I had a similar thought to your first point when reading this. The author is claiming that webmasters have to build two sites rather than one, thinning resources and reducing quality. This is because if Google determines one is spam, they have to fall back to the other site.
But if the sites are similar and are created for safe redundancy, I would assume the second site is going to imminently get nailed as well. I mean, the guys says build two of the same sites at different places so you have a backup. You're building two mediocre targets either hoping that the other one isn't noticed by google (which probably means users aren't finding it either) or that they're significantly different somehow.
I agree, it sounds in its lack of detail like someone doing something sketchy and complaining it doesn't work. I'm not aware of any cases in which non-specious websites have gotten nailed and had no recourse. The author didn't provide any. Has anyone seen this in the wild?
Well, that's very interesting. Although this article is merely a pro-journalism example of the very same "consider the case of sites X and Y, where X and Y are cannot be named" phenomenon, so it still isn't clear to me how large the risk is.
And I'm with justindz, who doesn't understand the proposed defense. If a competitor decides to cross the ethical line and take your site down by "generously" having spambots put up links to your site, thereby causing Google to conclude that you're a spammer and shut down your pagerank... can't they do this to all of your sites at once, not just one? My understanding -- correct me if I'm wrong -- is that the cost or supply of spambots is not the limiting factor here.
But if the sites are similar and are created for safe redundancy, I would assume the second site is going to imminently get nailed as well. I mean, the guys says build two of the same sites at different places so you have a backup. You're building two mediocre targets either hoping that the other one isn't noticed by google (which probably means users aren't finding it either) or that they're significantly different somehow.
I agree, it sounds in its lack of detail like someone doing something sketchy and complaining it doesn't work. I'm not aware of any cases in which non-specious websites have gotten nailed and had no recourse. The author didn't provide any. Has anyone seen this in the wild?