Does Ethics really matter in SEO?

[Sam Fischer]

Rap Genius the big brand in song lyrics lost their Google rankings for slightly over a week, something that is definitely on the extremely short side of penalty lengths for invalid backlink warnings. And they were also getting special help from Google to resolve the issues.And not only that they even outed their major competitors to Google saying that those competitors also used black hat techniques in hopes that they would get penalized.
Who was at fault here ? Is this natural thing for Google to do as it pleases and what about RP who just blatantly outed its competitors .
If it were you would you have slashed your competition this way?

 

[Cody]

I've moved this to our SEO category for you where this topic is better suited.

 

[VirusZero]

If they were caught using black hat techniques then they deserve to be punished. Google set down the acceptable practices for their search engine and if people don't abide by them then there will be repercussions.

It doesn't matter if they go: "B-b-b-b-but <site2> was also doing it".
Doesn't change the fact what they did was wrong nor will it stop them from getting punished. In fact the other site may be going through a similar or worse situation (or may soon be).

Just because a site hasn't gotten caught yet doesn't mean they can do whatever they want. In most cases it's a matter of when rather than if they will get caught.

Furthermore Google is under no obligation to act on any/every situation if they don't want to. So someone made one incorrect backlink? Maybe they'll just ignore it if they've made proper ones since.

As for taking shots at competitors this way. I wouldn't because it only comes off looking childish and petty. Plus, if I were on the opposite side, I might dismiss any claims made as trying to divert attention to another issue.

 

[Sam Fischer]

If they were caught using black hat techniques then they deserve to be punished. Google set down the acceptable practices for their search engine and if people don't abide by them then there will be repercussions.

It doesn't matter if they go: "B-b-b-b-but <site2> was also doing it".
Doesn't change the fact what they did was wrong nor will it stop them from getting punished. In fact the other site may be going through a similar or worse situation (or may soon be).

Just because a site hasn't gotten caught yet doesn't mean they can do whatever they want. In most cases it's a matter of when rather than if they will get caught.

Furthermore Google is under no obligation to act on any/every situation if they don't want to. So someone made one incorrect backlink? Maybe they'll just ignore it if they've made proper ones since.

As for taking shots at competitors this way. I wouldn't because it only comes off looking childish and petty. Plus, if I were on the opposite side, I might dismiss any claims made as trying to divert attention to another issue.

If I give my opinion here it's very likely that if I came across spamming I'd first let the company know about it because most actors around here are also potential partners or allies. But if they kept it up would I have any reason to not report them? Simply for pragmatic reasons: keeping internet clean and cutting some competition from SERPs.

I wouldn't see any reason to report random IMers for example.