Jason Calacanis is no stranger to controversy or success.
Read about him and his latest project Mahalo, and you can see how well the man has done for himself. Mahalo seems to be going steady with its ambitious “Human Powered Search” approach. At Mahalo, your seach results are hand picked by editors instead of a seach algorithm.
Now let’s talk about the heated controversy he has generated at search engine marketing conferences with the following comments about SEO:
SMX Social 2008, Long Beach, CA: “SEO is a wasted industry. You’re wasting your time fighting off ranking problems instead of creating great content. You’re just spinning your wheels hoping the Google gods won’t kick you out. It’s a bad way to live your life. Using a human service is a better way to go about it.”
SES 2006, Chicago: “SEO is bulls#*t…90% of the SEO market is made up of snake oil salesmen.”
The search marketing industry got all worked up about the comments. SEOs called for banning him from future conferences.The man must be a genius if he twice rattled all the SEO “professionals” to the extent that they wanted to keep him quiet.
Hey, don’t we have this freedom of speech in this country? In this industry? When did Jason Calacanis become a leader of a hate group that should be banned from speaking? The answer is: Never!
The truth is: what he said wasn’t anything I don’t think about myself, though not in exactly the same way. Here are my thoughts.
“SEO is bulls#*t.”
Is that true? Not always, but sometimes it is. Bulls#*t SEO is practiced by more people than you can imagine. Here is some SEO bulls#*t for you to consider:
- Agencies based out of nowhere and everywhere “Guaranteeing #1 placement” on Google for something like $299 per month
- Agencies advertising that they will submit your site to “300+ search engines for $2.39” or provide “100 guaranteed live directory one-way links in 4-5 days for just $25”
- Link farms & shady link building — the # 1 source of web spam now available to everyone with a website (Viagra, Cialis, Britney Spears, Male Enhancement anyone??)
- Agencies claiming to have “cracked,” or worse, to “own” the Google algorithm. Hear this, there is one company claiming to have the Pay Per Click Algorithm! This one just cracks me up. The sins people do in the name of the algorithm.
Why do these businesses even have any cash to market themselves? Simple: lack of education fuels the fire of ignorance! Google has made the rankings algorithm so mysterious and complicated that it is almost too easy to take advantage of all those website owners who have no idea what we’re talking about. In a situation like this, there is always a snake oil salesman ready to make a few dollars.
“SEO is a wasted industry. You’re wasting your time fighting off ranking problems instead of creating great content. You’re just spinning your wheels hoping the Google gods won’t kick you out. It’s a bad way to live your life. Using a human service is a better way to go about it.”
Let’s take a closer look.
- Waste of time — well, yeah! Look at the time and energy it takes to build links (spam & non-spam). What would happen if that time was spent creating more meaningful content instead? A cleaner worldwide web.
- The Google Gods — There is hardly any transparency when it comes to the unicorn named The Google Algorithm. We all (black, white and grey hats) put in a lot of energy to please the algorithm and generate rankings for our clients. Yet nothing can ever be guaranteed. You never know when you or your client may disappear from the front page of Google. Such volatility results in worshipping what Jason aptly called The Google Gods.
- Stress for everyone — The search industry is very stressful due to the SEO element. Sponsored listings are different: all agencies have an account manager in Google who we can call to discuss Pay Per Click. A lot more transparency here allows us to focus on improving clients’ ad groups, ad content, and keyword selection to reduce cost per acquisition. SEO, on the other hand, guarantees nothing. So all you have is a worried client, a worried SEO agency, and the constant fear of losing your ranking to some competitor who might use the back door (black hat) to sabotage your rankings. Fear= Stress = “Bad way to live your life!”
I am not a utopian that believes human powered search will clean up the web. Every great idea gets gamed in its lifetime; human powered search will have its issues once it reaches critical mass. A lot of factors are in play that make a very strong case for it, but only time will reveal the scalability of human powered search.
If we think the search marketing industry has it rough when Jason Calacanis says a few controversial lines, think of the medical industry that is thrown under the bus every day! Do the highly publicized medical errors and scams make us believe that all doctors are evil? No. Because the good ones continue to do practice the right way, irrespective of what people have to say about their industry.
Search engine marketing is a relatively new and little understood industry (at least in the “mainstream”), and obviously is very sensitive to comments from Jason. Banning anyone who speaks his mind is not a good idea. I do want to add a disclaimer that I am not a personal friend of Jason. I have never met the guy, so this is a voluntary moment of support for him. I guess I can consider this my Jerry Maguire memo moment, where I have said things a lot of us think about but don’t say out loud.
I hope I don’t get banned — I’ve already bought my ticket for SMX Seattle.
“Mahalo is a sh!@@y idea”
- Dave Winer
Comment by Anonymous Coward — 28 Apr 2008 @ 12:34 PM
I could be wrong, but I don’t think it’s about trying to deny his right to free speech, but rather not paying him to speak at conferences dedicated to the thing he slams.. Sort of a huge difference between those two things.. Sort of like inviting Balmer to be the keynote speaker at MacWorld, sort of doesn’t work..
As for the level of incompetence in SEO, that has a lot to do with the incredibly low barrier to entry to get in to the field.. But it’s no different than hundreds of other fields, it’s just that JC doesn’t compete in those markets.. I would suspect we would see similar comments about various cars if he built cars, or any other field..
It is fun to read and watch though.. BTW thx to @JasonCalacanis for twittering the post..
Comment by Feydakin — 28 Apr 2008 @ 12:40 PM
even if he was the sworn enemy of all search marketing people, his criticisms would still be valid.
under his logic…
marketing = bullsh*i
which is kinda true also.
people are taking his comments way to seriously. he has his opinions, we have ours, and constructive criticism is beneficial
Comment by Slick Willy — 28 Apr 2008 @ 12:43 PM
I’m neither for nor against Calacanis, though I would argue that he is getting the blame for an industry that can be very successful for businesses and also a cause of major concern for others. Where Spam has spiraled out of control, someone and or some search engine needs to step to the plate and give us, the users, the results we want and not of those that have spammed their way to be there.
You are right in saying that SEO is an industry in its infancy, and so are search engines, online advertising and social media. There is no 1 way to do anything anymore. Pleasing the user should be all that matters.
Comment by Greg Rollett — 28 Apr 2008 @ 12:43 PM
I love it when people like Jason rattle the cages and remind people that the content is what really matters.
Comment by Jay Francis Hunter — 28 Apr 2008 @ 12:44 PM
I have a tendency to agree with Mr. Calacanis. A site with good content and good meta data will shine through, and score good search engine ranking without all of this silly SEO trickery.
Comment by shawno — 28 Apr 2008 @ 12:48 PM
I actually got someone to ask Jason during/after the presentation about why on things like http://mahalo.com/thisisjunk it doesn’t return a 404 error. It also has Adsense on a page with no content.
These are issues that Jason said were “overlooked”
They were issues first raised by Bill Hartzer over a year ago when Mahalo was first released.
This is the type of garbage site design that causes Jason’s arguments to lose any basis of credibility.
Note: I don’t do SEO consulting, and this is just basic stuff any “SEO Professional” will spot, and so should most web designers.
This is also the kind of thing a developer could have fixed before Jason got back to his office, but still isn’t.
Comment by Andy Beard — 28 Apr 2008 @ 1:07 PM
Excellent point. But one URL should not take away all his credibility. Even if Mahalo is not perfect, we’re talking about a smart guy. We all know that our industry is far from perfect, and that is all he is pointing out.
Comment by Vikram — 28 Apr 2008 @ 1:15 PM
I think what we are really arguing about is the designation “SEO.” I think this term has been seriously tainted by snake oil salesmen. In fact, this is something we warn clients about every day, so they know when they are comparing apples to oranges. We all have our own definitions of SEO. At our agency, SEO means relevant content, clean programming, and a few quality directory registrations. This is probably not too far from Jason’s approach, although he might take issue with the fact that we package these services as SEO because that’s what the market demands. I also take issue with the fact that we have to share this market with the 1000 Directories for $5.99 crowd, especially because they are the ones creating the web spam we hate.
Comment by Melanie — 28 Apr 2008 @ 1:28 PM
Most marketing sucks, on and off line. SEO included. Many mktg/adv/SEO agencies are more intersted in selling and growing than generating results for clients. Which is why most of what they do sucks. That doesn’t mean mktg or adv or SEO is inherently bad. But as practiced today, most blow. So, more accurately: lazy people suck; dishonest people suck; incompetent people suck; and selfish people suck.
Comment by hamilton wallace — 29 Apr 2008 @ 8:20 AM
Great Post.
I’ve been watching (and writing about) this debate myself and continue to be amazed at the reaction Jason is able to get. I think most of where this comes from is the truth behind a lot of what Jason says.
Comment by Tin Pig — 29 Apr 2008 @ 11:17 AM
Thanks! Aaron Wall @ SEO Book pointed out to me to get the post more balanced. Here is a post he did recently titled: Mahalo documents are considered spam according to Google’s internal documents. The page has moved on his blog but you can find it there.
Comment by Vikram — 29 Apr 2008 @ 12:50 PM
Right now Jason Calacanis is trying to promote Mahalo as much as possible, and there’s no better way to get attention than to pi$$ people off, so I’m sure he had no qualms about dissing SEO. He also has a legitimate point that SEO as an industry is about gaming algorithms as opposed to making quality sites or content. There is a legitimate marketing aspect to it - just like there are experts who will help you design a billboard to attract more eyes, but there is also a shady aspect that bloats the web with fluff that nobody wants.
Mahalo itself looks fairly promising though. It’ll never be a Google because a “human-powered” search engine can’t scale in the same way, but it offers some useful pieces. Here are some thoughts about its benefits over Google:
http://hightechweekly.com/mahalo_vs_google_r1
Comment by Keith Cowing — 30 Apr 2008 @ 12:39 PM