My Opinion on Using Only1 WMT Account

oozyluce · Jun 6, 2013

----------- Disclaimer -----------

I mix facts and opinions.
That's it

Let's try to get a meaningful reflexion on if it's suicidal or not to use only one google webmaster tools account with more than one website here.

After reading older threads on the subject here on BHW, i've witnessed a lot of horror stories involving multiple websites and only one WMT account, where one website gets slapped and all the others on WMT consecutively get slapped - for the sole reason of being in the same account as the one that got caught -
Most of these stories claim to have only done whitehat SEO to all but one website in their WMT account, and blame the one where they did BH SEO for getting penalized.

My opinion:
Google is an unconditional Data God. The main reason that guarantees their success in any new venture they touch is the fact that they have sufficient data to accurately profile each and everyone of its users and therefore their consumers. Hence, in their case, massive would be a weak adjective to qualify their audience.
With that being said, i seriously believe that using only one WMT account with multiple website doesn't do less harm than using multiple WMT accounts with one webiste behind it. You leave footprints to google everywhere, your adsense IDs, your Gmails, your browsers, your cache, your cookies, your DNS queries, your phones... That's their specialty: BIG DATA.

If you think that google knows which sites are yours and which sites aren't just because you've added them in one account, i believe that you are fooling yourself. In my opinion, you need to go down this road much, much further to cover your traces if you don't want them to know which is yours and which isn't. It's definitly not impossible, but i see it as an herculeean task.
Having just one WMT won't help your cause - That's for sure - , but then again not having one probably won't save you either, which is why i don't see a big deal with placing all my websites under one account.

Plus, when reading other threads on the subject, i have also heard the complete opposite situation, where people use one WMT for all their websites - BH and WH SEO combined -, and once the BH SEO'd website got slapped, the WH ones remained perfectly fine. Were they simply "lucky enough" to not have been identified as owning the WH websites as well? I think that's highly improbable.

What do you guys take on this? Share your experiences and your opinions, i'd like to hear them!

drywallrob · Jun 7, 2013

I use Piwik. Why should I give Google free data?

oozyluce · Jun 8, 2013

drywallrob said:
I use Piwik. Why should I give Google free data?

Piwik is an alternative to Google Analytics, not Google Webmaster Tools.
Besides, WMT doesn't give any data to google that it didn't have before, as you do not give exclusive access to your website, you merely add an html page to your server to get it verified.

The real question leveraged by the original post was more if it DID infact matter that Webmaster Tools left a footprint, as where google has footprint data everywhre anyways, and avoiding it is a monstruous job

GiorgioB · Jun 8, 2013

I personally keep my clean long term light grey hat sites on one WMT account, and the dirty black sites on another (or not on WMT at all). Never had a problem, but I would not put both types of sites on same accounts.

Scritty · Jun 8, 2013

oozyluce said:
If you think that google knows which sites are yours and which sites aren't just because you've added them in one account, i believe that you are fooling yourself. In my opinion, you need to go down this road much, much further to cover your traces if you don't want them to know which is yours and which isn't. It's definitly not impossible, but i see it as an herculeean task.

While this could be true - let's also examine the legality of the situation.

Google are not allowed BY LAW to farm personal data without the owners consent.
They could scrape WHOIS sites and then backflush all those WM's with privacy turned on - but that would be against the law
They could backtrack none google email adresses to check which servers they were from and add this date to their database - but that would be against the law
They could try and jon the dots between many none google social media accounts to see if they were made by the same person and add that to their database - but that would be against the law.
And many many other things that are technically possible - but legally not.

Now the "tin foil hat" brigade might well say that Google break the law all the time. Some Illuminati profit conspiracy or some such shit.
Fact is Google are on a knifes edge every day.
Not a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of 1% of their users has ANY emotional involvement with using Google.
Imagine if Google lose a massive and public anti-trust case that makes the front page with headlines like "You use Google - They are farming and selling your data illegally and have been for years"
People could just swap - i'm not on about IMers and SEO's I'm on about just regular people who use them.

"Fuck it - there are other search engines - who cares?"

And Google have lost some anti trust cases. 3 this year ALONE - luckily they were small key - and "technical breaches".
They start pissing around deliberatley breaking privacy laws and anti trust and get found out..their business is dead.

Why - because no one who uses Google has any emotional reason outside "habit" to use them.
Google rely on "habit" not "love of the product"
And give people enough reason to break a habit (and perform the 20 second operation it takes to pop into browser options and change default from Google to Yahoo or whoever) And that's just what will happen

I think my business is pretty involved with Google and search - but if a critical number of people left then even I could shift my entire PPC and search to another platform inside a day - two at the outside - and carry on if nothing had happened.
And frankly?
I wouldn't give a fuck.
I care about Google as an entity about as much as I care about the brand of bleach I clean my toilet with. That's to say - not at all - and most people are like me - and Google KNOW THIS.

Look what happened to "News International" 2 years ago.
IBM? Yahoo? .....

Massive corporations die - and when they go it's often unexpected and very quick.
The one leverage venerable companies might have to mitigate this is the emotional involvement of their customer base.
As Google+ showed us - emotionally no one gives a fuck about Google. One massive clusterfuck like personal anti privacy breach that makes BIG press!? And they are gone
The bigger they come the harder they fall

oozyluce · Jun 10, 2013

Scritty said:
While this could be true - let's also examine the legality of the situation.

Google are not allowed BY LAW to farm personal data without the owners consent.
They could scrape WHOIS sites and then backflush all those WM's with privacy turned on - but that would be against the law
They could backtrack none google email adresses to check which servers they were from and add this date to their database - but that would be against the law
They could try and jon the dots between many none google social media accounts to see if they were made by the same person and add that to their database - but that would be against the law.
And many many other things that are technically possible - but legally not.

Now the "tin foil hat" brigade might well say that Google break the law all the time. Some Illuminati profit conspiracy or some such shit.
Fact is Google are on a knifes edge every day.
Not a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of 1% of their users has ANY emotional involvement with using Google.
Imagine if Google lose a massive and public anti-trust case that makes the front page with headlines like "You use Google - They are farming and selling your data illegally and have been for years"
People could just swap - i'm not on about IMers and SEO's I'm on about just regular people who use them.

"Fuck it - there are other search engines - who cares?"

And Google have lost some anti trust cases. 3 this year ALONE - luckily they were small key - and "technical breaches".
They start pissing around deliberatley breaking privacy laws and anti trust and get found out..their business is dead.

Why - because no one who uses Google has any emotional reason outside "habit" to use them.
Google rely on "habit" not "love of the product"
And give people enough reason to break a habit (and perform the 20 second operation it takes to pop into browser options and change default from Google to Yahoo or whoever) And that's just what will happen

I think my business is pretty involved with Google and search - but if a critical number of people left then even I could shift my entire PPC and search to another platform inside a day - two at the outside - and carry on if nothing had happened.
And frankly?
I wouldn't give a fuck.
I care about Google as an entity about as much as I care about the brand of bleach I clean my toilet with. That's to say - not at all - and most people are like me - and Google KNOW THIS.

Look what happened to "News International" 2 years ago.
IBM? Yahoo? .....

Massive corporations die - and when they go it's often unexpected and very quick.
The one leverage venerable companies might have to mitigate this is the emotional involvement of their customer base.
As Google+ showed us - emotionally no one gives a fuck about Google. One massive clusterfuck like personal anti privacy breach that makes BIG press!? And they are gone
The bigger they come the harder they fall

Very interesting point of view mate, i enjoyed reading it.

I couldn't argue with this very much as i am in no case a law expert.

However there is one thing i am sure of, google isn't only a search engine anymore. i'ts a browser, an advertising platform, a DNS service provider, a video content syndication, an email service, an internet service provider, a Geocoding Prodiver, an operating system, and much much more.

The information they have from each of it's user is in my opinion legal because we complied to give them this very information by accepting their privacy policies on each of their services. Since it is all their data they are allowed to cross-link it from one service to another without having to scrape an external source for information... And i strongly believe that they have enough data to analyze a pattern of ownership between my adword, adsense, analytics and Webmaster Tools account for it to be irrelevant that i removed one to the equation.

My Opinion on Using Only1 WMT Account

oozyluce

Regular Member

drywallrob

Senior Member

oozyluce

Regular Member

GiorgioB

Supreme Member

Scritty

Elite Member

oozyluce

Regular Member

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