Google vs. Paid Links
Posted to: Blogging, Google, Links, Matt Cutts, PageRank, Search, Spam, Webmaster
Google is against paid links, or at least that’s how it appears from a recent post by Google’s quality control and anti-spam guy Matt Cutts.
One thing I heard at SES London was that people wanted a way to report paid links specifically. I’d like to get a few paid link reports anyway because I’m excited about trying some ideas here at Google to augment our existing algorithms. Google may provide a special form for paid link reports at some point, but in the mean time, here’s a couple of ways that anyone can use to report paid links:
- Sign in to Google’s webmaster console and use the authenticated spam report form, then include the word “paidlink” (all one word) in the text area of the spam report. If you use the authenticated form, you’ll need to sign in with a Google Account, but your report will carry more weight.
- Use the unauthenticated spam report form and make sure to include the word “paidlink” (all one word) in the text area of the spam report.
But this brings up a whole lot of issues, which particularly affects the business model of a lot of blogs and websites out there.
You see, selling links (both image and text) has been the staple of professional bloggers, blog networks, and webmasters for some time now. This brings them good money, and in exchange advertisers get good link juice (especially if a site has high PageRank). But Google apparently thinks link selling dilutes the quality of the links, and hence Google is asking people to report sites that they think are selling links in exchange for compensation.
People are concerned because this means these things -
One, Google’s algorithm is unable to automatically detect link spam (aside from those that are blatantly obvious), and hence they need human intervention.
Secondly, if a site is reported to have been selling links, there needs to be a good way to prove this. But how can you do that really? And sites that are in the business of selling advertisements would probably be downgraded in terms of link potency.
Third, Google’s competitors in the online advertising world might be on the losing end. Companies like Text Link Ads, for instance, make a living from putting up text links on publisher sites. Does this mean Google is using its dominance in setting up a monopoly of sorts?
Fourth, there are pay-per-post and pay-per-review schemes where bloggers are paid to write reviews. With this new trend in reporting sites that sell links, bloggers might decide not to disclose that they’re blogging for compensation. This could create a whole new trust problem when it comes to blogging.
SEO Class has listed reactions around the web, and is worried that Google wants to tell us how to run our websites.
Any thoughts?
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As usual informative and one wonders where Google is going with all this
I don’t think the whole world would be stupid enough to fall under Google’s threat. This does affect their good name for me, though. Lots of sites get their traffic from link shairing and selling. I mean.. that’s what web popularity is based on. It would be a big deal for some PR10 out there to host a link to my website. My traffic would grow exponentially. That would worth ALOT of money to me, why wouldn’t that PR10 site say, hey, we’ll do it, but it’ll cost you. The only thing google could possibly have against that is their own business’s welfare. Let’s all cry a handful for big millio0n dollar Google.
Like I said, this is too much of a big business to go away, so Google needs to get over it. Afterall, they are one of the top ten sites in the world, and they over paid linking as well!
I think it’s ridiculous that google is against paid links.
The whole internet is based on paid links / commercial websites.
Business need links that pay them, and ultimately pay an opportunity cost of one form or another to have links point back to them.
Companies would never invest in SEO, PPC, article writing, if they didn’t create some form of return on investment.
Google really wants those that have paid links on their website (and find me one who doesn’t) to buy google advertising.
Maybe I can pick up some tips here on how to do that successfully….
Wonder how many “people wanted a way to report paid links specifically.”
[...] scraping of content. Sadly, the prevalence of splogs has also prompted the search engines to consider lessening the “link juice” of sites that sell text links (but this is worth another blog post [...]
I can understand why Google doesn’t like “link farms” or other “false” links, but to try to destroy this type of advertising completely is ridiculous.
Buy Link Selling Links… Come on if google banned those people who are buying or selling links , might as well banned 80% of entire websites then…
Am i riight?
I Links a pagamento sono una buona cosa per chi ne usufruisce (e per chi li vende)… una buona cosa fino a quando Google non ti “SGAMA”..allora si che sono dolori !!