libeltyseo.com/)

I have a problem with Google's whole approach to "cleaning up the net" with their "spam-eating Penguin".

First of all, the Penguin update clearly does not work very well in spite of Matt Putz saying that it was a success. It clearly was not a success. Anyone who does much research using Google's search engine knows that the first page results are now inferior to what they were before the Penguin arrived.

Yesterday I was looking at laptops and the results on Google's first page are absolutely DOMINATED by some very spammy apparently Asian-made Amazon affiliate sites with NO content at all - just the most basic of info taken right from the manufacturers and reviews that seemed to be stolen from amazon. The first 5 results were created by the same amazon affiliate with different sites and were absolute crap in terms of design and in terms of content. As to SEO I didn't have time to investigate but from what I've seen Google has discounted a lot of SEO so my guess is these guys were just lucky.
In my own niche it's the same thing: ALL of the results on page one are worse than my own site which got severely Penguin-slapped back to page ten or so. Some of the results on p. 1 are absolutely content-free, just pure advertisements, "click here to buy".
Bear with me a minute while I back up and point out that Google has always pretended that they hold that "content is king".

If you do some looking around - especially at search engine discussion sites - or just do a search for "how Penguin screwed up the search engine rankings", "problems with the Penguin update" and so on, you will find plenty of proof that what I am saying is true.

Now, were these sites punished because of "unnatural backlinks"? I'd say most were, but many were not. Maybe as many as 30% were Penguin-slapped for some unknown reason, apparently just caught in the crossfire of the Penguin algorithm's shotgun approach to cleaning up "spammy sites".
Regardless of WHAT GOOGLE HAS ALWAYS *SAID* IT WANTED (great content), the fact is that it valued backlinks more! I don't think most people will argue this point. While good content may have played a part in google's algorithms for SERP, what really made the difference for most sites was backlinks, with quantity mattering more than quality.

This being the case, how does Google have the right to just suddenly start punishing people for giving Google what Google apparently WANTED?
I know that I improved my rankings by doing link exchanges and building links like my competitors did. But I still could not get to page 1 EVEN THOUGH MY CONTENT WAS WAY BETTER than any of the pages on the first page.
So I happened to discover an SEO company which claimed to be white hat and which claimed to get first page rankings, guaranteed. I hired them. They got me to page 1 within 2 months for 5 keywords. If Google did not want this, why had they been rewarding it for over a year??

I found out soon enough that this SEO by this company I hired was NOT white hat, but was being done by spammy articles on a spammy blog network. But... it was too late... the damage was done... and besides that it was working! I was finally on page one where - with all due modesty - I DESERVED to be because my site had a lot of really good expert written original content (I know because I wrote it! ;-D )
So.... Google slapped me hard. My site was put WAY FURTHER BACK in the rankings than it ever was before Penguin! So this appears to have been more a punishment than just a de-valuing of the article network links.
Here's my problem with this:

If Google wanted to get rid of spammy backlinking why didn't they just issue a PRESS RELEASE stating exactly what they did not want and WARNING that these type of backlinks would lead to punishment?

This all they really would have had to have done: just make clear to everyone what they don't like. Then everyone could have gone about their business without losing income. I went from making $1000/month to zero a month on my main site. In this economy people cannot afford to lose this kind of money based on Google's whims, or poorly conceived algorithm changes, or misdirected vindictiveness.
While some sites may have fared well or better under the Penguin's update, you don't have to look very far to see TONS OF SITES that are now on page one that are NOT deserving of it AND see that tons of sites were punished which had great content.
Seems to me that Google is more interested in punishing backlinkers - who may not have been trying to "game" Google as much as just give Google what was apparent that It wanted -  than it is in providing good search results. Otherwise why not just have released a clear warning as to exactly what they were going to base rankings on and what they were going to de-rank?

And clearly the search results were not just a litle but much better before the Penguin came to town.

What does this all mean?
I think it means the people at Google are:

a) nuts

b) a-holes

c) cutting off their nose to spite their face

d) screwing up their own search results so they can punish gray- or black-hatters

e) all of the above

Google Penguin Update SUCKS

KILL THE PENGUIN!

Google, if you have a heart at all, if you want to keep your image positive in the eyes of the public... YOU MUST KILL THE PENGUIN UPDATE now!

As you may have noticed according to the search engine results (IF you can even tell now that the Penguin has totally made them less relevant and more spammy and stupid) your image has been severely hurt by this update.

Why? Because it makes you look not only stupid (it doesn't work, for one thing) but it also makes you look inhumane, arrogant, and completely lacking compassion as it destroys the rankings and thus the profits of thousands of small businesses who are struggling to make a buck in this ailing economy! That's right: the ones who are most hurt by the Penguin are little mom-and-pop businesses that rely on web traffic to make some extra money or even their main income after they lost their jobs and no one would hire them so they turned to the web to be an internet entrepreneur.

Supposedly this Penguin update was supposed to weed out spammy sites. Yet what it has actually done is to weed out good sites and promote spammy sites to the top of page 1! (See my other post on the Penguin update re evidence of this!)

Granted some who were hurt by the Penguin may have been using some grey hat SEO techniques. But ask yourself: Why?

Most of  them saw what their main competitors were doing and simply copied them in order to compete. Their competitors were using link farms, so they used link farms too. Their competitors were using articles  spun and distributed to blog networks, okay then they did that too, to compete...

You see when you are a small businessman you often have to compete in your niche with people who have quite a bit of money and who have a paid SEO firm working for them who know all the best techniques to get rankings... Clearly great content was NOT getting anyone ranked high. So they did what their  competitors did thinking "if Google is rewarding them (and they were - that's a key point in all this!) then surely they'll reward us as well."

So then they start competing, doing well in the rankings, and BAM! The Penguin pulls the rug out from under them!

Why? Why, if Google wanted people to quit doing this or that, why wouldn't they just tell us, issue a press release:

"WARNING: [This or that practice of linking, on site SEO or whatever] is no longer acceptable! Change your sites now according to the following standards and practices, or you will be penalized on April 24th!"

Then they could have listed what was acceptable or not acceptable and let us fix our sites according to their wishes, and stop using whatever link schemes or other SEO they don't like, and most people would have OBEYED and that's it: no more problem.

But noooooooo! Google would rather just SLAP you down, punish you for something you didn't even know was wrong or at least didn't know was on their radar... and then let you just dangle in the wind as your money site(s) lose all rank and traffic and you can't pay your rent or your car payment or whatever.


And GOOGLE WONDERS WHY PEOPLE SAY IT IS EVIL?????!!

Google has zero regard for people. (Are they run by robots? Or just jerks who have no human compassion?)


So what do we do now?

Some are saying to just wait and see. Maybe Google will show some compassion and reverse the severity of the Penguin...

Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

THE LEAST THEY COULD DO IS ANSWER THIS QUESTION FOR US:
WHAT DOES GOOGLE WANT? What do they want from us as webmasters? 

And tell us the TRUTH! Don't give us this b.s. about how you LOVE CONTENT! 
The results of Penguin prove that you do NOT love content because many sites with great content have been slapped while sites with ZERO content have been put up on page one.

IF Google loved content my site would have been #1 as soon as I built it, and I'd have never had to go searching for info on SEO, how to get my site to rank, how to use x% keywords, how to have just the right Page Titles, how to use keywords for images, how to get backlinks, how to get social bookmarks, etc. etc. etc....

So until Google comes clean and tells us the TRUTH about what Penguin really is filtering and why, and what we need to do to be liked by the Penguin and the Panda, I see that we really can only do 2 things:

1) WAIT AND SEE what Google wants or if they have enough sense to reverse or minimize some of the filtering and our rich content sites will come back up the page rankings; and 

2) BOYCOTT GOOGLE! At least until they repair the damage they've done, and hey maybe even issue an apology! 

LOL! Yeah, right! Google issuing an apology about their stupidity will not be forthcoming! I think that's one thing you can count on.

"We don't care. We don't have to. We're Google!"