Does Google have a bias against small business?

If you arent new to search optimization then you know all about the fear that search engine companies instill in marketers. The dreaded banning from Google or Yahoo because they caught you using "black hat" methods to get your page top listings.

We have all been warned against hiding text with background colors, spamming alt tags, using hidden css, multiple re-directs, link farms, cloaking, ect. These methods are unethical and have no place in fair competition for search traffic. You should be able to build a great website using white hat methods and compete on a level playing field with the big guys.

But I have found that this is not always true.

I had a client that was aggressive in their pursuit of SEO and I was actively engaged in competitive analysis for over a year against the companies top fifteen competitors. My client was considered an SMB and many of its competitors were large business or enterprise. These were also the search placement kings of our space.

I spent alot of time researching those who ranked higher than my client and noticed a peculiar phenomenon - a couple of them were blatantly using many of the black hat methods that I mentioned above.

And here were some of the big dogs doing it and getting away with it!

So I decided to do what anyone who is playing hardball does - I brought it to the attention of Google (or tattled on them, however you want to look at it).

But after multiple emails reporting the abuse I received no response. It has been over 2 years now and they still rank supreme.

Now I understand that these large enterprise companies have more inbound links, have brand recognition, tons more traffic, and probably deserve to place higher for many legitimate reasons. But the fact that they engage in black hat SEO was not enough to get them banned from the search engines - and that is a double standard.

The question was asked at the Search Engine Strategies Conference a couple years ago to the Google and Yahoo speakers - and they politely declined to comment on "specific algorithm questions". I think that the simple answer is one of self interest - the removal of these companies from their listings would reduce the search engine's relevance which trumps everything the company might be doing that is unethical.

But you the small business owner - do not qualify.