Do you think Google monitors what is going on here on DP and has "undercover" members checking what people are discussing/buying links/selling? It would make sense to do so but I've not heard anything about it. Your thoughts?
IMO Google works on its algorithm so even if you discuss all your link trade it may not affect your websites ranking
In terms of "automated" obviously the bots/spiders come and crawl all pages of DP including the BST forum but not sure if they have actual members keeping an eye on things...
The internet is too large for Google to benefit from specifically employing people to monitor DP BUT there may happen to be people who are Google employees and also members of DP who monitor Links Sales from time to time.
There may be a chance that there are some members here on Digital Point whom may be feeding back information to Google; But I doubt that if there it. That they are not directly linked with Google. ~ Mike
I guess if you work in this industry then it would make sense to be a member in your own spare time anyway.
Yes, that is correct. Google and many other company employees are more than likely here in their spare time. ~ Mike
google etc do employ people to lurk in the various forums. Probably fulltime, by this point. Forums are a good way to quickly find out what's 'hot' right now. And that gives search engines a heads up and a lead in on how to prevent it becoming a gaming strategy.
Well it does make sense if they have someone who is active around webmasters forum to find out the latest craze and happening.
but it is not impossible that they do that and laugh at us at some point, like: "you are wrong about that... "
Of course they cant monitor every forum, but I feel I am right in saying DP is one of the busiest SEO related forums where links are bought and sold - probably something google would like to monitor...
Google is bigger than that they don't need to do that in order to stay on top but truly it does make sense for them to do such a thing.
I bet they actually do have some people monitering what people say. It would make sense, especially for link selling and those sites because they don't like the private selling of text links.
it sort of makes sense that anyone working on the algo at google, msn, yahoo etc would check relevant forums SOMETIME in their day to see if there are posts about unexpected things when they change their search alogo ... however, i very much doubt they pay anyone just to READ forums per say.