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1) What is advertising?
Simply put, and for businesses: Advertising is a (tax deductible) expense that serves the sole purpose of promoting the products and services of said business.
Text links are in that category. So are banner ads, AdWords, PPC, SEO, print ads, flyers, business dinners, web design, product placement, radio- and television commercials. To the extent that the time spent getting recips can be translated to paid work hours, so does recip links (or even one way links).
As WebGuerilla pointed out, the webmaster that makes off-topic advertising is generally a bad businessperson, as (s)he does not maximize the ROI on the time/money spent.
2) What is the ultimate goal of a SE?
The ultimate goal of any "organic" SE would be to "allow no webmaster any control over how his/her site is ranked" - apart from the indirect long term effects that springs from consistently "offering good on topic content", of course.
Some are better at this than others, but none are perfect as it's not an easy task. Let's just say, that they're "generally working in that direction, and always have been".
So,
3) Should advertising (in any shape) help in the SERPS?
And the better of the latter would add: "... but note that what works today might not work tomorrow".
... sometimes a correlation between ad budget and ranking is not bad, even from a "SERP purist" perspective
I would certainly concede this point, from a user perspective. I'm not too much of a businessman myself, and I find it hard to be sure what is a legitimate business practice in terms of gaming the search system - which is basically there to attract users. A web user I certainly am, with a tendency to see things in terms of design. If there is one thing I feel sure about in this debate, it's that it is a bad thing for the user not to be able to distinguish between a natural link and one that is - in your broad terms claus - an advert. To remove the distinction is to damage the infrastructure that those who are outright business people rely on for a living. In most other mass media the distinction is strongly protected, in some cases by law.
People who say that the quality of Google's SERPS is Google's problem alone are in my view killing the goose that lays the golden egg - or some such expression.
One very tricky (but welcome) aspect of the web, of course, is that anyone can launch a website with very little resources - like a market stall - but most people know a market stall when they see one. On the web it's often hard to know what some of the websites one comes across in search engines are actually about.
The ultimate goal of any "organic" SE would be to "allow no webmaster any control over how his/her site is ranked"
You mean it is not to provide the best results for the user?
The philosophy used to achieve a goal should not be confused with the actual goal...
The philosophy may be wrong. The philosophy may change. The goal remains the same.
- apart from the indirect long term effects that springs from consistently "offering good on topic content", of course.
There is nothing indirect about the webmaster's contribution, IMHO.
for those that would buy inbound links:
once you are in bed with purchased inbound links... you are essentially stuck unless you transition into a new campaign and let it take hold before dropping a current one. and, the advertiser knows that, and it is not unheard of to see the price of the inbounk links go up once they have been indexed to your web site in google. if you are going to do it hopefully you have enough of a budget to lock in more than a month at a time.
something google hates--- sudden signficiant drops in the amount of inbound links... especially a large number from one inbound web site..... your rankings get punished and you could even drop from the index for a bit.
so, buyer beware of what you are getting into.
I'm not debating this topic anymore - since it's obvious those like yourself fail to understand the big picture. I will suggest before you start accusing those that disagree with you as trolls that you step back and read this entire thread again and look at the depth of experience of those members whom you are accusing of being trolls. ;)
Edited: to be as nice as possible...
google cannot determine if an inbound text link is bought or free without human intervention
Re: human intervention -- dmoz.org editors are noticing this junk and are taking a dim view of it. Off-topic outbound links hurt the listability of sites. Please report sites listed in the ODP directory that seem to have gone off the deep end with this linking trend. We'll look it over.
I don't see why you couldn't report it to Google as well.
Oh my god dmoz ediitors have morals, sorry for the 5% who have
Your naivety is beyond belief, please, if you want to make a comment, try and stay in the real world.
I will totally agree with you here, since the buyer doesn't know that the endorsement they are reading is from a paid advertiser. But, it really isn't any different than the actors on TV that wear a white coat and sell medical products.... This is just the reality of advertising in the whole world, not just online.
steve128 The Dmoz crack was awesome, keep up the good work. LOL
GW
The topographical point made earlier looks more promising. Google can evaluate a text link in the context of the meaning of the words that surround it - to what degree they do this, I have no idea. But to give less value to links in a repeating footer, or amongst other links (as in a list) would be easy. To give higher value to a link that is immersed in semantically similar content - even taking a whole page or a set of pages as the context - wouldn't necessarily hit all paid text links but maybe it would mean that the seller would have to work much harder.
I would be interested to know more about where Google stands on this - the degree to which their algorithm does look at the context of a link and assigns weight to it.
The topographical point made earlier looks more promising. Google can evaluate a text link in the context of the meaning of the words that surround it - to what degree they do this, I have no idea. But to give less value to links in a repeating footer, or amongst other links (as in a list) would be easy. To give higher value to a link that is immersed in semantically similar content - even taking a whole page or a set of pages as the context - wouldn't necessarily hit all paid text links but maybe it would mean that the seller would have to work much harder.
If Google did this Patrick, then we would be forced to make our ads look like content and surround them with relevant text. This creates more of what you don't like now, paid ads that look like content.
I actually think just having paid links listed on the side or bottom make them look like part of a menu and everyone human, and most search engines, should be able to see that they are just a place to click if you want information on that topic. As they are used now, they don't mislead anyone.
and you already know my feelings on search engines using this information for ranking purposes.
GW
Your naivety is beyond belief, please, if you want to make a comment, try and stay in the real world.
Your point is what, that you didn't understand what I said? Where'd I leave the real world?
Let's all just face it... there are some of us that believe that there's nothing wrong with bought/paid links - and then there are others that disagree.
Who's wrong? None of us... we're all welcomed to express our own opinions (without being labeled as a "troll”), and in reality - the only opinion that matters is that of the Search Engines.
Perhaps it's 'okay' today - but may not be tomorrow (much like everything else that's been tried) - but I don't think it's fair to label every paid listing as spam, and that's probably why Google, Yahoo, MSN, and who ever else might matter hasn't, and likely won't throw the axe on this.
Simply my last 2 cents...
You may not believe this but some "dmoz editors" are not exactly editors for the benefit of the super highway, if you do not understand that there is little else i can say.
Some less savvy editors even leave snail trails, even smart ones can be traced with some effort.
Ok some are superb and do a great job but as always the corrupt steal the headlines
