22 replies to this topic

[seadog]

GoGuides directory has begun selling text link ads at the top of their pages. The links in the directory don't seem to be passing value anymore. Might want to avoid this guide until something changes or you get traffic from them anyway. Also GoGuides results are appearing in G's supplemental index

[Jill]

How do you know it's not passing link pop?

And even if it is true, why does it matter?

[seadog]

How do you know it's not passing link pop?

And even if it is true, why does it matter?

Jill I'll try and explain the process (which I learned from Dan Thies) however it is hard to put into writing. Its possible Dan has already composed something and posted in the forum somewhere

You find a unique piece of link text on the site you are testing. You search for that phrase in google. If the site the text is linking to does not show up but is indexed than you can basically assume no link value is being passed

It matters because some people count on value from links such as these to help with indexing/spidering, building trust, and many other things.

It wouldn't matter like I mentioned before if you were only using the link to get direct traffic(although the fact GoGuides is now supplemental is disconcerting).

Edited by seadog, 19 April 2006 - 02:08 PM.

[Michael Martinez]

Dan's methodology is sound enough, but right now Google is doing weird things. I've been doing some test searches and I find the craziest results. A couple of other forums have had some discussions about similar oddities.

Although I tend to look askance of some of the people posting in those forums, this time I think they may be on to something.

I don't regard this to be an update. I think Google seriously broke something with Big Daddy.

[Scottie]

GoGuides also appears to have removed a lot of sites that were added by editors when they went to paid listings, although they say they have not. Previously discussed here.

[seadog]

GoGuides also appears to have removed a lot of sites that were added by editors when they went to paid listings, although they say they have not.  Previously discussed here.

scottie,
thanks for the link to that thread. It's a must read for anyone doing business with GoGuides. However still it seems like even more has changed since that thread. Maybe Michael is right and it is temporary. Time will tell

[Michael Martinez]

For what it's worth, I have two listings with GoGuides and they do appear to pass Dan's test. If Google is, as I suspect, having issues, there has been no official confirmation of which I'm aware. This is an open-ended issue, I'm afraid. It may take a lot of screaming and hollaring in the forums before Google admits that something has to be changed.

[DanThies]

Hey all, it's late, I just got an email on this. A question came up about GoGuides during my link building class today. It does appear that GG is selling text links, which I consider a red flag on a directory, as Matt Cutts and other Google folks have made it clear what actions they take to prevent purchased text links from influencing search results.

I will post something in the morning about the methods we use to diagnose whether a website is passing reputation (keyword text) through links. I found two "hits" during the call, of websites that were clearly not receiving link reputation from GG and a couple other directories. Two hits is not enough to confirm whether there is really filtering going on, but we will be looking into all three of these directories in detail.

I expect that GoGuides will be relatively easy to resolve, since Robert Barger is a good guy and likely to be just as interested in finding out what's going on as we all are. I will also reach out to the folks at the other two directories.

At this point, we have a reason to look into it further, but we do not have confirmation of anything, other than that some pages from GG appear in Google's supplemental index. Find me a directory that does have pages in the supplemental index, and I'll get excited about that.

[DanThies]

Okay, to follow up, I'm going to address three things in this post.

1. Methodology - how we diagnose whether a web site's outbound links may be filtered by Google
2. GoGuides specifically, because that's where we started
3. The relationship between GoGuides and TextLinkAds.com

Methodology: If you don't grok the concept the first time through, keep trying. It's not the easiest thing to wrap your head around.

1) Find an appropriate link to test on the site you're investigating (e.g. GoGuides.org)

• This link should contain a phrase that does not generate very many search results (preferably 10 or fewer) when you do an exact phrase search on Google
• The phrase must not appear as a phrase on the target page, or in the TITLE tag on the target page. The target page = the URL that the link points to. Got it?
• With directories, this can take some time, you may need to look at a lot of links to find one that fits the criteria.
• On GoGuides.org, one link that does fit the criteria is found at http://www.goguides....opic/15200.html
• The text of the link is "Luxury apartment at Cannes Mandelieu"
• The target URL is http://www.info-fran...a.apartment.php

2) Do an exact phrase search on Google using the link text found in step 1.

• If you see exactly two results (the page carrying the link and the target page) this indicates that the link is probably passing reputation. Since the phrase does not appear on the target page, the only other way it could appear in search results is if a link is putting it there. You can validate further by viewing the cached page, where you should see "the following only appears in links pointing to this page."
• If you see exactly one result (the linking page), then you have an indication (absolute confirmation is impossible) that the linking page is not passing reputation.
• If you see multiple results, including the target page, you have learned nothing because you don't know which link is passing reputation, so go back to step 1.
• If you see multiple results, but the target page is not among them, then you probably have found multiple sites or pages that are not passing reputation.
• In the search result linked to above, we see four results, from the GoGuides, Skaffe, and Tygo directories. The target page is not among the results, so we see no indication that reputation is being passed by any of the four links found.

3) Check to verify that the target page is actually indexed by Google, by searching on some unique properties of the page that will cause it to appear in search results, such as site:example.com "words that appear in the TITLE of the target page"

It's important to verify that the target page is indexed, so that you don't get a "false positive" result because the target site isn't being crawled thoroughly, is possibly penalized or banned, etc.

4) Repeat several times. If you can find several "hits" that indicate that reputation is not being passed, and no results indicating that reputation is being passed, then you can draw your own conclusions about what this means. When I see this, I draw the conclusion that my advertising dollars are better spent elsewhere.

About GoGuides in particular:
I spoke with Robert Barger from GoGuides this afternoon. We do believe that the GG directory is currently not passing reputation w/ Google. However, I believe that this will be corrected soon.

Robert has switched over to using a Javascript wrapper for ad delivery, so that the links no longer appear in the source code of the page. This is the same way that Google delivers AdSense ads. Robert will contact Google to let them know about this, probably already has. I have done the same. It would be a shame if a good directory like this one were filtered, and others with less editorial control left alone.

About GoGuides and TextLinkAds.com:
We had wondered whether the ads appearing on GG were from TextLinkAds.com, because an ad for that company appears in the same area on the page.

Robert from GoGuides and Patrick Gavin from TLA have both confirmed that the ads do not come from TextLinkAds.com, but have been sold independently by GoGuides for some time. TextLinkAds.com advertises on many websites, including GoGuides, because those ads bring in targeted traffic.

Patrick let me know that they do not seek directories as publishing partners for their ad network, precisely because the directories would run the risk of having their links filtered, which would be harmful to the perceived value of the directory from a submission standpoint. This is why I like Patrick even though he is a link pimp.

More to come:
We are now conducting in depth research on a large list of directories. I will be holding a couple (free) conference calls next week to discuss our findings. Call info will be distributed via my regular email newsletter and posted to the High Rankings forum and perhaps a few other forums if they'll allow it. We'll be able to accomodate around 100 people per call, and I plan to do as many calls as necessary to let everyone hear what we have found.

[qwerty]

Very useful info. Thanks Dan.

[Hank Cowdog]

Dan,

Excellent post!

I would add an additional check to step 2:

• Confirm that the referring page shows up in the search results. If it does not, then it is possible that Google has not reindexed the referring page since the link to the target page was added.

If you wanted to be especially thorough, you could also check the cache of the referring page to insure that when Google indexed this page, the linking text actually pointed to the target page. In your particular example, the referring page is in the search results, but the cached image was not available. I still believe that your example is an accurate one.

[Alc]

Dan, I hate to disagree with you but you are totally wrong. If goguides or any other directory sells links on thier own site this is NOT a red flag and it does not hurt links from that site. I have no idea how you have come to this insane conclusion.

What red flags a site is when the site is in the business of selling links. Then there is a problem.

The ONLY time there is a problem with selling links on your ouwn site is when you create a link farm out of the site.

In the case of GoGuides Skaffe and the like, the number of links that they 'sell' is insignificant and in no way devalues their site. They do pass along link popularity.

We have tested it completely. If you want to be an expert in the SEO field as many say you are. I would suggest you do a little more homework before you pass along miss-information like this.

Yes Dan, I know for a fact you are wrong. We have a NDA with Google and we cannot tell you the formula they use but you are totally off base on this.

You owe GoGuides an apology!

Al

[Michael Martinez]

As I recall, O'Reilly didn't create a link farm with their paid links. Google openly acknowledged that only the pages with paid links were devalued. Matt Cutts has made no distinction between "these paid links are okay" and "these paid links are not okay".

Google don't like paid links, and they don't have to allow links to pass anchor text and PageRank if they don't want to.

[sweepthelegnate]

We have tested it completely.

Care to share one of these tests? Dan put his methodology out there, and at least to me it seems pretty sound. If you're going to call his conclusion insane you might want to back it up with a little more than "we have an NDA with google."

[Alc]

Michael,

I will explain a bit. Its not about these paid links are ok and these paid links are not ok. Its not about paid links at all. Unfortunately alot of very smart people like Dan and others do not understand how the penalty works.

I completely know how this penalty works and we have been in working on the Internet way back when when it was called Arpanet before there was even a world wide web.

There are alot of things that cause a page to pass along PR and many things that cause it not to.

One of the biggest changes is the age of the link. The longer the link exists the more autoritative it has. Basically this is one of the ways Google determines rank by the age of the link.

Now not to digress or cause a shouting match on this topic but anyone that says a paid for link is hurting a site is DEAD WRONG!

Google sells links on many sites these links do not hurt the site nor the advertiser.

If I own XYZ.com and I want to sell ROS links. It is not going to devalue my site. What it may do is cause me to have alot of out bound links. But if you have 7 advertisers on a site it is going to do NOTHING, no harm at all.

I looked at GoGuides, Skaffe, and WoW directory. Look carefully how they sell links. They are very restrictive and there are less then seven paid for links on Wow for example.

Having a link on a site like WOW directory it going to be a benefit. Look at thier PR its a 6! As long as the link does not open into a new window the link is going to pass along PR. If it opens in a new window and the link goes to a different domain it will NOT pass along pagre rank value.

I strongly recommend WoW directory to all our clients! Yes links on that site does wonders

So take another look at that "research' Enough free advise. I get paid for these answers :-)