Google to enter the SEO business....

[garyk]

Yep according to this article anyway

http://www.newswire.net/newsroom/index.php/permalink/69048.html

Nice to see them following in M$ footsteps of abusing their position.

[Kev Jaques]

Even their own seo sucks lol ;)

[MASSEY]

$25,000 a
month............................................. ......

[directmarketingadvice]

It would make sense.

As I've said in the past (http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=144445&page=3), Google is going to find a way to monetise the positions on the page that are taken up by organic rankings.

If they're the best SEOs in the world - and they should be, they control the algo - then they're the ones you'll have to hire if you want the top spots for the high traffic, high money phrases.

Probably not moral, but it's Google's ball and they get to choose the rules of the game.

Steve

[I, Brian]

There's been talk of Google entering the SEO for many years - however, if they did launch something, expect it to be little more than a "managed webmaster tools" service.

Google will not compromise on the integrity of their search algo.

[fisicx]

You can bet that any site optimised by google will be poured over to try and identify the key changes. If I were google I'd fill it with red-herrings.

However, google admits that thier own SEO is pretty pants so would you really trust then to mess with your own site?

[OldWelshGuy]

There is an FIA ruling that insists that listing that have a monetary element involved in them MUSt be clearly marked as adverts. Google are likely to be forced to have to mark their own listings where they carry out SEO on the site, as paid positioning.

Google will not be SEO'oing, they will be algorithm monitoring as they manually increase the link juice to paid sites. It is in fact Pay for Position, which is what Yahoo/Altavista were doing all those years ago, when the anti trust case first came to court.

This isn't going to be as easy as Google think, they are going to have to face the might of Microsoft, who in the business world can chew google up and spit it out a thousand times over. There is already the one anti trust case against them, methinks there will be another coming sometime soon.

[rupertbright]

Google providing seo services, surely that goes against a competitive market. I can imagine there are not going to be too many people who will be ahppy with this. Google taking another step towards wolrd domination

[Andy Walpole]

The article reads like an April Fools joke

I would imagine the author has his facts wrong. He doesn't really understand SEO and PageRank as his explanation makes clear, so he's unlikely to really have much of a clue about any rumoured new Google business initiative.

Google would never be able to get away with setting themselves up as an SEO company (at least in the traditional sense). It would be a ridiculous internet monopoly that leave them wide open to a legal challenge

[mattsaw]

Even setting any legal and moral issues aside, and assuming that the article isn't BS (which I'm not convinced of) realisticly the only sites that are going to be able to afford to invest $250,000+ p/a in SEO are going to be commercial enterprise level sites.

The kind of SEO that is performed on these kind of sites is mostly related to information architecture and technical issues.

I know for a fact that many of these larger sites, particuarly those with a large AdWords spend are already receiving advice and guidance on these issues already, so it's a bit of a non-issue. The only thing that would surprise me would be Google formalising the arrangement and leaving themselves open to all of the issues mentioned above.

[directmarketingadvice]

I can imagine there are not going to be too many people who will be ahppy with this.

The world at large won't care one jot.

Why would they? They've no idea about SEO or how or why pages rank highly. Why would they care if that changes?

As long as the search results aren't worse - and they wouldn't be - the man in the street is unlikely to be bothered.

Steve

[franchiseshop]

I smell a fish, or is it a rat? Where is the link in the article to Google's official statement on this?

It wouldn't surprise me if Google offered a service to "optimise" your website but only in the way of ensuring your pages are well structured and only to make their job easier with regards to indexing good quality content that may otherwise get missed due to a poorly optimised website.

" In early April, Google put an end to the rumors and unveiled a plan to open the SEO agency as early as May"

Sure this aint just linkbait? ;-)

[cliquekaila]

Matt Cutts just responded to the rumors with this tweet: twitter.com/mattcutts/status/13072191187

Quote:
More to debunk the "Google to enter SEO business" myth: goo.gl/d6Qy Someone at NewsWire thought April Fools = real

The link is to this article which explains how everything got started - April Fools Joke 27 Days Later. Quite an interesting tale of how an April Fools joke can be misconstrued as real news.

Enjoy!