PublicSphere - 3:02 pm on Sep 18, 2008 (gmt 0)

Thanks guys. Very interesting.

You know the more I think about it, the more annoyed I get.

Your SEO firm is giving you good advice. Those are reputable directories that use human reviews. That is what you are paying for with no guarantee of being accepted. I have some previous experience with those directories and am not aware of any sites suffering a penalty with Google because of their inclusion

First of all, I wouldn't pay someone to review my site. If someone wants to review my site they can do it for free.

Secondly, why is it that some sites can get away with accepting paid links, while others can't?

I find it hard to believe that anyone would pay these directories purely for the review -- and I find it hard to believe that Google doesn't feel the same about that.

I can see how Google asking webmasters to report paid links could improve the quality of their search results. Unfortunately it seems to me their attempt to solve a problem merely creates another, since they're not tackling the problem at it's root.

We can't pay for links. But we can pay to create linkable content. OK so Google might say that's exactly what we want -- linkable content is good content, whether it's made for the purpose of SEO or not.

But is that really true? Or does it perpetuate the development of a 'webmaster orientated link driven internet'. One in which content creation is driven by the objectives of link builders.

Of course this content model is probably far better than one in which Google uses paid links as a factor in their algorithm, in terms of search results quality. However it's still not perfect. It means much of the content is written for webmasters (a small group of all searchers).

My main gripe then is that Google does not discriminate against some websites that accept paid links, despite their clear policy on this matter. They have double standards.

I think if I was Google I would do one simple thing. Reduce the voting power of ANY page that accepts paid links to NOTHING. That means a link from Yahoo! directory pages (paid inclusion), BestofTheWeb (paid inclusion), etc. should all have zero influence on Google search results.

But that's up to them.

In the end I think if you want to pay for traffic, PPC is the only way. Otherwise produce your content for webmasters, as that is what Googles policy has achieved.