Before I even start this article, let me be clear that I know this is as much as a link bait from Scoble as for the reason he is sorry - but it is important to document on a site that covers the SEO industry and news around it.
Robert Scoble, one of the more famous bloggers and social personalities on the Internet, has made a public apology to the SEO industry. He apologized for bashing the SEO industry on how they manipulate Google and also Google. You can read about his claims back in 2007 over at SEOmoz. Today, Scoble says he was wrong.
Scoble explained:
I showed an example where SEO techniques had put stuff into Google searches that just wasn't very good and compared that to where Mahalo had done a better job.Anyway, it's 2011 now and it’s clear that the Google way of doing things is still better for most people. It’s instructive to go back and see where I went wrong.
The funny part to me is one of the reasons he bashed the SEO industry was for the "link bait". He even admitted it, "I went for cheap SEO tricks. Truth is, if you bash the SEO world they will all link to you, argue with you, etc. (Bloggers even have a name for this: “link bait”)."
But if you think about it, apologizing to the SEO industry is also a cheap SEO trick and gets you lots of links - maybe not as many as apologizing, but still plenty of links.
As a side note, Robert Scoble is a good person. He probably doesn't remember it, but I emailed him out of the blue asking for advice on a Israeli Consulate backed Blogger trip that he went on the year before. He spent a nice amount of time talking to me over the phone about the pros and cons of the trip and what I should look out for. Rare to see someone with such a busy schedule take time out of their day to help a single person, they typically like helping the masses with their time - which totally makes sense.
Forum discussion at Sphinn.
