Hey Google! Sunset Your Unnatural Oral Action!
Do you remember the days when “manual action” was something desirable and NSFW?
Listening to Google spokespeople turns more bizarre with the years.
Why? They have come up with their own language to hide the sour facts of
- penalties
- faulty algorithms
- discontinued services.
Believe me! By now you need help to understand hidden meanings.
You need a translation for euphemisms used by Google.
It’s a quite a bit Orwellian. Don’t believe me? Hear me out!
Examples of Google Newspeak
In the past I created a dictionary for Google Newspeak. What is Newspeak?
In Orwell’s “1984” novel it’s made up language used to cover up the reality.
I already explained made up Google terms meant to hide negative messages.
Here are some more even blatant examples of Google’s misleading language.
Just consider a few words that have been used to lessen the impact of the historic Google Reader fiasco.
The official Google announcements were all very positive when it comes to wording.
Sunsetting
The Google Reader demise was all about
- spring cleaning
- powering down
- retiring
- sunsetting
Only nice things aren’t they? Who wouldn’t want to retire and watch a beautiful sunset amidst power and cleanliness?
Sunsetting has been not the most important euphemism they used this time.
Google had already “sunset” Google Wave. The much hyped tool has been quickly abandoned after a failed start.
Google didn’t want to remind people that they are sunsetting all the time while the sun never rises again on the affected services.
Compare this usage of made up words to those used by more legitimate sources from bloggers and journalists:
They are pretty matter of fact aka rather objective. Now what the hell am I trying to tell you in this post?
Let’s take a step back and cite someone who knows more about language than me. I wanted to cite a credible personality like
- Noam Chomsky, a leading linguist and dissident
- Allen Ginsberg, a famous poet of the beat generation
who both are well known for showing how language turns manipulative but I finally decided to cite a popular writer.
Writer Gore Vidal has explained the corruption of language:
“As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action”
He goes on to give some awful examples:
“you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.”
The correct and straightforward usage of words is something that really touches the foundations of our society!
In contrast I always have to think how Google engineers are touching themselves when it comes to “manual action”.
Many more publications have been using the negative word kill though:
“Killing” reflects the true nature of Google’s move to “power down” Reader.
After Google Reader was finally dead, the Google word choice became more down to earth.
They said that the data got “deleted” while the service got “discontinued”.
Google can be actually matter of fact when they want to.
In the meantime their public relations department and lawyers are working hard though to limit their liability for any damages they inflict on users, publishers and website owners.
Unnatural links
Of course it’s not just Google Reader. Google is making up its own language along the way.
We often hear about so called unnatural links for example.
It’s a completely nonsensical term! Why?
Links or hyperlinks are part of the virtual reality of the Web which is based completely on technology.
Links can not be natural by definition. They don’t grow on trees at all.
Hyperlinks are part of hypertext and the Web. They consist of code and get added by people.
Manual action
I might err here as I’m not a native speaker of English.
English is my third language after Polish and German.
Let’s recapitulate how Google defines a “manual action” first then!
A manual action is a penalty someone executes on your sites personally by clicking a button (instead of algorithmically).
Yet even I know that manual action sound like something you do as adults during sex.
Or is it not sex yet when there is no intercourse?
Bill Clinton, a president well known for his hot oral action argued in such a way.
So whether it’s manual or oral action. It sounds a bit too hot for me.
Is this o purpose to distract people from the actual meaning?
So when you listen to Google’s “hot oral action” you may get reminded of British writer George Orwell. Ignorance is bliss isn’t it?
The less you understand of what Google PR teams tell you the better for Google but the worse for you.
When something is unnatural, it’s their use of language though.
You don’t have to be a linguist or poet to recognize this.
Time to nofollow Google
What can you do about Google bizarre language? Not much.
You can nofollow Google from now on. I don’t mean unfollow.
I mean nofollow as in the link attribute used to devalue links as not trustworthy.
It means you cripple all the links pointing to Google so that they don’t count as endorsements.
This is what Google requires from publishers for linking to not trustworthy sites anyway.
It’s not just the really shady sites you have to use nofollow on.
Over the years nofollow has become the one size fits all red flag to mark your link building efforts.
Google wants you to castrate all your links you have built.
- Guest postings
- widgets
- infographics
are “unnatural” according to Google. No matter the quality of course.
According to Google links from these types of content are worthless per se and worth to be followed by their bots.
Yes, they are worthless from their perspective. They don’t earn any money by indexing them.
They only need your unique, original content to put ads above it.
Google does not earn a cent from your links. The opposite is the case.
The fewer links there are the better for Google by now. Why?
Google is the number one link list on the market!
They can monopolize the Web even better when nobody else has links.
Of course they have their own walled garden type of Web in the making.
Most searches start and end on Google by now.
Google does link to content itself. Sites linking to others are their competition.
Yet by now there is no need to click through to pesky third party sites.
Just think of shopping search engines that have been mostly wiped out during the so called Panda update.
I want to tell you something dear Google!
I will use your own language so that you get the message:
Sunset your unnatural oral action or I’ll nofollow you.
Ideally you stop all of your unnatural action, not just the oral one.
Dislike what Google says and does?
Are you dissatisfied with Google search experience for some reason?
Luckily we’re not stuck with Google btw. There are lesser known search engines like
These are great alternative search engines I used for many years!
DuckDuckGo, Ecosia and Startpage are all private search engines unlike Google.
* Creative Commons image by Mike Behnken
