Google News Censorship At Its Worst

A recent elaborative news article titled censorship of news by Google is forsaking its do not be evil motto has spilled all the beans about Google’s news censorship activities.

We also believe that Google has been systematically censoring and manipulating news results.

We also believe that posts that are legal and protected as part of speech and expression are deliberately censored and deleted by Google. They resurface again only after publicly criticizing Google in this regard.

The latest to add to this list is the news article titled Vodafone taxation, parliament, international treaty and taxation issues of India.  The same has been reported by the post titled Vodafone taxation dispute in India and censorship by Google.

Like Priyanka Sharma said, the trust and confidence in Google has long eroded and so is Google motto of not being evil. I hope someone at Google is reading these posts and would take notice of the deteriorating standards of Google’s civil liberty protection initiatives and efforts.  

Google Censorship: Vodafone Taxation, Parliament, International Treaty And Taxation Issues Of India

Google has been censoring news for long. There are many posts, news and articles that appeared and at Google  on numerous occasions.

The latest in this regard is the news item titled Vodafone Taxation, Parliament, International Treaty And Taxation Issues Of India. The same was censored by Google within half an hour of its posting.

Google is, engaging in non accountable censorship in India with great disregard to speech and expression.

Can Google And Posterous Defeat Negative SEO By Malicious Competitors?

Negative search engine optimisation (SEO) has been messing up with Google’ search results for long. It is not possible to absolutely stop such malpractices and abuse of Google’s search engine results placement (SERPs) but Google has to tackle such evil practices with an iron hand. For the time being, Google seems to have been defeated by splogs and content farms that are engaging in negative SEO techniques.

These negative SEO techniques are also responsible for poor growth and bad search reflection of many genuine, hard working and original content creating websites. For instance, contents lifted from these original blogs frequently appear at splogs and Google punishes the original blog owner for the wrong doing of the splogger. In fact negative SEO and splogs are the main reasons why Google censors and manipulates SERPs, news and blog results.

Due to negative SEO Google believes that a genuine and original website is engaging in spam and link exchange behaviour but in reality this is not true. But Google still punishes the original and genuine website due to bad and malicious behaviour of others.

Now it seems Google has taken artificial and unnatural links seriously and has issued notifications to website owners to remove artificial, unnatural and paid links. But Google has still not explained how a genuine and original source website owner can get his own copyrighted contents removed from platforms over which neither Google nor the copyright owned content website has any control whatsoever.

The Google artificial and unnatural links strategy is still far from perfect as it has many shortcomings. Further, the DMCA procedure adopted by Google is also slow due to tremendous volume of DMCA complaints.

However, the worst nightmare while dealing with Google is that Google is not willing to take down splogs, contents farms and bad neighbourhoods even when there is clear evidence provided to it in this regard. If a single post is removed after DMCA complaint, the splog would pick posts of other blogs and it would still remain active.

When there is a clear case of continuous and persistent copyright violation by a single individual or organisation, deleting a single post is not the right approach. Google and Posterous have failed to realise this fact while TypePad is doing the right thing.

It would be better if both Google and Posterous removes the offending blogs than the posts alone as a single individual or organisation that is manipulating many platforms does not deserve to remain on the platform. However, for the time being, these splogs, content farms and bad neighbourhoods are fooling Google and Posterous.

Google Is Taking Artificial And Unnatural Links Seriously

Spam blogs (splogs), content farming websites and bad neighbourhoods are big nuisances for not only the blog and websites owners whose copyrighted contents these splogs, etc pick but they are also greatly disliked by the people looking for relevant and authentic results through search engine results placements (SERPs).

This is the reason that search engines like Google regularly take action against splogs, contents farms and bad neighbourhoods. Till now Google’s strategy in this regard was to silently demote these splogs, contents farms and bad neighbourhoods either through algorithms like Panda update or through manual action penalty.

However, by and larger, Google has been defeated by these splogs, contents farms and bad neighbourhoods. If this is not enough, the genuine, hard working and original content producers are punished for the evil deed of these splogs, content farms and bad neighbourhoods. Presently, Google cannot differentiate between original content producers and splogs and at times punishes the original source in its SERPs and search results.

Even after a valid DMCA notice to Google in this regard, Google takes 5 to 7 days to resolve copyright violation claims. This policy and method of Google needs to be changed as soon as possible. Even this policy of Google is illegal as per the Indian cyber law that does not allow such long period to Google and other Internet intermediaries to take corrective and appropriate action.

The only good thing about this entire episode is that now Google has started sending warning messages to websites/blog owners about artificial or unnatural links pointing towards their websites/blogs. We have been doing a herculean task of doing this on our own so far regarding our own websites/blogs and this notification system of Google may save many hours of labour on our part.

Google has recently sent such messages to many webmasters informing them of the Google’s Webmaster Guidelines violations. The idea is to check manipulation of Google’s PageRank. For example, buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link exchange schemes violates Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

However, Google is still unable to punish splogs, contents farms and bad neighbourhoods that deliberately use negative SEO to harm genuine websites/blogs. Even if proper DMCA complaints and link removal requests are made to Google, it refuses to tale proper action against the offenders and recommends contacting the owner of website directly.

In the Indian context this violates Indian laws and amounts to lack of exercise of cyber law due diligence. Google must seriously think about its Indian strategy in this regard as soon as possible to avoid civil and criminal liabilities.