What can Google measure?

[Jaycee]

An SEO contact was teling me that Google is able to take into account the IP address of such things as retweets. So, if you are running a host of different Twitter accounts from your desktop using something like Tweetadder it can tell that you're manufacturing the situation.

One of the main competitors of one of the sites I am working on is evidently doing this without it seeming to affect them. But I'm intrigued, does anyone think Google goes that far in its measurements?

[dogboy]

As far as your specific situation goes, I don't know... but in general, I would think by now the granularity of their detection might illuminate such techniques. IP detection is like a flint arrowhead; it's very old but it is quite effective most of the time hitting big, 'easy' targets.

[TallTroll]

It's worth bearing in mind that as well as publically available info, G is a registrar (so they see zone files) and a HUGE operator in the infrastructure business, so they see a lot of raw packets over TCP/IP. Clearly, using all that raw data is a challenge, but it is the kind of thing they are good at

[4Eyes]

There is so much stuff that Google 'could' measure that one could easily become scared into inaction on almost every SEO front.

The most important things to remember are:
* just because they can, doesn't mean that they are doing
* just because the spot SEO activity doesn't mean they will penalize you for it (it may need a combination of factors happening together before it incurs a penalty)
* even if they can't, or don't measure something, it doesn't mean they won't in the future. Think of all those headless chickens busy trying to remove directory entries and otherwise clean up their link profiles that they thought were safe.

There is no such thing as 'safe' SEO any more.

[JasonD]

>G is a registrar (so they see zone files)

Everyone can get access to TLD zone files, whether you're a registrar or not. Google being a registrar gives them negotiating power rights with ICANN

> There is no such thing as 'safe' SEO any more.

hear hear