Image via Wikipedia

There is currently a discussion on MyVirtualPowerForum about Google being evil. This was my first response to the discussion.

While I do not consider Google “evil” (I reserve that label for the really bad things in life), I do think that they are the big bully on the block.

For all the reasons given here and more, Google has decided that it is the search engine “God”, and whatever it decides goes.

Well, this only works if your SEO person only optimizes your website for Google. I have never followed this method because it puts you at the mercy of them. There are many techniques (especially now with social marketing) around the monolith of Google.

What I find funny is when Google spokespeople openly lie (IMHO), and all these SEO discussion forums obediently fall in line with the supposed policy. An example was the pronouncement from on high (Matt Cutts) that Google does not consider “.gov” or “.edu” sites to be authoritative. What pure nonsense!

Another stupid comment from them was that they no longer use inbound links from directories. Yeah, right.

Google’s biggest, and ongoing lie (IMHO) is their use of PageRank. The supposed PR that you see people claiming that their site ranks for is useless. First of all, the term PageRank, is named for Larry Page, not after a web page. Secondly, the PR you can see on the Google Toolbar is not what Google is using. What Google is using is a trade secret.

And finally, PR is not important in the bigger picture. What is important is where your site ranks in the organic results on any search engine, and where it appears for the keywords that you want it to appear for.