64 replies to this topic

[projectphp]

These are perfectly legitimate sites which depend on paid adverts for their living. If they don't use 'nofollows' - through inattention or ignorance - will they be slapped down by Google ?

Untrue. If you sell links, you may lose the displayed Pagerank score. There is little to no evidence that anything else happens. And the TBPR (ToolBar PageRank) is (by legal decision) 1st ammendment protected free speach. Meaning Google can display whatever they like

IMHO, if people make a living selling the displayed PageRank (as oppossed to anything "real", which we can't know anyway), and Google shorten the green gif, then really, all Google are doing is stopping people from benefitting from their trademark. Tne legal implications of doindg so to stop a competitor are of ourse questionable...

The craziness of all this is that, ironically, the fuss has been raised over TBPR, not anything 'real' like people's site's sufferring a loss ion traffic, by ae person who never thought TBPR was important anyway (Jill, You Go GIRL!!!! Good times... Good times...)

The only constant in SEO (some would say life) is change. If you bought/sold links, bank the cash and accept that times change, and take solice in teh fact that you benefitted for so long whilst others, who refused to take the short-term cash, struggled along.

[thx1138]

Given all of the above, why does the toolbar PR exist, it clearly has no value, wouldn't it be easier just to do away with it?

Charlie

[Jill]

Good question for Google, Charlie!

[projectphp]

Given all of the above, why does the toolbar PR exist, it clearly has no value, wouldn't it be easier just to do away with it?

Rubbish! It has tremendous value, for all concerned.

And is it really that hard to work out what Google get out of the toolbar? Just imagine you are Google, and work out what you get. Simple

And what is that? Data from every single page a toolbar user visits, complete with the referrering page. Just think how much user data that is... It is mountains of data. For free. Combine that with Analytics, AdWords conversion tracking, YouTube and Doubleclick, and you'd be hard pressed not to cover like 60-80% of all user usage of the web.

Why give that up because a bunch of parasitic SEOs and PageRank sellers whine? If Google give it up, they'd lose a lot and gain nothing except a few articles by a few SEOs, probably split down the middle as to whether it is positive or negative.

Flip-side: what do webmasters get out of it? Data It never hurts to check PageRank, and the data is not useless (very little data ever is). It is simply flawed. Good analysis takes flawed data and uses it effectively. The problem is, most people who bought links based upon a 'lil green bar were no good at analysis, because in part it was more effective not to be any good at it (link building is mostly a numbers game).

IMHO, everyone wins from the TBPR, and the whining of a few brazillian forums is kinda trivial in the bigger scheme of things, for all concerned.

[thx1138]

It's hardly rubbish, and I'm talking about the PR displayed by the toolbar here, it's a valid question. If the PR displayed has little or no relation to Google's internal data and they can change what's displayed at will, surely it has little value?

Charlie

[torka]

IMO, it has value to Google by serving as a "shiny thing" to distract webmasters and SEOs who haven't figured out what really matters. Keep them focused on trying to manipulate the little green bar and away from trying to find and exploit holes in the Google algo.

It apparently has value to people who sell links based on PR to people who are clueless enough to buy links based on TBPR.

It can (notice I say "can" and not "does" -- this is potential, not absolute) have some value as an indicator of problems such as weak inbound linkage to a page. Of course, if one always waits for an update of the TBPR to figure things like that out, one will be behind the curve perpetually, but it can potentially be a wake up call to a webmaster who's been on auto pilot for awhile.

The way I see it, it's not totally useless, it's just not worth the time and energy some folks spend on it. It's just another indicator. A flawed indicator, to be sure. And a trailing indicator at that -- which means at best it's only going to reflect a rough approximation of what's already happened. It's an "acknowledge and move on, dude," situation.

The reason I personally (and I'm guessing at least some of the others here as well) often come down pretty strong on how "worthless" it is, is to counteract all the Chicken Little SEOs out there who declare the sky is falling every time their TBPR goes down a point, or who get all excited because they see evidence of an update, or who spend any amount of time at all at all trying to manipulate the green bar display.

My

--Torka

[projectphp]

Little value to whom? If you make an argument, don't fall into the trap of not defining your terms. "Value" implies a "valuer". Who this entity is needs to be defined.

Google - they get value out of it. Webmasters - they get value out of it. Monkeys, however, likely do not. Unless we are talking monkeys, I don't think it is a valid argument to say removing the service makes sense

Also, don't fall into the trap of using one perspective to argue for a different perspective's change. You may think, from your perspective, that toolbar PR in its current state has little value, but why should Google remove it? Your perspective != to theirs, and the decision to remove is Google's alone to make. Removing it would have to have some significant positive value over the current setup, for Google. Personally, I doubt there is any benefit to them. For yourself, removing the G toolbar may be a good idea, but that is a serperate issue to removing the service altogether.

Google's goal to organise information benefits from TBPR, as every page that is viewed they get to read about in the logs. Seems like a pretty sweet score of data, for free, to me.

But then, I use Opera, so this has never really been an issue for me anyway

[Jill]

Michael, I think the value for Google in removing it would be that all those who buy and sell ads based on it's flawed numbers would have to stop doing that. And since Google doesn't appear to like people buying and selling ads based on it's flawed numbers, it has been somewhat surprising that they haven't removed it.

But then again, Google does like to mess with SEO's heads, so there's probably more than enough amusement value in it (for Google) to make it worthwhile keeping it.

[thx1138]

Michael, I think the value for Google in removing it would be that all those who buy and sell ads based on it's flawed numbers would have to stop doing that. And since Google doesn't appear to like people buying and selling ads based on it's flawed numbers, it has been somewhat surprising that they haven't removed it.

But then again, Google does like to mess with SEO's heads, so there's probably more than enough amusement value in it (for Google) to make it worthwhile keeping it.

Nothing to add to that, took the words out of my mouth.

Charlie

[nethy]

That's the question of the week, iggy. And the reason why it's ridiculous for Google to force it down people's throats.

The line between legit and ilegit in this whole paid links/nofollow mess is always about the 'is it for traffic or is it for PR' and the answer is almost invariably 'both' though it may be very skewed towards one of these. The value of a paid links (advertising, and so competing for revenue with Google) is diminished if you take PR out of this equation. They have an undeniable right to do this within their algorithim, even if the sole purpose of this is to attack their competition (I am not saying this is so, just: 'even if'). The problem is in the whole public approach to it. Google is known to be very close with information. They don't even give basic & important information to their clients and partners let alone to the public & especially when it has to do with their Algo.

Google cannot argue ignorance when it comes to public response to their Statements. Besides the fact that the way they are operating is trying to bully compliance from webmasters, they are bound to know the inescapable effect that this will have on the public approach to advertising online- Fear.

Even (especially?) on this forum and this thread we can see the response 'what happens if I buy/sell links (advertising)?' Just like people are afraid of things like 'the duplicate content penalties' etc. Google will claim that the distorted views of the public are not their fault but its obvious that they are fully aware of this in advance. If this approach continues we will have a comletely new discipline SEC (search engine comliance).

[Jill]

For what it's worth, I recently bought a few ads before our last seminar as a way of hoping to increase attendance. We didn't care at all about PR or link pop or anchor text, just was hoping to perhaps get some people who may not have heard about the seminars before.

We did some that were through an ad buying service that used links that would not pass PR (javascript type, I think...it was through AdBrite), and one that was a straight link. The straight text one, was sold to us with a "wink" about it being a direct link (appearing to be a vote for our site) with whatever anchor text we wanted. But since it was just a temporary ad for us (a month or two) that's not what we were after. These were on fairly popular blogs in the search marketing space, and none of them brought very much traffic, let alone any conversions. We were pretty disappointed (although not surprised).

That said, I can't imagine anyone buying any of those ads for the traffic they bring. If they did and they were at all measuring stuff, they wouldn't keep them for very long, unless it was strictly an exercise in branding. They're not what you'd think they'd be...

(For the record, none of the ads were on Search Engine Guide!)

[oneofthe3lions]

Im sure my site has fell foul of this toolbar drop.

I started selling very relevant links on my home page a few months ago. My site had fluctuated between 4 and 5 for a year or two. Now down to a 2. Id be suprised if it wasnt this reason.

I used a ´broker´´ at 30 bucks a month for example. I sent relevant traffic to the advertiser, say 50 visitors a month. Costs the site in question about 60c a click for a good lead.

My pr drops, now can only get 10 bucks a month at best with the added knowledge that im in googles bad books. so the links get removed.

So maybe Google thinks thats clever because the advertised site will have to use adsense content network more or something? Maybe it costs 70c a click for keyphrases that may be found on my home page kinda thing..

At the end of the day, its probably good for me/us.. Now instead of doing it the easy way I can approach the advertiser direct and say i sent you 50 visitors a month, did it give them good roi and if so do thay wanna advertise for 50 bucks now with nice no follow link. What we should be doing (if we had the time) anyway I guess. Add to that, touch wood, that there seems no discernable drop in google traffic then all can be fine all round for all 3 parties.

[projectphp]

Michael, I think the value for Google in removing it would be that all those who buy and sell ads based on it's flawed numbers would have to stop doing that

Do you really think so? Thing is, even wiithout the green bar, people will buy links. I personally doubt getting rid of it would stop the trade, and would wager it would make it worse, because people would have no reason (a PR drop) to stop paying a site. IMHO, the best way to stop PR selling is to reduce PR for sellers, not remove the green toolbar (which is what they pretty much did). I think, in fact, I have said the exact same thing a half dozen times in this forum.

In either case, that makes the equation this: what is more important, stoppping PageRank selling completely, or acquiring data? If collecting user data has any value at all (and it must), then that equation would be a pretty straight forward one to calculate.

And if reducing PageRank has the same effect as, or even is fairly close to, killing the service, why ditch it? Seems to me you can win (keep the data) and win (hit the hip pocket of sellers), so why bother nuking the thing when sanctions can work?

Edited by projectphp, 28 October 2007 - 09:12 PM.

[projectphp]

the value of a paid links is diminished if you take PR out of this equation.

That is kinda obvious, and yet so many people miss it. Thing is, if you take ANYTHING out of the offer for a product, it loses some value. A iPod with no charger is worth less than one with a charger. A car with air con is worth more than one without, and a link is worth more for a variety fo reasons, ranging from where it is on a page to what it offers (Images? Text? PR? tracking?)

If people didn't realise they were getting a premium for selling PR, they are idiots, because it was always short term, and it means they undersold such links. Call me crazy, but if you sell a service, you really should know what the customer is hoping to get, and find a way to maximise the value to all concerned parties (including your own revenue).

[Jill]

I don't think they need the PR graph installed to collect their data.