Comments on: A “Market for Lemons”, a Nobel Prize, and Snake Oil SEO

by: Dave Store

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:54:34 +0000

There seems to me to be a lot of SEO work that non-technical people can do. It seems insane for a company who has employees who maybe aren’t employed to the full not to utilize them for an hour a day trying to find links and writing content.

by: Interview with Aaron Wall of SEOBook.com » SEO Archive

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 18:03:46 +0000

[…] the field of SEO gets tarnished as a whole it creates a market for lemons effect. And virtually nobody seems to […]

by: test » SEO Archive

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 17:57:36 +0000

[…] the field of SEO gets tarnished as a whole it creates a market for lemons effect. And virtually nobody seems to […]

by: Dan Durick

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 13:22:42 +0000

John, you’re right on here. In dealing with clients I’m finding a trend in growing interest in consulting rather than hiring SEO services outright. I primarily work with car dealers, and the savvier, larger, auto groups are tackling more in-house. If they already have a strong marketing team, this just makes sense, and I see the “secret information” as something that be overcome with some consultations (I wouldn’t hold back information from a client, and I don’t think most consultants would).

by: Douglas

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 21:47:04 +0000

if it hasn’t happened already, SEO will be offered as a major at some major university within 2 years.

by: » Google Barters Backlinks to Show The Way - John Andrews - johnon.com

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 17:47:20 +0000

[…] search optimization community, by investing energy into Google’s arguments, is decimating the public market for SEO, increasing the profits of the underground and so-called Black Hat practitioners and giving Google […]

by: The Future of Business Process Outsourcing — SEO Zeitgeist

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 00:55:01 +0000

[…] piece of the market creates a market for lemons effect, be it SEO, web design, programming, eBay listings, […]

by: Pony

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 10:37:43 +0000

In my experience, the highend SEO techniques eventually filter down to the entry level SEOs when they are no longer pulling in the kind of SERP power that they used to.

In South Africa there are a number of low level SEO companies that are using questionable methods including using client sites to link back to the mothership, embed third party google analtics code to inflate clicks. For about $30 you can get someone to SEO your site, i.e. change the description, titles and metatags on a couple of pages, and add a link back to the mothership, basically the mothership gets a free dofollow link, and they get paid for it. These are the same people still using hidden links.

by: Peter T Davis » Blog Archive » The SEO Lemon

Sun, 16 Dec 2007 06:38:46 +0000

[…] I don’t often blog just to say read what someone else has posted, but occasionally I see something that’s so thought provoking that it’s worth remembering the login to Wordpress and crank out a few sentences. John Andrews post about A “Market for Lemons”, a Nobel Prize, and Snake Oil SEO is one of those occasions. […]

by: Matt L

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 14:48:52 +0000

Great post - only recommendation I’d make is to work on that formatting a bit so more readers get through to the bottom :)

lines currently about 115ish chars, no longer than 65 reads the best
chop up those paragraphs a bit more - maybe no longer than 5 lines
some subheadings

anyhoo - thanks for sharing