40 replies to this topic

[Alan Perkins]

Is that really what happens though? Do paid links being detected lead to a lose of traffic?
The whole argument revolves around "tell". What if we reword it as ask? Or offer?

The three words are not synonyms.

Part of my fear is for Google itself, not for publishers. I know, I know, Google is big enough to look after itself. However, back in the day, so was Alta Vista. Google is a good search engine, that has had fine ethical and moral standards (at least on the natural search side) until now. But this is different. Google chose to

1. invent Pagerank
2. patent Pagerank, thus making its workings transparent
3. put a Pagerank meter on the Google toolbar, thus providing the opportunity to buy or sell PR based on what the meter reported
4. agree to the rel=nofollow attribute as a means of insulating publishers from ill effects generated by automated or user-generated content
5. subvert the rel=nofollow attribute as a means of labelling paid content and request/demand that publishers use it to prevent certain kinds of paid link from "flowing Pagerank".

I can't see it any other way.

[projectphp]

The three words are not synonyms

Agreed, but they are all possible interpretations

Some say "Google is telling us what to do", because the word "tell" has power. To dictate is, in our (anglo-English) society one of the worst crimes. We simply don't care for dictators, and to use the word "tell" is to tap into this deep rooted cultural mindset. Remove the word "tell", and the argument pretty much evaporates. A one word argument is never very compelling

The 1-5 are a pretty accurate summation of what happenned, and I agree whole heartedly EXCEPT for the last half sentence I think that publishers asked for this as much as Google wanted to provide it. People wanted a way to make sure selling links wasn't "dangerous", a word I still can't quantify in this context, and Google grasped at the first tool that offerred such a reprieve.

I think that rel=nofollow is NOT the right tool for this job, and would go one step further and ask why this is the webmaster's responbsibility at all. The whole shebang is poorly conceived and thought out, and no one should be using rel=nofollow pretty much at all (because there is no documented usage I can point to).

However, to make the leap to dictators and a slippery slide, especially when both sides have some complicity in all this, is certainly not one I am neccessarily agree with.

[Alan Perkins]

Can we agree that, as applied to Google, rel=nofollow is a tool to manipulate Pagerank - nothing more and nothing less?

[Scottie]

Can we agree that, as applied to Google, rel=nofollow is a tool to manipulate Pagerank - nothing more and nothing less?

We can agree that appears to be what they are attempting to do. No one really knows for sure how they treat those nofollow links.

If you have a page full of nofollow links... I would doubt the validity of the content on that page. nofollow was originally introduced as a tag to say "I don't vouch for this link," and meant to tag blog spammers. I don't know that advertisers should be "not trusted."

[Alan Perkins]

No one really knows for sure how they treat those nofollow links.

I think we have to work on the assumption that Google takes some notice of them! Otherwise, what the heck is all the fuss about?

rel=nofollow must either "not manipulate Pagerank" or "manipulate Pagerank", and if it doesn't manipulate Pagerank there's no problem or discussion ...

[projectphp]

Can we agree that, as applied to Google, rel=nofollow is a tool to manipulate Pagerank - nothing more and nothing less?

Hmm... not always, but I'll grant you that

Otherwise, what the heck is all the fuss about?

Beats me (seriously). The fuss is going in so many directions I can't keep track. Alls I knows is, the peeps is mad

[Alan Perkins]

The fuss is going in so many directions I can't keep track.

That's why I'm trying to reduce it to this simple thing...

rel=nofollow is a tool provided by Google to Webmasters to manipulate Pagerank

Then (if it's not obvious enough from that statement) we can discuss why it's a really bad idea!

[Ron Carnell]

Technically, Alan, rel=nofollow is NOT a tool to manipulate Pagerank. Put the attribute on a DIV and it'll have no impact on Pagerank at all.

And no, I'm not being purposely facetious, either. I'm trying to make the point that the tool to manipulate Pagerank is not the attribute, but rather the tag. And, with or without the attribute, in Google's world the LINK tag has always been a tool to manipulate Pagerank. Even that, however, is just a red herring, because we all know that manipulating PR and a dollar won't get you much more than a cup of coffee. The real goal -- to the LINK tag, to the TITLE tag, to robots.txt and more -- is to manipulate search engine rankings.

Nothing has really changed, in my opinion. Pretending search engines don't exist is, perhaps, a noble goal, but it's probably a futile one for most of us. It's not much different than treating people the way we want to be treated rather than the way our legal system insists we treat them. Yea, the former sounds beautiful, but the reality is that we still need the latter.

Google, et al, isn't "suddenly" influencing the way we create links or title tags; they've been doing it all along. Rewarding someone for good behavior, while simultaneously punishing them for bad, will always and inevitably lead to a position of power. It matters little whether we're talking about search engines or governments. Paying your taxes and bartering links have more than a little in common, in kind if not necessarily in degree.

The 800 pound gorilla hasn't greatly changed. If anything, it just came out of the closet and admitted it was a gorilla.

[Alan Perkins]

Nothing has really changed, in my opinion.

Well it has in mine. Up to and including now, failing to know Google existed, failing to use robots.txt, or failing to write a proper title tag, has not been considered spam. Now, failing to use rel=nofollow IS considered spam. Nofollow has ceased to become a tool for those in-the-know, and has become an obligation for all. That's a big deal IMO.

The 800 pound gorilla hasn't greatly changed. If anything, it just came out of the closet and admitted it was a gorilla.

If true, then that in itself would be noteworthy.

[DanThies]

Alan, Google finally giving us a tool to manipulate PageRank is a great thing. The idea that we should pretend search engines don't exist, I'm sorry, has become completely irrelevant. You can not run a business and ignore the search engines. By using nofollow, I can create a PageRank-friendly structure for my site without compromising usability.

Why do you think they invented nofollow anyway? They had to have an implementation running long before they told bloggers about it. What was it for? It was for Google, so that they could ignore paid links. As far as I can tell, that's the goal - ignore the paid links in ranking pages.

If I decide to sell text links, and Google identifies them, I'd expect them to ignore all of my outbound links. Makes sense, doesn't it? I sell advertising without disclosing the relationship, so they can't trust me. If I label the paid links, then "maybe" they can trust me again.

As I recall, you were all for the FTC telling the search engines to label the paid links in their editorial content. I think we both still think that was a good idea.

I'm not sure what the difference is here - is it the idea that someone should label paid links, or is it that Google shouldn't be saying to do it? Or maybe, you just don't like the specific implementation*? Don't you think that paid links should be disclosed? In an electronic media, isn't a machine-readable disclosure more useful?

*That's my beef with this thing, BTW - nofollow does not explicitly mean "paid link" and they shouldn't be trying to use it for that...

[projectphp]

Up to and including now, failing to know Google existed, failing to use robots.txt, or failing to write a proper title tag, has not been considered spam. Now, failing to use rel=nofollow IS considered spam. Nofollow has ceased to become a tool for those in-the-know, and has become an obligation for all. That's a big deal IMO.

Here is a question: what about bad neighbourhods? Lets assume that linking to them causes your site to suffer. If you didn't know SEs existed, and linked to a bad neighbourhood, advertently or inadvertently, you would suffer a penalty.

But is that spamming? Did you do anything wrong? I don't think so, and I don't really think spam is the right word to use to describe that situation. The outcome might be the same (penalty) but the reason is different, in the same way that 5-3 and 1+1 have the same answer, but use different methods to get there.

I don't agree with your use of the word spam in this context, and believe you have artificially created two categories: with us (not spam) or against us (spam). They aren't the only two options IMHO, and not every situation that can affect your SEO perfromance is spam. Bad neighbourhoods and not labelling links fall into this "is bad but isn't spam" middle ground. I am hestiant to raise more FUD by creating a third category when spam is such a nice, simple concept, but I doubt that re-using an old word is the right fit in this case, and i think we do have a second category of bad

IMHO, if you don't know SEs exist and are selling footer links for for $800, it is either 1995 and the bubble has just kicked off and you are trying to scam your investors, or you are selling PageRank, knowingly or unknowingly. As long as Google doesn't penalise the selling site just for being a selling site (and there is no evidence they do), nothing has changed. At all. One bit. Fullstop.

[Randy]

As I recall, you were all for the FTC telling the search engines to label the paid links in their editorial content. I think we both still think that was a good idea.

I may be picking a nit, but the difference is that the FTC wants declarations of a relationship to be declared in a way that real human users can identify. nofollow doesn't do this. It only tells Google etal that something is up.

Frankly, if this is the goal it would make more sense for Google to support the FTC requirement and make something like nofollow a block level declaration. Meaning instead of having it at the Link level, place it either in a <div>, <span>, <td> or similar block level element where the entire content is then marked as a paid advertisement, complete with a visual reference for real users.

That ain't ever gonna happen though. At least not until the FTC starts making an example out of some of the big name folks who still do not label paid content as paid content. Yahoo! would be a good place for them to start.

[Jill]

Here is a question: what about bad neighbourhods? Lets assume that linking to them causes your site to suffer. If you didn't know SEs existed, and linked to a bad neighbourhood, advertently or inadvertently, you would suffer a penalty.

Bad neighborhoods are rarely something someone would link to because it was such a great resource for their own users. If it were, and you linked to it, then I'm sure it wouldn't be a problem.

I've not seen a useful bad neighborhood site, though.

[Alan Perkins]

The idea that we should pretend search engines don't exist, I'm sorry, has become completely irrelevant. You can not run a business and ignore the search engines.

You're taking the idea out of context. The whole point of the idea was to give a potential warning flag that a technique might be considered to be spam. The closer you come to doing something specifically for search engines (e.g. cloaking, keyword-stuffing ALT attributes, etc.), the closer you come to spamming (unless, like robots.txt or rel=nofollow, the search engines have given specific permission to do so).

Why do you think they invented nofollow anyway?

Er, I thought it was to provide a means for Webmasters to link to content without endorsing that content. Nothing to do with paid links.

If I decide to sell text links, and Google identifies them, I'd expect them to ignore all of my outbound links. Makes sense, doesn't it?

Yes, agreed. Google are free to apply their algorithm how they like.

I sell advertising without disclosing the relationship, so they can't trust me.

No I don't agree with this at all. The fact is that you have no means to disclose the relationship other than to write something like "Sponsored Links" in the content itself.

rel=nofollow is not a means to disclose paid links. Google is trying to subvert it to that, but it wasn't ever designed for that, and it doesn't do an adequate job of identifying a paid relationship, especially when its proper role (identifying untrusted or unverified links) is still in use by both Google and other search engines.

As I recall, you were all for the FTC telling the search engines to label the paid links in their editorial content. I think we both still think that was a good idea.

Yes, definitely. And I think all publishers should label paid links clearly - to humans. I just don't think that rel=nofollow is an appropriate way to label paid links. It's a very blunt instrument that was designed to say "I 'm not sure that I trust this link", not "I have been paid (in some undisclosed way) for this link".

I'm not sure what the difference is here - is it the idea that someone should label paid links, or is it that Google shouldn't be saying to do it? Or maybe, you just don't like the specific implementation*? Don't you think that paid links should be disclosed? In an electronic media, isn't a machine-readable disclosure more useful?

Agreed, but rel=nofollow is not it.

I'd argue for machine readable paid link disclosure, but I could understand somebody arguing against it. It's fraught with problems, not least its reverse application to the billions of Web pages already out there. If the W3C, the FTC, and other authorities got together and invented a standard for labelling paid links, then the search engines could choose to weight labelled paid links accordingly. Maybe such labelling could include the relationship between the source and target of the link (supplier/customer, parent/child/sibling, partner, etc.), the amount that was being paid and the basis of payment (CPM, CPC, tenancy, etc.), none of which are encapsulated by rel=nofollow. AFAIK there has been no call whatsoever for such a labelling scheme to be developed, and it would be years off and very difficult to gain widespread (e.g. global) acceptance. If such a labelling scheme is developed, then of course Google and other engines are free to incorporate it in their ranking algorithms, and label publishers who don't adopt it as "spammers".

I don't agree with your use of the word spam in this context.

It's not my use. From Matt Cutts' blog post:

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.

My emphasis added. Of course, you'll also note that Matt is head of Google's Webspam team.

[projectphp]

Far be it for ME to be the one to go all semantic on yo ass (nerdy attempt to make semantics sound tough), but every highlighted spam includes report. Which is what the form is called and, more importantly, colloquially known as

One could conclude that, because of the name, therefore anything submitted via it is spam. Looking back through history, Matt has, on occassion, asked for other reports through the spam report that weren't spam (various updates spring to mind), making such an assumption false. One analogy would be a football stadium (Wembley say) where football isn;t the only thing they do there (they had some big concert about starving once).

If Google changed the name of the form to oh, lets say "Formius Maximus", would that change things? More seriously, if they changed the name in a corporate BS way to "Quality Assurance feedback Form", and Matt was convince to use this rather than the accepted Webmaster vernacular of spam report, would that change the argument Alan?

Because quite legitmately, if the inference is that the spam report is the cause of the view that paid links are always spam, of all the FUD, changing the name and stating that "paid links are not spam, but not sopmething we like either", would quite trivially fix that

Again, I don't think that spam is the only dangerous thing a site can have or do, and I would argue that link analysis openned up the whole possibility of non-spam badness (and equal measures goodness), because a portion of your ranking score is reliant upon external (as in not done by me) factors.

I've not seen a useful bad neighborhood site, though.

Lots of bad spammers have useful sites in there somewhere. Cloaking is one such example.

Spamming doesn't and more than likely aproaching (but certainly NOT) 0%.

Bad neighborhoods are rarely something someone would link to because it was such a great resource for their own users. If it were, and you linked to it, then I'm sure it wouldn't be a problem.

My point stands that it is possible to be penalised WITHOUT spamming, and that spam, as Alan is trying to uise the word , is not a verb that is a synonym for all the wrong, bad or potentially damaging for SEO.