A welcome and a plea for leniency from the Google gods

As a webmaster, I have a love hate relationship with Google. On the one hand, I get a lot of traffic to my websites from Google, and that helps me make money. On the other, darker hand, I spend hundreds of hours every year jumping through Google's hoops (Goops) to build and optimize websites that meet an ever-changing miasma of Google guidelines. I stick to a White-Hat-Only philosophy when optimizing, which makes my job even more difficult. I'm a "stick to the rules" kind of guy but my problem, and the reason for this blog, is that the rules are murky and seem to change on a continual basis.

I want to start by highlighting some of the positive things I see from Google. I'll be plenty critical in future posts, and I don't want to anger the Google Gods before I even get started.

1. Pagerank - From a webmaster's point of view, pagerank is a wonderful tool. Seeing an increase in pagerank after months of hard work is a very satisfying feeling and is a great way to provide a preliminary and ongoing analysis of the website's strength. Pagerank isn't the be-all-end-all in my Search Engine Optimization process (the actual search results being far more important), but is a fairly consistent judge of the progression up the internet food chain. Read a more comprehensive explanation about pagerank from the guys at www.webworkshop.com.
   
   More importantly to me, pagerank is an invaluable tool when deciding how important or powerful a website is when I'm visiting. A website with a pagerank of 8 has more authority in my mind that one with a pagerank of zero or 1. I trust Google when it gives a site that much credence, and I value those authority sites for their content. Many of my favorite websites, message boards, and blogs have healthy pagerank, and I don't consider it a coincident.
   
   
2. Search Results - Google provides the best and most relevant search results. I use Yahoo occasionally, but it comes in a very distant second place to Google when it comes to delivering relevant search results. My one complaint here is that too many search terms have Wikipedia or Directory entries in the top 2 or 3 spots. If I want to search Wikipedia, or look for a website on a Directory, I'll go to those specific sites myself. When searching for information on chess, I don't want a Wikipedia entry describing the history of the game. I want serious, chess-oriented sites that can provide how-to guides, tips, or even online game play.
   
   
3. Webmaster Tools - Google's webmaster tools are second to none. There is not a more comprehensive set of tools available to track the websites I manage and to find errors in my sites that I wouldn't have otherwise been able to see, let alone resolve. There are, however, some better tools for certain SEO tasks, and I'll probably go over those in the future, with a suggestion to Google to implement some of these tools themselves to push their own webmaster tools from a utilitarian devise to a true killer app.

Watchdog?
I don't aim to be a true watchdog, but my goal is to provide my opinions on Google's actions, and to challenge them when they do things that hurt the webmaster community at large. Many of my posts will be negative, but my aim is to provide constructive criticism rather than using this as a forum to complain about everything Google. I hope to turn this into a blog that Google can "spy" on for useful advice from the little guy, and to see the repercussions of some of their actions.

I'm hoping for a little leniency from the Google Gods when it comes to my rants. Take it or leave it, these are my thoughts, and I hope that they aren't taken lightly. I'm an educated and successful businessman that can hopefully provide some perspective from the position of the "little guy".

---

If you have a problem with, need clarification on, or have a question about this post, visit my web design site at www.fastwebsitesolutions.com to contact me.