Yelp is Useless and their Review Filters Stink

Update 9-10-14

Yelp still has the same serious problems and defects I mentioned below, the part that is really frustrating is how arrogant Yelp is.  Even if you send them proof that they can not tell a fake review from a real review they will still not fix any of their defects.  Yelp remains a useless website, and their review filters are worse today than they were a year ago. Please click on the following link to see another example of how terrible Yelp is.

Manpower Movers San Diego

Please look at some real HTP Company Reviews, that Yelp does not show at all.

http://nypost.com/2014/09/10/sparks-steakhouse-sues-yelp-to-identify-internet-troll/

http://valleywag.gawker.com/lawsuit-says-yelp-made-millions-forcing-businesses-to-p-1617941464

new-google-quality-rating-guidelines

Below is a link to a very interesting new set of guidelines for quality from Google.
It confirms what Google has been working on for the last year.

Google is now putting a high emphasis on sites that are considered to have a high level of expertise, authoritativeness or trustworthiness. This is something that Google has been working on in their algorithms for some time, and shouldn’t be much of a surprise for webmasters to see this.
Lacking in E-A-T
Google’s brand new emphasis in the new Quality Rater’s Handbook is the idea of E-A-T, which is a website’s “expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness”.
Too Many Ads = Low Quality to Google Raters.
In the past the raters only looked for spammy or deceptive advertising.
Today you want little or no advertising, especially on your home page.

bing-search-results-better-than-google-market-share

Update:  Eight months after I first wrote this article Bing search results are still better than Google search results.  Everything I state below is still correct.

Today in my opinion the quality of Bing's search results are better overall than Google search results.  In the past I never used Bing and now I am using it more often than Google.
The big change came in May of 2013 when Google started using its newest algorithms with very poor results.  Known top quality web sites were pushed down and lame, crappy and unreliable sites were put at the top of Google search results.  There are many cases where "landing pages" with the exact keyword match in the domain name and literally zero content are ranked #1 for some fairly important keyword phrases.  This is especially upsetting to webmasters as Google makes videos telling webmasters to focus on content and that website owners should not worry about search engine optimization.

Even after many people have complained Google has not fixed the quality of their search results yet.  Furthermore Google continues to treat webmasters poorly.
What do I mean?

1. Google continues to unfairly penalize good web sites; I have given proof and written several articles about this serious problem.  Google's staff can not even implement Google's own guidelines and rules properly.

2. Google continues to deny that any negative SEO even happens and that SEO sabotage is not possible, when I have personally seen many cases of this and there are many companies marketing these negative SEO services.
So no matter what bullshit claims and excuses Google comes up with, the bottom line is they have made several wrong strategic decisions and implemented a set of defective new algorithms, which have harmed their search results.

3.  Google has decided to squeeze all the money out of web Publishers that run Google Ads on their websites.  I talk with many hundreds of successful Internet publishers and I hear story after story of people that used to earn $11,000 per month from Google Adsense and now they earn $2,000 per month.  You ask how this is possible.
Well Google makes you sign an agreement that they will pay you by a secret formula, which Google will not reveal.  Yes as crazy as it sounds many people agree to this and whenever Google decides they can take as much money as they like and the Publisher is left with crumbs.

So why is Google not losing market share to Bing yet?

I think they will over time unless Google straightens out and starts treating Internet publishers better and quickly improves their current poor search results.

Currently Google still has 67% of search market share, and Bing has 29%, this includes Yahoo, since Bing provides all search results to Yahoo.
This is a good question to ask people to find out what level of knowledge they have about the search engine industry.
If a person does not know Bing provides all search results to Yahoo, then you know you are talking with someone that is ignorant of the search engine industry.

Frankly I wish better search engine companies would spring up and start giving Google even more competition.  I do not think Google is going to take any steps to fix the problems I mention above unless they start losing some market share.

In some ways it is sad to me, as I used to be very loyal to Google and now that Google treats me and all of its other clients/customers so poorly I am promoting and asking people to try Bing and other search engines.  I think the big problem for Google is many people are starting to see this in similar ways I am seeing it.
I think the part that bothers me the most is all the unfair penalties Google gives to web site owners.

* After I wrote this article I did a search on Google for "tom forrest htpcompany" and compared it to Bing's results.
Guess what Bing won, however how can Google screw up a basic targeted specific search like "tom forrest htpcompany"?
Google has had this example search correct for over eight years and now based on their new defect algorithms Google cannot even get this simple search right.  

Interesting Google Claims About Cheating Publishers Out of Money

This is an interesting article that hopefully will be investigated and reported on by major news networks.

Some people believe this article may have been written by a disgruntled Adsense Publisher.
I can tell you for certain that Google has dramatically cut the payments to Publishers over the last several years.  So in the best case Google has a problem with many unhappy Publishers and I would not recommend anyone waste their time with Google Adsense.  I would not put any more Google ads on my websites as I feel Google treats Publishers poorly and I hate the idea that Google makes you sign an agreement that they pay you by a secret formula that only Google can see ... seriously.
People that are not in the Internet industry are shocked when they learn of this crazy Google policy.

One long time Publisher friend of mine said:
"I think there is an eerie truth to these accusations".

I am a former Google employee and I am writing this to leak information to the public of what I witnessed and took part in while being an employee. My position was to deal with AdSense  accounts, more specifically the accounts of publishers (not advertisers). I was employed at Google for a period of several years in this capacity.

Having signed many documents such as NDA's and non-competes, there are many repercussions for me, especially in the form of legal retribution from Google. I have carefully planned this leak to coincide with certain factors in Google such as waiting for the appropriate employee turn around so that my identity could not be discovered.

Matt Cutts of Google says:

Matt Cutts ‏@mattcutts 

if they were really an employee, it's not hard to give some proof. And the whole "AQ3C" thing?
Complete BS.

Top-Internet-Advertising-Companies-2013-Inc-5000

This is an interesting list to study.

 

http://www.inc.com/inc5000/list/industry/advertising-marketing

Funny link selling story - Matt Cutts tweeted Vince at WebDesign.org

This article on SearchEngineLand made me laugh.

http://searchengineland.com/selling-links-big-brand-heres-dont-tweet-187179

Now let's see what Google does about this clear violation of the Google Webmaster Guidelines and how long it takes Google to do something.

Currently this site WebDesign.org is ranked #2 for "web design" on Google (very impressive).

Also this site is a PR6 with many PR5 internal pages and no gray bar pages from what I can see.  I would say this is currently considered a super powerful and highly ranked website by Google.

In the SearchEngineLand article it really made me laugh when I saw what Matt Cutts tweeted to this guy Vince.

Negative SEO article on Forbes - SEO Sabotage

Today Forbes released a very interesting article regarding negative SEO and I am glad.
Hopefully this will help promote this issue and make people aware and put pressure on Google to change some of their lame policies that lead to innocent websites and people being penalized.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2014/03/18/negative-seo-have-mercenaries-been-hired-to-torpedo-your-search-rankings/

In this useful article Matt Cutts is quoted as saying:

"In my experience, there's a lot of people who talk about negative SEO, but very few people who actually try it, and fewer still who actually succeed." He goes on to say, "I know that there's been a lot of people stressed about this. Whenever we dig into what's actually going on, there's been a lot of discussion but very little in ways of actually people trying to do attacks."

Bullshit from Matt Cutts, Google cannot even find and detect obvious paid links correctly, how can they claim they can detect negative SEO?

I do not believe Google has any clue about how often this really happens.

No Google is NOT Doing Enough to stop this terrible problem of negative SEO.
Google needs to decide which backlinks to count and which ones to ignore, that is their job, not the job of business owners.  It is ridiculous for Google to create this problem, then tell website owners they must do a lot of work to protect themselves from the problem Google created in the first place.

Google SEO Sabotage

Update 9-1-14
Not much has changed since I first wrote this article below.

By: Tom Forrest
Email: tomforrest@htpcompany.com

Hello Google,

Google has created a new industry “SEO Sabotage”, I have seen several cases of this and it is easy to do.  You can now easily have your competitors penalized by Google and your competitors can also easily have you penalized by using bad link building methods and procedures that Google does not like.

This article is one of many real life examples.

http://blog.kevinfream.com/2012/09/01/seo-sabotage
Another good SEO Sabotage article to read. 

http://www.seobook.com/negative-seo
The author (Aaron Wall) is one of the best SEO experts in the world.  Many people are SEO pretenders and do not know what they are talking about, Aaron Wall is a true SEO expert that I respect.

I just found another good SEO Sabotage example and even though I do not know the author, when I read his article I can tell that he is an excellent SEO expert.
http://www.itstheroi.com/google/google-fail-victim-of-negative-seo-still-suffering 

This is Google's latest Disavow information:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-new-tool-to-disavow-links.html

This SEO Sabotage problem is not going away, it is becoming huge and many people are very angry at Google because of this terrible new Google policy that started in 2012.
Please look at what this web site is selling:
NegativeSEOguy.com

It is common sense… webmasters can control who they link to, they can Not control who links to them.  There is no way around this basic fact and now it is leaking out and many people email my company asking if we can sabotage their competitors with “Bad Backlinks” that Google does not like.

Furthermore you are penalizing way too many innocent webmasters.

Just Google “Google SEO Sabotage”  there are many interesting stories to see.

I am just trying to help Google. This is the worst problem Google has created in over five years.
I own Google stock, and as a long term shareholder I am very unhappy and many people knowledgeable about SEO are very unhappy and upset with Google over this ridiculous policy of penalizing web sites for something out of their control, and now the huge increase of SEO sabotage Google has caused.

Thank you in advance for your consideration on this issue.

HTP Company 5 Star Rating

HTP Company

 based on 15 reviews.

This company's business is Search Engine Optimization, Internet Advertising and Consulting Services.

Category:		Internet Search Engine Optimization Services
Address:		30961 Agoura Rd, Suite 215 Westlake Village, CA 91361 (800) 213-8530
Web Site:		http://www.htpcompany.com

Customer Reviews & Ratings

Wes R.       In summer of 2010 I began speaking with HTP Company regarding aSEO campaign. For years our website has struggled to gain a footing on search engines, partly due to a site design flaw and partly due to another SEO company's failure to live up to goals. I was interested to try HTP Company and found many great reviews of their service online. I can report that HTP Company was able to fix the design flaw in our site as well as create a fantastic SEO campaign to help us grow our business.  In a few months our site is now showing up near the top on all major search engines for our keywords. I would definitely recommend hiring HTP Company as they are experts in their field and easy to work with. Posted on 12/20/2012

Mike Georgia       The ranking results from HTP Company are outstanding.  HTP is one of the few company's that I have hired that can handle clients issues properly. They seem to know who I am when I phone them, and they are friendly with me. They understand that their business is technicial and doesn't lend it self to personal relationships, HTP Company really combats that feeling by always knowing who I am and handling any issues in a personal manner, and quickly.  » Bookmark  |  » Send a Message  |  Posted on 12/13/2012 Was this review...? Useful (1) Funny (0) Flag this Review

Everyone at HTP Company has been professional and very knowledgeable. Our website traffic has dramatically and steadily increased since we started working with HTP. I would highly recommend them to any business for SEO. Mich Keller V.P. Sales & Marketing MateStone International, Inc. Posted on 12/2/2012 Useful (2) Funny (0)

Google Updates Their Link Building Policies Again

Google has updated their policies again and it is as confusing or more confusing then ever.

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en
At the bottom of this Google page, you can put your rating and comments.
I put: Google should just decide what links to count and not count and leave web site owners alone, and stop penalizing innocent web sites.

Google has the average website owner so confused they do not know what to do.  Google continues to penalize innocent web sites and implement their still vague and confusing rules unfairly.  I will say Google is trying, however the results are poor, it certainly does not make anyone who has received an unfair penalty from Google feel any better.
Furthermore when you see all the evil hackers and spammers running wild on the Internet you can not help thinking, why is Google not better at going after the bad guys and why does Google manually and unfairly penalize innocent web sites?

Google has never been willing to admit any mistakes, the best any website owner can hope for is that Google may fix their defects and mistakes over time.  One site www.ichatdev.com had an unfair penalty from Google for 2.5 years, and the website owner never changed a single thing and finally after 2.5 years Google just removed the penalty that should have never been there in the first place.
This is why I always recommend business owners have multiple web sites registered by private proxy and hosted on different servers located all over the world.
I know a guy that has a $50,000,000 per year business, most of it coming from online sales and Google unfairly penalized his main web site, and thankfully he had followed my advice and made a full recovery in less then one year.

Below are excepts from a good article that zdnet wrote.  The problem is after you read this article three times you will still be confused about what Google is trying to do now.

Excerpts from:
http://www.zdnet.com/did-google-just-kill-pr-agencies-7000019182/
However, under the new rules, Google could penalize a PR firm's client web site because it will view the links as an attempt to unnaturally promote the site! Only "natural" growth in the popularity of a web page is allowed.

Tom Foremski does not mention the huge problem Google has created called SEO Sabotage or Negative SEO, which I have seen several cases of and I have helped people write emails to Google explaining they have been a victim of SEO sabotage by one of their competitors.  Google just sticks their heads in the sand and pretends this does not happen, when it has been happening for years now. It is also possible to trick Google to penalize an innocent online business owner via complex duplicate content generating schemes. Google's current policies are just making this negative SEO a huge and rapidly growing problem.  Even when presented with overwhelming proof of SEO sabotage, Google will not acknowledge the problem even exists.
Please click on this link it explains the concept correctly:  http://www.negativeseo.biz

Today Google also put out a bunch of new videos and Matt Cutts seems like a gracious and very nice person, however not one word is mentioned in any of these new videos about Negative SEO or SEO Sabotage.  Google we have seen many cases of SEO sabotage, it does happen and happens often.  If Google makes a nice video and tells me the sky is not blue it is green, guess what Google it ruins your credibility.  Clearly Matt Cutts is a highly intelligent and talented person, who makes great videos, so how can he believe or pretend to believe SEO sabotage does not happen?
If this is what Google honestly believes they are amazingly naive and in denial of the true facts.
http://searchengineland.com/google-releases-six-videos-on-typical-manual-spam-actions-169226


I wanted to research what blackhat SEO forums are saying about Google's new Link Building Policies.  The question was asked:
Can Competitors use Negative SEO and Sabotage your rankings with Google?

Below is a screen shot with the correct answer to this question.