Matt Cutts updated his paid links post

[proboscis]

Lots of good stuff there, most interesting to me is that he says he does not want reports of directories that sell links, and I think he's saying that it's okay to sell links in a directory. Or at least he's saying that it's oaky to buy them...

Does that mean that some directories can sell links and still keep their trust and ability to pass pr? I wonder.

[g1smd]

Or, maybe he is saying that those sorts of sites are easy for Google to identify, and they are already discounted...

[proboscis]

Honestly I really don't know what he's saying. Why would a directory with scraped listings that is selling pr have a pr of 5, be allowed to have adsense and show up on the first page of results, if it's easy to spot.

He says "If there is a fee, what’s the purpose of the fee? For a high-quality directory, the fee is primarily for the time/effort for someone to do a genuine evaluation of a url or site."

That seems to say that "high quality directories" have a legit reason to charge for links and that it's okay. That sounds reasonable, I'm just not so sure that they can always tell the difference between a high quality and a spammy directory. Or do they even want/need to tell the difference at this point?

[crobb305]

Are you referencing a post on his blog?

[crobb305]

I found it. :)

[reseller]

Folks

For the sake of future reference and further discussion on this thread, here is the link to Matt's first post of 14th April 2007 and update of 12th May 2007

How to report paid links [mattcutts.com]

Btw, Matt Cutts wrote the said update of 12th May while he is still on vacation :-)

[skipfactor]

>>Honestly I really don't know what he's saying

My take is human-edited directories will do best but ya need to get picky (and raise your fees).

[Whitey]

What Matt is saying is:

- some paid link directories are OK and some are not.
- he uses a subjective opinion with a range of what's definitely not and what's probably acceptable

I have no certainty with "probables"

Since there are limited human edited "quality directories" out there it won't take long to review and monitor them.

All of this makes me think that Google is becoming more confident with it's algo's, relying more and more on alternative data, rather than pure links ie things like time spent on site, age of site, bookmarks , the quality of bookmarks etc etc coupled with relevant content.

Links are still an integral part, but with less of them around and all this uncertainty being fed into the community , i agree, editing time costs are likely to go up to provide better review and supporting content application.

[JoeSinkwitz]

F
U
D

Again, paid links really aren't that big of a threat to quality on the net -- to spend that much time talking about them, when he really could talk more about technique X is telling. It'll keep some people from going out and buying links they probably should be buying (for traffic and users at the very least), while some people out there will continue to absolutely pound a couple shadier techniques into the ground, nullifying any positive effect gained by discouraging some slightly off-topic links.

Cygnus

[Marcia]

There are a good number of niche, vertical directories out there that use editorial standards for inclusion. Some are paid (with good reason, they take time to review and include), some are not charging.

Those aren't the same as general multi-topic directories, and it looks like good ones haven't been hit.

[McMohan]

Obviously all directories can't be painted with one large brush as not good, and Matt knows it.

As for to know if a directory indeed does a manual review of submitted sites and is worth its price, I think there is one simple way for the algo -
If the majority of its content seems to be scraped, then the editor has just used whatever description the submitter has given and listed it. Being an editor myself, I know there aren't many who write the description the way a quality directory would want them. Coupled with this, I think other parameters such as Keyword-only-Titles can be used to know the quality of directories and treat then accordingly.

[simonmc]

That ADSENSE allows crap directories smacks of a massive does of double standards.

Googles problem is they want the cash all ways ...but you can only have some if you play THIER game.

[mattg3]

We have a human reviewed unpaid inclusion directory with nofollow noindex. it was anyway linked to a click counter redirect script. I hope this is enough to tell Google nothing is used to be fishy.