Are Newspaper Sites Exempt From The Google Kiss Of Death?

Seems to be a double standard here.

[TheComte]

Maybe I'm wrong. I usually am, but I know I have seen threads here that talk about penalties when one carries links on a page that are unrelated to the subject of the page. Huh? Have you ever looked at the newspaper sites that carry mega advertising and have massively, irritating popups? I was looking at them today because of a news story that I wanted to follow, and it was extremely irritating. So, I assume it's alright to have this kind of unrelated content if you have a PR8 but not a PR4? Is this the way the Google algorithm handles it? Just wondering.

Hank

[digitalghost]

>>but I know I have seen threads here that talk about penalties when one carries links on a page that are unrelated to the subject of the page.

You may have seen those threads, but that doesn't mean the information is accurate. The word penalty gets tossed around quite a bit, too often in my opinion. "No obvious benefit" does not equate to "penalty".

Google doesn't penalize for linking to off-topic sites.

[TheComte]

I'm glad to hear that. I've been worried about it after reading some of the threads, but couldn't realyy understand it since it seems to be a standard on a number of well thought of sites.

[BigDave]

You have to read some of the threads around here very carefully. In fact, I'm sure there are going to be people that read your comment and decide that there ARE penalties for linking to unrelated sites.

90%+ of the people that post here about getting banned or being penalized, simply are not. And in those few cases where they are being penalized, most of them just pick a random reason that they think they are being penalized get that stuck in their head.

Now what does appear to be happening, is that google is adding some filters that will block PageRank and other factors from being passed on in certain situations.

In other words, they might decide to make it so that as far as google is concerned, a link may no longer exist. They will generally only do this in cases where they believe that those links are causing skewed results.

[TheComte]

In fact, I'm sure there are going to be people that read your comment and decide that there ARE penalties for linking to unrelated sites.

Opps! I guess this is a self perpetuating thing. I read a thread, complain, and then somebody reads my thread. Sorry. I just really got irritated going to some of these news sites today. Don't pay any attention anyone. As Rossana from Saturday Night Live would say, NEVER MIND!

[BigDave]

I didn't mean that as any sort of blast at you, but just to give you and example of how it seems to around here.

The truth is that there is only one person on this board that really knows what is going on, GoogleGuy. The rest of us are just guessing. It's just that some people take better guesses than others.

Spend some time trying to figure out which posters are worth paying attention to, and which ones aren't. Then remeber that even the better posters will sometimes get things wrong.

Wvwn when GoogleGuy posts something, make sure that you don't read anything extra into the post.