Given the recent actions Google took against Blog Networks, including Know More Media and Syntagma (both that I'm associated with) but not against Corporate Interlinking, using human reviewers, I found the following commentary and video by Arron Wall to be very relevant, both to me, and many others who have had some success at blogging and driving traffic.  

Here's the Video, and the I'm put in my two cents:

The problem for me with what Google did last month is:

1) human reviewers decision are arbitrary and don't always make sense and they're applying rules that haven't really been shared (not the whole Webmaster Guidelines thing - but the cheat sheet they use to decide if a blog should be devalued or increased in value/PageRank - that sheet).

2) Arron Wall correctly points out that Corporations (and I know this well) did and are doing the very same kind of interlinking and self promotion that blog networks have done, and didn't get penalized (because they're large corporations and spend a lot of money supporting Google?).

OK, who knows, maybe next month Google will penalize Corporate sites like they have penalized many bloggers - but then again, it's more likely that Google won't ever penalize large corporations - because Google has become too much like them - they're now too much like Microsoft, too much like the big, glizy corporate sites - they identify now, more with the larger enterprises than with the average user.

3) if you have success as a blogger and drive too much traffic (by Google's standards) and are mentioned to predominately in an SEO blog, your PageRank is automatically devalued one a human reviewer looks at it.

OK, now, I understand Google's position - they have to police the rankings …. I really do …the algorithms can't do it alone and there are always people out there gaming the system and they need human reviewers to make corrections.  No one is arguing that.

What we're arguing is the arbitrary way those decisions are made - what they're based on, specifically in each case, and what sites can do (in each case) to correct the issue (without the devaluation).   

Sure, it's OK to hire a bunch of testers to go though and have them look at "offending sites" (that they may hear about via popular SEO blogs, according to Arron Wall) and arbitrary, based on some cheat sheet the testers are given, make a decision - maybe even have two or three testers look at the same time and then take a vote - that's OK…. but it's not OK when Google does to not have the time or wish to explain and qualify that decision to each site, so affected. 

Perhaps, it's time for there to be standards and guidelines - something like the Bill of Rights for siteowners as they relate to Search Engines. 

Since Search is such a big part of most site's traffic these days, it makes sense to me that it's time for some kind of council where grievances can be taken - that is not part of the Search Engines - but whom they must answer to.

For example - if your PageRank is suddenly devalued - you can write and ask for an explanation of why and then be given the opportunity to explain what you did - and if the council agrees with your side, they have the power to ask Google to reinstate the PageRank within a certain amount of time (IE: two weeks), and if Google doesn't they get fined, bigtime.  That's just one proposed solution - but in some way, Search Engines need such a body to answer to, because without that - they're free to make any decision about sites they want - for whatever reason they choose.

It's a fact that Google needs human beings to correct problems with it's algorithms - it's well known that even the best algorithm needs human oversight - but once you bring in humans - they will make arbitrary decisions.  When arbitrary decision are made it's necessary to also give people and explanation specific to them while giving them an opportunity to make corrections (remedy) - or to give their side of the story (in case it was just human error by the Search Engine employees).  That's not being done today and Google Webmaster Central is not the solution since many people still don't use it and it's still just you and Google - it's not an impartial, outside, council.

It's known that Google is unwilling to get into actually dealing with people - that's why the perception of Google, overall, is spiraling down -even as they get bigger and more successful financially.  It's not Google's success that people are worried about - in fact, Google's success is what is powering the Internet, mainly.  If Google were to suddenly fail - a massive depression would follow - too much is bundled into Google now - for it to fail - it must succeed. 

However, there needs to be checks and balances in that success - there needs to be a place to go to complain to and get action taken when Google acts too imperialistically, and there is no place to go, today - not to Google, really, and not outside of Google, at all.

Again, it's not the human reviewers adjusting PageRank of sites that is the real problem here (it's more like a symptom)

Were Google to, in fact, explain to me, individually, why a human reviewer(s) decided that Webmetricsguru deserved to be a PageRank 4 instead of a PageRank 6 - they'd get into a whole human range of emotions - of feedback, of, perhaps, legal issues, they don't want to deal with.   So they say nothing and just change PageRank as they see fit.

That's why, I believe, they don't want to explain what they're doing. 

But what Google is doing now is not really a good, long term solution either; every time they fix one problem, they create two or three others - because the basic algorithm no longer works as well and it's too easy to game it or confuse it - that's a fact.  The more they expand the ranking algorithm - the more problems they also create as they get away from textual ranking to universal search and metadata, clustering results, etc. 

Besides, every couple of months, they'll do it again to the next set of offending sites - and at the end of the day - nothing has really changed - the Google Pagerank/backlink algorithm has to continually be "patched" and manipulated, by humans - who don't need to explain what they're doing.

Even at the cost of slowing things down (and maybe that's not a bad thing, after all) there needs to be a way of regulating the decision Search Engines make about sites - some mechanism to talk back when a decision is made - and to go outside the Search Engine to complain - today there is no such a mechanism
or body to go to.

Sure, if you can work it out with a Search Engine (most of the time, Google) with out going "outside", that's great, but right now, there's no compelling reason why Google needs to do anything for any individual - because there's nothing telling them they have to.