To be honest I think that what Jay was doing (and obviously I wasn’t there and even if I had been I couldn’t speak for Jay) was just trying to shake things up a bit. A lot of the things that people term as being ethical are nothing of the sort - they’re simply business decisions; it’s not like reporting political activists to totalitarian governments, or censoring web results.

Knowing Jay a bit I’d say that he’s actually a pretty ethical person - he just doesn’t view gaming a search engine as being a question of ethics (please see my note about not being able to speak for Jay again - this is just my impression of him).

Matt is just an employee, he is not Google. And Google is just a search engine. Jay was right, you should do what you want, but you have to deal with the possible consequences thereafter.

I had a problem though with what Jay suggested as basically throwing ethics out the window. Just not caring about what is right or wrong is what is inherently wrong in the business world overall. And I am worried about people thinking that is what we are all about.

Do some of his tricks work? Yep. Is it good to be aware of all of this? Yes. But I’m with you, I’ll never do it because of who my clients are and their goals. I’ve never needed it yet.

Nice write-up. I wish I’d been at the link building panel instead of at the booth!