Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Last December Matt Cutts, Head of Google WebSpam Team, wrote a post which impressed me indeed:
Tell me about your backlinks [mattcutts.com]
Here is part of what Matt Cutts wrote at that post:
My favorite overall moment was when a totally legit company (micromatic.com) stood up and asked for advice. Overall, their site was great: good architecture and very crawlable. They had lots of really good backlinks, including industry-specific links. But I could also tell that they’d been buying some backlinks. And they were buying backlinks from the exact same place as one of the earlier sites! At the point when in a minute of typing, I can say: you guys are both trying to buy backlinks, and I can tell that you’re buying them from the same network, and here’s an example page from ketv.com where both of you are even on the same page, and it’s not doing you any good at all: that just made my day. Having a concrete demonstration is so much better than just making a claim, especially when one of the sites says beforehand that they’re not doing as well as they used to be. I told micromatic.com that they had a great site, so they should stop trying to buy backlinks and spend more money to reward their inhouse SEO who had done a great job on the crawlability and architecture of the site.
When you read that post you might get the same impression that I got; Google knows and penalize buyers and maybe also sellers of Backlinks. Not so, unfortunately.
However, it just happened that I know of a site (not mine) which purchased backlinks during the first 4 months or so of 2006. I know from which sites the backlinks were purchased. And I know approximately how much was paid for most of the purchased BLs. No rel=nofollow was applied, of course.
Then the current indications of PR update arrived. And I checked the PR of the site which purchased the said BLs.
WOW... boost in PR from PR4 to PR7!
And I checked the PR of the sites which sold the BLs.
WOW.. they retained their high PR!
Am I the only one who have noticed Google rewarding sellers and buyers of BLs?
Have you noticed the same?
Your feedback would be highly appreciated.
reseller, you didn't state whether the site was ranking better than it was before. You only mention Toolbar PR.
My main interest at the said site (buying backlinks) has been whether purchasing backlinks will boost its PR4, and whether the site itself or the sites of the backlinks sellers will be affected by violating Google's guidelines and will suffer the consequences that Matt Cutts mentioned , "lose their trust in search engines".
As far as I can see the buyer site has gained a boost in PR from PR4 to PR7. Ranking for my few testing keywords of the said site show improvements in ranking. However, as I mentioned, ranking wasn't my main interest in that connection. The said site is around 6 years old.
I can see also that the sellers sites aren't affected as far as their PR. Have checked also ranking of some of the sellers sites under competitive keyphrases and can see they are not affected.
One day you'll be that "big" company who'd rather pay out the nose for backlinks than play silly "Google Games" (tm) cause you'll be too busy doing "real" business.
It isn't that easy ;-)
If you are a SEO/SEM/Web Marketing specialist and wish to follow ethical methods and be in good standing with the folks of search engines, then you need between now and then to examin the effectiveness of your methods compared to what other SEO/SEM/Web Marketing specialists are doing.
Its in that connection, you migt also start asking yourself, which part of the equation would decide whats "ethical" and whats "unethical".
If Google isn't able to mandate or police their own guidelines in relation to backlinks sell/buy, then those same guidelines are useless, worthless and no need to follow.
My main interest at the said site (buying backlinks) has been whether purchasing backlinks will boost its PR4...
Google does not reveal PR
What you see in the toolbar does not reflect true PR. So do not use it as a metric of what Google thinks about a site, including whether it's PR has been boosted, because it does not reflect the true state. Do not use it to judge whether a site is being rewarded as it won't tell you.
I don't know how much clearer I can make it:
Google is not an SEO tool
All of Google's tools and searches have been tweaked to make them less useful as SEO tools. For instance, the backlink search only shows a sample, and this sample may or may not reflect what is counting to your PR. intitle and inurl searches are not predictive of how well you're going to rank, etc. Notice a pattern? Google purposefully, by design, has tweaked their tools, including the toolbar, to minimize their effectiveness as SEO tools.
Believe your eyes
For your situation, the only thing visible is PR's effect, which is why I am asking if they are ranking better or not. If they aren't ranking better then your question is answered- the links are not helping as per Matt Cutt's suggestion- or vice-versa.
As a "SEO/SEM/Web Marketing specialist" your primary "ethical" interest should be to your clients, not to "be in good standing with the folks of search engines"
Just as Google's primary "ethical" concern is to make money for it's shareholders, not keep webmasters "in the know" or even be honest with them.
Once you come to grips with these realities, it's a lot easier to "figure out" what MC, GG, or Adam is saying and reading between the lines.
Until such time as I hear MC say buying backlinks is "black hat" AND see it posted on their website guidelines page, AND see big name companies (like Yahoo!) losing rankings with obvious bought links, then it is in a SEO specialist's interest to inform their client of potential consequences.
The words of MC should always be taken with a grain of salt as it is not his primary "ethical" interest to look out for webmasters or their sites.
As I've mentioned before, MC says alot of things that Google isn't able to mandate or police their own guidelines.
Sure I keep an eye out for proof (the SERPS) that indeed the new algo is penalizing or rewarding for said behavior.
But I most certainly do not take MC's word at face value.
It is not in my clients' primary interest to do so.
---------------
Buying and selling backlinks isn't using third-world children for slave labor (or illegally using copywritten foreign news articles, or even censoring results for large communist countries to make money) so let's also be careful about using the word "ethical" in terms of "staying in Google's good graces."
Again, here in the "real world," buying/selling advertising is a natural and "white hat" way to do business.
Just because Google's brilliant PHD's have set up a system that now gets confused by such conduct is really their problem.
And I don't foresee G pursuing the matter to any great degree.
They have more important issues that "corrupt" their results to worry about, rather than if "big brand name company" ranks for terms in which Joe Consumer feels comfortable doing business with anyways.
C'est triste ..:°((
However ..it isn't that Matt has feet of clay ..
it can pay to watch the hand he is trying to divert your attention from ..just like any dove juggler or card sharp ..so his act is still worth catching as are the others ..
But PR is PR ..however friendly the smile ..and only exists to serve the speaker ..never the listener ..;-)
[edited by: Leosghost at 7:29 pm (utc) on Oct. 1, 2006]
Practically speaking, I do think they are trying to penalize sites that buy links, or, at least to ignore the links.
[edited by: Simsi at 7:45 pm (utc) on Oct. 1, 2006]
Google doesn't like a webmaster monetising their own sites by selling links *just in case* it's for SEO purposes. Doesn't seem right
It's not that Google doesn't want advertisement sellers to monetise by selling links. It doesn't want advertising buyers to influence Google's SERPs.
All Google would have to do is dampen the links so they don't pass PR. Advertisers have their cake (purchased traffic and branding) and Google has their cake (purchased links don't influence the serps).
Everybody eats cake. How is the above scenario not right?
You as a link seller have the responsibility to sell a decent link which produces traffic and conversions. That's your responsibility. If your link cannot produce traffic or conversions, then your link isn't worth a nickel. It's worth is diminished.
How is it unfair that you are unable to traffic in a commodity (PageRank) that does NOT belong to you and is not yours to sell?
How is it unfair that you are unable to traffic in a commodity (PageRank) that does NOT belong to you and is not yours to sell?
You missed the point of my post I think: I am saying that selling links to facilitate traffic leaving my site to the link buyer's site should be okay, but because Google may assume you are doing it for SEO, that you can't. I actually understand that selling links for SEO is wrong in Google's eyes.
It's not my fault I have PR, but if I have valuable traffic from *any* source and someone wants to pay to get some of it, why should I have to take a Google penalty because they assumed wrong?
[edited by: Simsi at 9:24 pm (utc) on Oct. 1, 2006]
Poor, poor Google algo... getting gamed by companies with millions of dollars in advertising budgets.
Wait no, don't wake me yet.
Instead, wake me when they get control of the MFA spam.
Let's try cleaning up our own house before we go knocking on our neighbor's door about the mess in his yard, no?
[edited by: whitenight at 10:04 pm (utc) on Oct. 1, 2006]
since the purpose of that link is "selling traffic" adding a 'nofollow' tag should not hurt. Then, you have made sure it is just about traffic.
