On Friday, a millennial completely eviscerated another millennial for ripping into another millennial – Google! It’s, as the French call it, a clustérfuck à trois.
It all started when a millennial SEO wrote a long rant, ironically on Medium, about the lack of traffic that self-involved millennial Google is sending his way. A few hours later his site vanished from Google. This has created a hot debate about how evil Google is and whether Google should give greater search visibility to any and all whiners.
Here are the three letters making the rounds on social media – one by Roger, one by Kat, and one (allegedly) by a prominent Googler.
An Open Letter To Our Google Overlords
(Reprinted With or Without Permission)
Dear Google CEO Sundar Pichai,
When I was a kid, I used to play with wood blocks. My favorite letters were always S, E, and O. And Google was still #cool.
I dreamed of making and optimizing lots of websites, adding douchey comments anonymously to SEO articles, writing guest blogs on any sites that would publish me, getting drunk in fancy hotels in cities around the world, automating all my daily tasks, collecting bigger and better paychecks, and eventually calling myself CEO, despite being my only employee.
This must be what it means to be an SEO, I told my 13-year-old self. That and endless porn!
Fast forward to today, and I’ve done all those things. But little did I know that Google would turn out to be such a #dick.
- You say create amazing content. I do! And still it doesn’t rank.
- You say make pages for users, not Google. Why are you lying?
- You say don’t deceive your users. Hello, this is marketing!!
- You say avoid tricks to improve search rankings. How else am I supposed to get traffic and make more money? With a decent product or service? Are you high?
- You say make your website stand out from the rest. Well, it would be a lot easier if you ranked my amazing website at number one – that would sure make it stand out!
- You say avoid making automatically generated content. But I have expensive bourbon to consume and a devoted Instagram following to constantly update.
- You say don’t participate in link schemes. But links help my sites rank really well until they get removed from the search results for some mysterious reason. #googlefail.
- You say no cloaking. But not cloaking reduces my income!
You also say a bunch of other stuff about redirects, hidden text, doorway pages, scraping content, using irrelevant keywords, abusing rich snippets, and creating malicious web pages. Blah blah blah.
What makes you the Internet police. Maybe people want, nay DESERVE, to be phished!
Well, Google, what do you have to say about this? You say:
We understand that placing ads above-the-fold is quite common for many websites; these ads often perform well and help publishers monetize online content. This algorithmic change does not affect sites who place ads above-the-fold to a normal degree, but affects sites that go much further to load the top of the page with ads to an excessive degree or that make it hard to find the actual original content on the page.
When are you going to take yourself out of your own index, Google? After all, you now have more ads “above-the-fold” than anybody with the recent removal of right-side ads. FOUR in fact.
Where is your original content?
Oh wait, you don’t HAVE ANY original content! Because your entire business model relies upon scraping everybody else!
But we’ve gotten off topic. Here’s the important point. I’m 25. Every night I drown my sorrows at the bar for HOURS. I cry alcoholic tears. Why? Because I’m not making enough money off you anymore!
I take Ubers everywhere. I’ve got rent to pay at this luxury apartment. I just bought my fifth drone. Check out my 24-karat gold Apple Watch on my Instagram! I have a scuba-diving trip to Hawaii that isn’t going to pay for itself.
All these bills are stressing me out. And now Google is stealing traffic from all of us?
FML!
Anyway, long story short, Google is evil and to fight the evil, I’ve started a Kickstarter for the most ingenious project ever: a non-evil search engine that has no advertising at all. It’s going to make MILLIONS!
Google used to have our backs. Turns out they were just getting ready to stick a knife in it!
Your Friend In SEO,
Roger
UPDATE: As of just a few minutes ago, Google has removed one of my websites from the search results. Coincidence? I think not! Now I know what aborted babies feel like – like I’m some sort of unexpected pregnancy Google wouldn’t allow to bring to term. In the meantime, I could really use your help on GoFundMe and/or PayPal. Also here’s my Amazon wish list. And my grocery list – I need some rice. Ooh and a rice cooker. And maybe some bamboo chopsticks… (Ed.: All links removed because screw him.)
An Open Letter To Young Millennial Asshat SEOs Like Roger…
(Reprinted With or Without Permission)
Dear Roger,
All of your views are wrong and stupid because you’re 25. I’m 26. And in that one extra year, I’ve amassed so much more knowledge. Let me drop some on you.
One day I was sitting at a bar, telling my bartender all my troubles. After listening to me whine about Google for several minutes, Henry, my bar-tending friend, told me Google doesn’t owe you a living and I’m so lucky to be an SEO. And then, for some reason, he asked me if I wanted to “flap my wings and fly away from here”.
The point is: your site sucks. There’s a reason why your site is gone from the search results.
I am a white hat SEO. I’ve never had any sites taken out of search results. I follow Google’s webmaster guidelines. Google’s guidelines aren’t a hoax. They’re real. Follow them now before it’s too late.
Spamming is like raw dogging – eventually you’re going to get burned.
Your strategy sounds more like a trip to the casino. Sure, your “investment” in the Google slot machine may give you a few small wins and maybe even a great bonus round or two. But by the end of the day, your pockets will be empty and you’ll have nothing to show for all your little victories. The house always wins.
Trust me when I say, there are far worse things in life than not ranking in the top 3, on Page 1, or even on Page 2 of Google. What’s far worse is people like you who expect Google to send your sites tons of traffic so you can keep buying expensive watches, chopsticks, and the fanciest bourbon.
Go eat some ramen noodles. As the great prophet Denis Leary once said, “Life sucks, get a helmet.”
You wanted to write an open letter? Well, I just closed it, bitch!
– Kat
An Open Letter To SEOs Who Shouldn’t Write Response Open Letters To SEOs Who Shouldn’t Write Open Letters to Anyone
(Reprinted With or Without Permission)
Fuck all y’all!
Sincerely,
Sundar Pichai
Final Thoughts
Oh, what an industry! What more can I say?
Thinking about writing your own Open Letter? Well, be sure to check out our guide to Open Letter Optimization (coming soon!)
