'Dirty' City Decides It's Cheaper To Clean Up Google Rankings Than Clean Up

from the taxpayer-seo dept

Tue, Aug 2nd 2011 5:47am — Mike Masnick

Bas points us to the news that a city in Russia, Chelyabinsk, which is ranked in the "top 10" list of "dirtiest cities" by the government, has apparently decided that the best way to spend taxpayer money isn't necessarily to make the city any cleaner, but to clean up their Google and Yandex rankings. They've put out for bid a search engine optimization contract, in which they want the top 150 results on the city's name to show "positive or neutral opinions of the ecology of Chelyabinsk and the Chelyabinsk region." At most only 20% should show "negative reports about the region's environment." Chelyabinsk was apparently near a nuclear waste facility explosion in 1957, which the Soviet government covered up for over 30 years. The city is also hoping that "search queries related to that incident," will have much cleaner results. I'm sure plenty of cities do some SEO activities these days, but there does still seem to be something quite questionable about focusing on cleaning up your search rankings, rather than cleaning up the actual city.

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Filed Under: chelyabinsk, cities, dirty, russia, seo

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Anonymous Coward, 2 Aug 2011 @ 5:54am

This reminds of the whole censoring of "child pornography" websites issue. It's easier to block the sites instead of actually catching the people doing it, and thus stopping the site, too. This way they can just block all child porn sites, and they claim the world is free of pedophiles!

Right. Of course their agenda is always another one, this why they push this issue because they know people will think it's make sense to block child porn sites.
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specialized (profile), 2 Aug 2011 @ 6:18am

This initiative is similar in nature, but even less effective than a puerto rican shower.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Aug 2011 @ 6:20am

A really good documentary on the city, how it came to be what it is now, and the tragedy of the people living there:
http://www.logtv.com/films/chelyabinsk/
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Aug 2011 @ 6:24am

In soviet Russia, search engine cleans you!
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Aug 2011 @ 6:26am

All SEO is a scam
I'm not talking about basic web site competence, such as ensuring that tags are used properly, that the pages comply with the relevant standards, that links work, etc. I'm talking about all attempts to manipulate search engine results: they are ALL scams.

Which is why it's not surprising to find some of the same people involved in spam and spyware working in SEO. Filth attracts filth.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Aug 2011 @ 6:54am

Re: All SEO is a scam
As someone whose main job is SEO for my company, may I ask why you think SEO is a scam?

Google is constantly updating its results by crawling the web and maintaining its algorithm, small changes to different parts of web pages affect those rankings. People selling you SERP manipulation are going to be the ones scamming you, but there are ways to improve your rankings as results change naturally.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Aug 2011 @ 6:57am

Re:
Beat me to it!
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Aug 2011 @ 7:06am

This is what you get from people who lived decades under a regime that relied on propaganda.
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abc gum, 2 Aug 2011 @ 7:22am

"They've put out for bid a search engine optimization contract, in which they want the top 150 results on the city's name to show "positive or neutral opinions of the ecology of Chelyabinsk and the Chelyabinsk region." At most only 20% should show "negative reports about the region's environment.""

Interesting that fake reviews are now included in Search Engine Optimization contracts, or did I miss something here.
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charlie potatoes (profile), 2 Aug 2011 @ 7:27am

Propaganda
Let's see, THEIR missiles are dirty old Scuds... American missiles are PATRIOTS. Yeah, I'm glad the U.S. Govt. never uses propaganda. Nasty business, what?
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Aug 2011 @ 7:29am

Re: Re: All SEO is a scam
your job is a lie.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Aug 2011 @ 8:13am

Re: Re: Re: All SEO is a scam
Don't you mean "your job is to lie" ?
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Marcus Carab (profile), 2 Aug 2011 @ 8:45am

Re: All SEO is a scam
This is what I always tell people when they ask me about SEO:

Google's goal is to direct people to useful, relevant content that matches what they are looking for. Thus your goal with a website is simple: be useful, be relevant, have content that people seek.

That's the only real SEO (apart from, as you say, some simple developer best practices that ensure your content is easy to read and index)
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Aug 2011 @ 9:31am

Re:
Interesting reading. Thanks for that!
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DannyB (profile), 2 Aug 2011 @ 11:12am

Re:
Interesting?

Maybe.

Surprising?

Not at all.
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hmm (profile), 2 Aug 2011 @ 4:14pm

"They've put out for bid a search engine optimization contract, in which they want the top 150 results on the city's name to show "positive(protons) or neutral(neutrons) opinions of the ecology of Chelyabinsk and the Chelyabinsk region." At most only 20% should show "negative reports about the region's environment.""

80%...chelyabinsk is great....i love the local parks!! etc
20%...hey this place is a radioactive hellhole and if you spend more than an hour here your testicles will grow tumors and fall off!!!!!!

I wonder which % would be more effective
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Aug 2011 @ 9:58am

Re: Re: Re: All SEO is a scam
Yet I still get paid for it and I've helped grow sales 200% in 3 years. I'm asking an honest question here and your reply is less than helpful.
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nasch (profile), 3 Aug 2011 @ 7:20pm

Instead?
Do you know that they are not also trying to clean the city up, or are you just assuming that?
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Martin, 25 Aug 2011 @ 2:41pm

I work at a Boston SEO company, and I think it's going to be pretty hard to take care of this issue. While I'm not familiar with the Yandex algorithm, Google treats informational searches very differently than transactional searches. It's one thing to say you want your company to appear above another, but much harder to change informational searches about cities, landmarks, etc.
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