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.
I suggested a client pay for a link on a prestigeous site in his area of focus (cost $300)--the purpose was to gain trustrank. He also paid $5.00 for a link on a directory. Both showed up in Google's recent backlink update.
Thanks for sharing, Lorel. So it seems I'm not the only one who have info about the growing Backlinks Marketplace ;-)
Wonder how our friends at Google WebSpam Team feel when reading this thread!
Talking about Google Webmaster Guidlines :-)
Both showed up in Google's recent backlink update.
Showing up on the backlink search means nothing.
Just because something shows up in the backlink search does NOT mean it's being counted as a backlink for purposes of calculating it's PageRank, or that it's counting as a backlink.
The ONLY metric that is reliable is how well the site ranks.
Three years ago GoogleGuy had this to say about guestbook backlinks:
I think it's a good time to mention that guestbooks showing in backlinks does not mean that they contribute much/any in scoring. Maybe we should stop showing guestbooks in backlinks and people everywhere would feel better.
OVERKILL TO PROVE MY POINT THAT BACKLINK SEARCH IS NOT ACCURATE
Matt Cutts at SES London
[seroundtable.com...]
Q: What is up with the Google link: command?
A: Google says they are not reporting all your links back to your site. So think before using it.
It may not mean it's being counted, but it may not mean it's being *discounted* either. Can anyone know for sure?
The fact that some of these sites -tagged as backlinks buyers- have been consistently improving ranks on each refresh and are now on top and the fact that a study of their backlinks using different tools displays mostly 'suspected-bought-advertising-links' offers a strong correlation.
The ONLY metric that is reliable is how well the site ranks.
Just wish to be sure that I understood your posts correctly.
So you are telling us:
- Doesn't matter if a PR of a site get a boost for example from PR4 to PR7
- Doesn't matter if "backlinks-supplier" site of high PR shows up in Google among sites linking to the backlinks-buyer site.
- above two factors has no effect on how a site rank.
Am I correct?
- Doesn't matter if a PR of a site get a boost for example from PR4 to PR7- Doesn't matter if "backlinks-supplier" site of high PR shows up in Google among sites linking to the backlinks-buyer site.
- above two factors has no effect on how a site rank.
Am I correct?
No. You are not correct. You still are not understanding.
I'll try to explain it again.
The above two factors are unreliable metrics for judging the efficacy of a paid link. The metric that should concern you is if the site is ranking better than it was before the paid links.
A bump in PR is meaningless if it is NOT accompanied by a bump in ranking. Your posts have so far focused on a bump in PR but have been quiet on how well the site is ranking. Your focus should be the other way around, silent on the issue of toolbar PR and focused on the ranking.
Backlink SERPs are not meant to represent PR metrics
Likewise, you got excited about links showing up in backlinks, and it's well known that the backlink SERPs are not meant to be an indicator of what is counting for PR. Google is purposefully doing that so that it won't be useful as an SEO tool or metric.
Similarly, the toolbar is not an indicator of a website's "internal PR" (the real PR score that they see in the GooglePlex).
Instead of crowing how successful a link buying campaign is because of a rise in toolbar PR, you should be focusing on the ranks of the sites that are buying links.
What I am saying is that you are looking at the WRONG metrics for measuring the success of a link buying effort.
If the site was ranking at number 20 BEFORE the paid links were bought and is now number 1 after buying the links ... then your point is made.
However, if it is still number 20 or lower (for the intended keywords) or just went up to 18 or 19, then no real benefit has been derived from buying the link.
Get it?
Your posts have so far focused on a bump in PR but have been quiet on how well the site is ranking.
Exactly. For this particular thread my focus has been on two main points:
- Boost of PR based on purchased backlinks!
- Google position about the same:
Google’s stance on selling links is pretty clear and we’re pretty accurate at spotting them, both algorithmically and manually. Sites that sell links can lose their trust in search engines.
Therefor the title of this thread:
Does Google Reward Backlinks Buyers & Sellers?
Boost of PR based on purchased backlinks! ;-)
Sites that sell links can lose their trust in search engines.
Trust relates to how well a site ranks. It has ZERO to do with the toolbar. Absolutely nothing.
Boost of PR based on purchased backlinks!
Pay attention now, don't get distracted:
Everyone outside of Google has ZERO way of knowing whether the PR of a site has been boosted by a link. You have no clue, whatsoever.
Outside of seeing the EFFECTS of a PR boost, you have no way to know whether the PageRank has been boosted. Which is why if you want to know whether PageRank has been boosted, you must speak about the EFFECTS, because you cannot know whether PR has been boosted.
It seems to me like those tactics are far worse than buying an ad on another site.
Especially when you consider that this is an easy pretexting scam... pretend that you're buying a bunch of backlinks for you competitor and then watch them get hit with a penalty.
For this particular thread my focus has been on two main points:- Boost of PR based on purchased backlinks!
- Google position about the same:
Why?
I think you're missing the core point going on here. Whether a link boosts your TBPR or doesn't boost your TBPR, why are you *worried* about the TBPR? I'd rather have a TBPR 3 site number one on all its keywords that a TBPR 6 site with crap ranks anyday. What difference does it make? If it were 2002, it would make a huge difference. Who cares how buying links does or doesn't affect TBPR? Its how it affects the ranks of the buying or selling site that matters. (Unless of course you're selling links bought by clueless webmasters who think TBPR is all that matters when purchasing a link - yeah, in that instance, basing your site life on TBPR would be great.)
Agree with MB - buying a link may or may not adversely affect your search engine ranking; buying a link may or may not positively affect your search engine ranking. Smart people buying links are looking at way more than TBPR.
Sites that sell links can lose their trust in search engines.
1. You *do* realize there should be a difference between a good site selling advertising that happens to come along with links and a site screaming "Buy Pagerank here; get you're hot and fresh 5 and 6 TBPR here!" like a hot dog vendor at a baseball game right?
2. MB tried to get this across, but I don't think you've listened to him - pagerank and trust are two seperate items. A site with high TBPR may not automatically have high trust and a site with low TBPR may not automatically have low trust. Two... seperate... items... [vldb.org] thus why there are two... seperate... papers [vldb.org].
3. Reread your own quote again and again. Do you see the word *WILL* or do you see the word *CAN*?
[edited by: tedster at 2:16 am (utc) on Oct. 8, 2006]
Especially when you consider that this is an easy pretexting scam... pretend that you're buying a bunch of backlinks for you competitor and then watch them get hit with a penalty.
Exactly!
IMO, if anything Google's pathetic spam fight and "flag anything that moves as trying to manipulate our index" has led to only one thing: it is easier then ever to hurt your competitor's rank and trust rank over the serps. In fact, Google is such a mess nowadays, they are disturbingly tangled within their own motives...adsense/adwords/google base/... and "organising the world's information" while “keeping our shareholders happy”, that they have completely lost the plot...
I really hate seeing what they are doing to the web and the way they hurt so many small businesses around the globe.
<End rant>
[edited by: Web_speed at 2:03 am (utc) on Oct. 3, 2006]
IMO, if anything Google's pathetic spam fight and "flag anything that moves as trying to manipulate our index" has led to only one thing: it is easier then ever to hurt your competitor's rank and trust rank over the serps.
Please, think about it rationally for a moment.
If you are spamming with guestbook links and are ranking well for five or six months then lose your ranks when the links are pulled out from beneath you, you may view that as a penalty. But it's not. Your site is ranking where it should be because your guestbook links are not counting, they have become neutral, as in they don't count.
Similarly, if you point a bunch of guestbook links at a competitor, what may happen is either the site will rank better or else it will rank the same (because the links are neutral and won't count). No penalty.
No businesses are being hurt. They just need to unlearn what they learned years ago (like worsipping the toolbar PR), and go back to SEO 101 and SEM 101. It's the same old game but the rules of the game have changed.
I wished to focus in this thread on the fact that;
- Purchased backlinks from high PR sites, do boost the PR of the buyer page or site
- Google is unable, at present, to identify and accordingly penalize pages or sites selling/buying backlinks. Which is not in accordance with what Matt Cutts claims.
Having said that, I'm aware of the fact that Google has targeted "popular" sites and a popular person because of selling backlinks. However, I consider that is done more for public relations than to mandate/police Google Guidelines in that connection. While we see Google unable to deal with the vast majority of "standard" backlinks-merchants and backlinks-buyers.
However, some kind fellow members have raised doubt about the importance or the effect of PR and purchased backlinks.
For the sake of further discussion and to illustrate my points, I'm bringing here what Matt Cutts said recently in relation to buying/selling backlinks. In addition to a post of Matt Cutts relating PR to supplementals which might illustrate the importance of PR in Google considerations.
Matt Cutts, told John Battelle in an interview (26th Spetember 2006) that a controversial page that allows webmasters to pay for listings on the W3C site now had a “noindex” meta-tag applied - blocking it from view by search engines.
Google does consider it a violation of our quality guidelines to sell links that affect search engines. If someone wanted to sell links purely for visitors, there are a myriad number of ways to do it that don't affect search engines. You could have paid links do an internal redirect, and then block that redirecting page in robots.txt. You could add the rel="nofollow" attribute to a link, which tells search engines that you can't or don't want to vouch for the destination of a link. The W3C decided to add a "INDEX, NOFOLLOW" meta tag to their sponsor page, which has the benefits that the sponsor page can show up in search engines and that users receive nice static links that they can click on, but search engines are not affected by the outlinks on that page. All of these approaches are perfectly fine ways to sell links, and are within our quality guidelines.
in a post ( 2nd October 2006) at threadwatch.org Matt Cutts wrote:
I would recommend that you think of supplemental results as pages which (most likely) have less PageRank than pages in the main web index. So www.google.com/reviews?cid=b3c12ee96ed87b2d , which is a review of "The Gold Rush," a movie from 1925, is a perfectly natural url to be a supplemental result. Although it sounds like it was a good movie. ;)
1st September 2005 on his blog, Matt Cutts wrote:
But for everyone else, let me talk about why we consider it outside our guidelines to get PageRank via buying links. Google (and pretty much every other major search engine) uses hyperlinks to help determine reputation. Links are usually editorial votes given by choice, and link-based analysis has greatly improved the quality of web search. Selling links muddies the quality of link-based reputation and makes it harder for many search engines (not just Google) to return relevant results.
9th December 2005 on his blog, Matt Cutts wrote:
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.
13th December 2005 on his blog, Matt Cutts wrote:
Google’s stance on selling links is pretty clear and we’re pretty accurate at spotting them, both algorithmically and manually. Sites that sell links can lose their trust in search engines.
