In response to an upset webmaster's post in the Google Webmaster Help forums, Googler JohnMu wrote down four things that some people suspect Google of doing, which he says he has never seen since working at Google. These include:
- Googlers changing crawling, indexing or ranking of content they don't agree with. As a data point, check the search results for http://www.google.com/search?q=jew as well as the explanation at http://www.google.com/explanation.html.
- Large companies being able to encourage Google to change crawling, indexing or ranking of a site they don't like. Yes, they contact us, but no, they don't get any results.
- A site being damaged with regards to crawling, indexing or ranking, by someone else on the outside. I've seen sites run into troubles for getting hacked, but I've never seen them run into trouble because of something someone other than the owner did outside of the site.
- A spam report being taken seriously if the site itself was abiding our Webmaster Guidelines. 42,000 spam reports wouldn't change a thing, regardless of who filed them, if the site is compliant.
Do I believe John here? Yes, 100%. Do I think Google has ever done any of these without John knowing about it? I think it is possible. To be fair, John does add:
Obviously, any of these things could theoretically happen, but I haven't seen it happen, and I don't believe it's something a webmaster has to worry about. If it ever became obvious to Googlers that one of these things happened, it would be resolved immediately -- so if you feel that it has happened, please take the time to submit a spamreport with the details. We take these reports very seriously.
Do you think Google is 100% honest about these topics?
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
