300m - 11:25 am on Jun 6, 2007 (gmt 0)

I think that the devaluing of links has been going on for a while now. What I am more concerned with is the whole paid link thing. How in the world can they know all paid links? What happens when they start to devalue links that they think are being paid for when in all reality they are not?

Sure, some are blatant, but most are not very easy to identify.

Why are they saying that link exchanges are in a way "manipulative" to search engines when we are being encouraged to submit to directories?

When submitting to Yahoo directory and other directories is acceptable, but link exchanges are not, its telling me that they want to see more 1 way links. Or perhaps they are trying to focus on page more than off. I find it ironic that Google created this popularity contest and then they continue to ride the gray in policy, but at the same time we are supposed to be able to define the doublespeak? I think that they should rewrite it to say;

We have been having a difficult time for the past few years with the way we score links in to our algo and because of that we may or may not identify some of the links that your domain is associated with as paid or not and discount the strength of the links if we deem it necessary, but hey, you can submit to Yahoo and Dmoz. PS link exchanges are bad today, go get 1 ways...better yet if you have some link exchanges going on, drop all of the links you have going out with other webmasters who you have a better relationship with so you can have instant 1 ways.

/*end sarcasm

I just get irritated with the double talk, they expect us to beta test all kinds of things for them and walk the straight and narrow, but when they have policies that are wide and gray only to cya from liability it irk's me.