64 replies to this topic

[Jill]

There's a lot of talk on the web this week about Google visually reducing the PageRank of sites that allow paid ads (paid links basically). It seems that they've reduced toolbar PR by 2 points on many sites.

My feeling is that the only penalty (and I use that term lightly) is the smack in the face of visually lowering toolbar PR, but that in reality there is perhaps not any real consequence to the lowering of TBPR.

Nobody seems to be saying this, but me, however.

What are your thoughts?

On a similar note, I found the post at Marketing Pilgrim on this topic to be slightly amusing, as Andy says he's not selling links there, when clearly he is. Not sure what that is all about. (Sorry, Andy, but let's get real.)

[Betty]

If he's not selling links then what are all the ads doing on the page?

[1dmf]

I've read this on a couple of forums , people complaining all of a sudden their site has dropped for certain keywords.

What I don't understand is how on earth the Google Bot can tell which links have been paid for and which haven't.

Let alone what links are adverts and which are not.

And at the end of the day, isn't ANY link an 'ADVERT' . your are advertising another webpage/resourse by having a link to the URL, that's what an anchor is.

You want a visitor to know about and have access to another page / resource, the mechanism for doing this with HTML is called an anchor.

If google has decided to devalue all adverts / paid links, then it would have to devalue every anchor it knows about, an anchor by its nature is an advert for something, and has either cost someone time or money for it being there, not just in placing it on the page, but the upkeep of the page, the webhosting for the page, etc.. etc..

Or does Google think webpages grow on trees ?

[Jill]

1dmf, look at the pages in that first post and it's pretty obvious that they're paid links.

[Jill]

Honestly, this is really starting to get silly. There are a zillion posts out there now (see Sphinn) on this topic, and it's as if people actually thought their obvious paid-keyword-rich-anchor-text-links were going to never be spotted by Google!

What's up with that?

[glengara]

It's odd, a lot of directories with similar paid/exchanged link issues were hit a while ago but in the SERPs rather than in PR...

[-=seth=-]

It's odd, a lot of directories with similar paid/exchanged link issues were hit a while ago

does google still suggest getting links on the yahoo directory because they deserve to be hit, i have come to the conclusion the yahoo directory is a rip off so watching them getting dumped from google index would be amusing

[Jill]

glengara, I wonder if the directory issue is slightly different? (yet similar)

[Ignoramus]

Methinks (he muses naively, leaning on the farm gate and sucking a length of straw), there’s a really simple solution to all this...

Suppose for a moment that Google, and all the other SEs, announced that link popularity would no longer be a factor in their ranking algorithms.

Think of the implications...

Webmasters would only solicit, exchange, or pay for links which were of genuine value in terms of driving quality traffic.

Webmasters could concentrate on building the very best sites for their visitors, make their sites ‘search engine friendly’, and cease worrying about penalties for link spam.

Directories, articles, blogs etc would not be populated by submissions whose sole purpose was to gain page rank (toolbar or real).

All link scam schemes would disappear overnight.

We’d all get fewer emails.

The SEs could save a bundle of time and resources sorting out link wheat from link chaff and focus on the quality, as they perceive it, of individual web sites.

Oh Brave New Web World that has such algo’s in it. (Sorry Aldous, but you’re dead anyway).

Bet I’m gonna get beaten up on this....

[Ahmed]

Well its very amusing seeing people blog about this Amusing indeed - I mean the whole point of "organic" search is that you cant buy your way to the top so why does it matter what "type" of paid link it is. No paid link should have any affect on rankings and I'll leave the "how do they tell whats paid" to google since they seem to have figured it out.

[glengara]

Well unless there's some fall-out in the SERPs it all seems a bit of a storm in a tea-cup.......

[Jill]

See my newsletter "rant" on Google’s Paid-link Smack in the Face

[Jill]

Iggy, your brave new world is the way that some of us try to operate anyway. Problem with it (if Google ever did it) the results would suck...ala MSN...

[nethy]

AH, So that's what the toolbar is for.


Jill, was this done manually, you think?

[Jill]

But of course, Nethy! Most likely by Mr. Cutts himself.