Mymotech

Matt Cutts has boldly gone and painted with a broad brush. In a blog post he insinuates a connection between using Google-unapproved SEO techniques and criminal behavior.

For a while now, I’ve had a slight hunch that clients that embrace blackhat SEO on their site are willing to cut corners in other areas of business as well… Can I definitively claim that there’s a connection between a willingness to embrace blackhat SEO and a willingness to cut corners in other areas of business? No, of course not…

The problem with Matt Cutts’ statement is that there is a difference between people who employ blackhat SEO techniques and people who misrepresent themselves to clients in an attempt to defraud them out of money for services performed poorly. In reality the latter is what got TrafficPower in trouble. The SEO methods that they used were ancillary to the wrongdoing they were engaged in.

Mr. Cutts is placing Blackhat SEO usage on the same level as business ethics. That is a fallacy. I am sure Matt would like us to believe that using blackhat techniques somehow compromises your integrity. The imposition of morality is always a tricky thing. Google controls 65% of all searches today, is that a mandate to impose laws on web sites? Does “might make right” on the internet today? The reality is that Google does not have the right to impose morality on anyone.

I can understand the temptation to view blackhat SEO as somehow immoral, but it just isn’t so. Is it a good long term strategy for a site that wants to be around in six months? Absolutely not. However, that doesn’t make blackhat SEO itself a crime. Selling SEO services with a guarantee you knowingly cannot fulfill, that is wrong.

In fairness to Matt he did not make the argument definitively, but it is troubling when the person at Google who is in charge of detecting and defeating spam begins to see his job as the battle between right and wrong in the moral sense.