Paid Links and Google.

[g1smd]

Matt Cutts confirms that the various warnings about paid links go back almost five years...

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogsp...d-selling.html


Some webmasters failed to heed those warnings.

[ihelpyou]

It's very good he laid things out with a timeline.

This won't stop all the blackhats and the whiners from complaining, but it may help just a little. I know we have discussed this paid link thing it seems like forever in here. Why it's such a surprise to SEO's now is quite the mystery. I have to think most SEO's out there are simply naive and even moronic.

[Blue]

I found it especially interesting that Matt mentioned 'inequitable'. Seems to me that many out there accuse Google of being the opposite, and especially in their Adsense program. While I believe the point was specific to organic results, I can envision people picking up on it and running with 'how equitable is adsense?' arguments.

I do believe that this will make many see the light and that only true cynics will have reason to vocalize. Besides said morons.

The other interesting point was that Matt stated that they not only seek out these paid text link scams algorithmically, but manually as well.

His use of terms like "deceive", "violate", "lose trust", etc, should make it pretty clear to even the most thick-skulled that Google simply wants everyone to be fair in their business ethics, and that they will actively take steps to not only ensure to the best of their ability that that happens, but also to protect their own interests.

So, put simply, be ethical (whitehat) in business and you can do good in Google.

[ihelpyou]

Yep Blue; the adsense and adwords thing is certainly being brought up now. I think Google will crack down in a big way with adsense and adwords as well.

Read this thread:

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/sellin...pass-pagerank/

I think that is the most outspoken I've ever seen Matt. He is debunking every argument in that thread, and doing so with authority and a loud voice.

[ihelpyou]

As someone just asked me through PM:

"What are they smoking in there?"

I have NO idea, but if I were back in my college days I'd be sure to ask them what they were smoking, as I would certainly want some of that. LOL

http://sphinn.com/story/16720

Please note the commenters who claim they are whitehats. Whitehats with no clue maybe?

I have to say it's great stuff to see Google clamping down and kicking some ass.

[IncrediBILL]

I smelled a rat when "rel=nofollow" first showed up and that rat really stinks now.

I'm torn here because this precedence is a dangerous step to the edge of the precipice where the search engines lay claim to the internet and start dictating who can play and how they can play online.

Obviously I don't like spam in the SERPs but I also don't like a monopoly telling me I must do this and must do that to my HTML otherwise my site gets thrown down the well and everyone that links to it might get a penalty just for being a friend.

This is the same kind of mental games McCarthy used to get people to turn on each other and out them as a Red Menace and it doesn't bode well.

If Google could detect paid links automatically they would just discount them, but they can't, so they're putting all this FUD in place just to make people scared and jump through hoops like trained poodles.

Think about this, if the paid links were relevant links to the topic of the site, who really cares because it doesn't break relevance. However, the paid links are often irrelevant to the topic so why couldn't Google already discount those links without playing all these games.

The bottom link is the PhDs at the plex aren't as smart as we thought and they took a page directly from McCarthyism to fix the problem.

[WebSavvy]

Originally Posted by ihelpyou

Read this thread:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/sellin...pass-pagerank/

Yahoo sells (actually rents) links for $300.00 a year.
Those links pass PR.
Google suggests for webmasters to get listed in Yahoo.

So which is it?
It's bad if you buy a listing in *any directory* unless it's Yahoo?
Or it's just bad to buy a listing in a directory that hasn't been "google approved?"

[Danny]

Here's your answer Deb

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/sellin...comment-117642