What in the world is Googlewashing?

I have just learn of this phrase googlewashing and a few minutes of surfing brings up some information. Back in 2003, reputable bloggers were already writing about this matter. I compare those posts and the current ones and found that the term now brings different meanings.

The current posts on Googlewashing claims that it is a method for some SEO companies to ‘clean up’ reputations. Let’s say your company has some photos or information which you want to wipe off the net, they can help to googlewash it for you. Say, a Mayor wish to takes her bikini photos off the internet for example?

On the other hand, some parties said Googlewashing means your lose your ranks due to others stealing your contents. All of us are familiar with content stealers and each time we hit the publish button, hundreds of other sites are already scrapping part of it to be placed on their site. In fact, I openly admit I have my own blog aggregator where I pull all my blog posts into one place. Technology makes things so easy to steal so it seems like a no escape at all. Way back in 2005 (that seems like the dinosaur age), Brian Livingston has mentioned about this.

Now, in 2008, it is even easier to scrape content. That’s why I said Blogging is dead. There is really little point in writing any long and informative article.

After reading some of the articles, I think we bloggers are part of the cleaner gang in this Googlewashing because our paid posts (Must I emphasize again that I DON’T have paid post here) usually stuffed the real stuffs down under. And if I have misunderstood the term googlewashing, it simply means I have just googlewashed googlewashing! Now, you understand why Google wants to smack us all the time?

Post Author: lilian

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