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There are definitely times when you have to wonder about the overall intelligence of some people. Some may be very bright and have an amazing IQ but then turn out to be so plain dumb when it comes to the real world that you just have to wonder how they survive in day to day life.

Take the guys behind Google as an example. Those two guys have built an incredible business that's slowly taking over the world. They came up with the basis of a search engine that is now used by more than half the people who hit the Internet each day. They built that search engine and the relevancy of sites on the basis of what others thought about each site and that was where they made a very basic mistake.

The idea of using linking as some measure of a site's worth was quite a radical way of looking at sites back in the day when they started what was to become Google. Of course they added in a few other little wrinkles that they would also use to assess the importance/value of a site; things such as keywords and relevanc but the basis of Google has always been about links.

To help build Google into what it is today the founders went out and found other bright people to employ. People with PhDs, MAs and other highly technical qualifications that were useful in building up the staff needed to fill Google's Mountain View headquarters. But it seems that one thing the founders of Google didn't have much of, and something that many of their employees also seem to lack, is good old common sense.

At first the lack of common sense probably wasn't even noticed but now that Google is beginning to suffer because of the lack of common sense they still seem to think that they can wing it by doing some very silly things. When you threaten webmasters in an attempt to save your algorithm and show other signs of desperation that's just plain silly.

You see, their lack of common sense really sowed the seeds of the problems they're facing right now. Back when they were building the algorithm that Google is based on they placed all that importance on links and if they had only looked ahead into the future they should have seen that there would come a time when links became so important that people would set out to exploit their system.

Back then they should have been thinking of ways to build in safeguards to prevent that exploitation. Did they look ahead and plan for the future? Perhaps they did but they don't seem to have had the common sense to realize that people would seek to improve their individual rankings by exploiting the value placed on links.

If the founders of Google - and their highly paid employees - had seen that situation coming they wouldn't be facing the situation that we see unfolding today. We wouldn't be seeing Google employees trying desperately to protect the algorithm by attempting to stamp out paid links.

We wouldn't be seeing that desperation reaching the point where Google mouthpieces are claiming that the FTC might get involved if people don't declare paid links and we wouldn't be seeing Google inviting webmasters to inform on other webmasters who just might be engaged in buying and selling links.

Now there's another sign of just how little common sense there is up at Mountain View. Do they really expect that webmasters will only report genuine instances of buying and selling links? Do they really think that all webmasters are so honest and honorable that some of them won't try to destroy their opposition by making false reports?

Does Google really intend to fully investigate every report? God I hope so because if they don't the collateral damage that's going to engulf so many webmasters who are doing the right thing is going to be incredible.

If you think I might be over-exaggerating the situation perhaps this quote from someone who was commenting on the story, on a well-known SEO blog, might change your mind:

'Look, Google is telling us that they think that paid links are disturbing SERPs, and that they are trying to filter out paid links so we get better SERPs. That's how I see things too — too many of the sites ahead of me are there on the basis of links that look very suspicious to a human eye'

An interesting comment don't you think? There are sites that rank ahead of this guy so they must be suspicious to a human eye - but which human's eye? They look suspicious to his jaundiced eye and so you can bet he's going to report them.

How would anyone convince Google that a link coming into their site was not purchased or a link appearing on their site was not sold? How do you convince somebody that a link is there because you feel the site or the business deserves a link?

What if your favourite coffee shop had a website and you loved the service and the product so much that you wanted to tell others about it? Of course one way is to link to the shop's website … but how do you convince others that link hasn't been paid for?

Things could get very dirty very quickly and all because of a lack of common sense.