Banned in Google? Then Google must be evil!

Wired posted an article recently about Google's pledge to not be evil.

Now, call me crazy, but the particular examples they've cited are not very controversial. They've left out a whole range of privacy issues and lack of communication and feedback for webmasters on the evil side and not mentioned a lot of examples of Google providing services for free and being community-focused on the good side. But that's neither here nor there.

The story, naturally, interests search marketers so it turned up on Sphinn - which, of course, wouldn't be a site for the SEO community if some webmaster didn't weigh into the discussion saying that he knew Google was evil because Google had banned his site - for no reason. Of course.

If you haven't enlarged that image, what the comment says is,

"I serve the best content for Geo-located budget properties and google refuses to list them (given in example). I also provide a substantial research on travel costs associated with flying with luggage, the best in the UK, and again Google will not list them.

I've never broken any guidelines, but I have made a substantial amount of money on the 'net.

I can only guess why Google has excluded my sites, perhaps they're evil."

Of course he thinks his site is the "best" site on the subject - every webmaster does. The thing is, if I had £0.05 for every time I've seen a webmaster say Google is wrong for banning a site, penalizing a site or simply not ranking a site at #1 then I'd be sunning myself on my own island.

Now, maybe the site in question really is a great site and has done nothing wrong - I don't know as no examples were ever provided nor was a URL. In all liklihood, however, the site has broken the Webmaster Guidelines - even if the webmaster didn't do it deliberately.

The simple fact is that Google rarely delists an innocent site and when they have they usually self-correct the problem pretty quickly.

So is Google evil? I can't answer that question,  but I do know that the definition of evil does not involve where they list your website in their search results.