Sponsored themes can lose your Wordpress site's trust

[Whitey]

I just came across this on Matt's blog on his ppt presentaion and wondered what the implications of it were :

Don't use sponsored theme - can lose all your trust in different search engines

[mattcutts.com...]

[tedster]

Sponsored Wordpress themes are "free" themes that include links back to the sponsors in a kind of barter, which makes it a paid link. That link is where the problem lies - it's not related to the site where it appears and it's often not pointing to a very healthy neighborhood.

[edited by: tedster at 1:45 am (utc) on Aug. 17, 2007]

[Simsi]

Thats a fundamental oversight surely. The fact is, someone gives you something, you give them something back. There's nothing at all dodgy about it (most of the time). But the search engines can't detect that, so they call it a "paid link" and penalise it. That's gotta be the wrong way to do things.

If its a nice theme, and you link to the designer, isnt that what the "spirit of the web" was supposed to be all about? Are they saying you must not link to the designer under any circumstances, even to tell people how good he/she is?

[edited by: Simsi at 8:38 pm (utc) on Aug. 14, 2007]

[jakegotmail]

If they consider those "paid links" then that is just ridiculous. If somebody spend's the countless hundreds of hours to program and create one of those themes I have no problem linking to them.

[trakkerguy]

"Sponsored" themes do not link back to the designer.

The designer sells the link to whoever pays they price, and in return they buyer gets links to whatever site they want, from whoever uses the theme.

So some very shady sites can end up with links from sites that would never knowingly consider linking to them.

Links on sponsored themes maybe should be devalued. But penalizing someone who uses a sponsored them? Many of whom don't even realize the link is there? Ridiculous.

[plumsauce]

So, if you got a "free" t-shirt from Google, because they handed them out to adwords spenders, would that make you a bad person? And would Google be a bad neighbourhood?

Same logic.

The t-shirt was "free", but Google bought them from the manufacturer, you're displaying the link/logo, the link/logo points back to Google. Therefore, the Google Campus is a bad neighbourhood.

As far as I know, there are ton's of these link/logos out there, and the population grows rapidly overnight at some trade shows.

[tedster]

As trakkerguy mentions, these links do not point back to the designer, but rather to a "sponsor", actually wherever the designer chooses to point them. That is often to an untrusted advertiser who pays the designer to be in the theme. That's a big difference.

[Whitey]

Is Google able to detect this in it's "trust" assessment?

My reason for asking is the potential correlation between this and sponsored link advertising. The word "sponsored" jumped out at me.

[CainIV]

Another ridiculous statement in a quest to complicate and break down their own algorithms and scoring until even they have know idea what animal they own. Unfortunately once again this hodgepodge statement really only applies to webmasters who already know the value of a link, and completely misses the target on user A or B who finds nothing wrong with linking over to the website who 'gave' them a design theme.

Why shouldn't someone link over to someone else for using a sponsored theme?

Absolutely silly issues when Google could be dealing instead with the massive problems that plague the engine daily.

[lakr]

What happens if we use "nofollow" for links to designers? is it unethical?

[Miamacs]

Once again:

Theme links to designer: OK
Theme links to pills, retail, p0rn, real estate, etc: NOT OK

...

I've came across some themes with pretty blatant attempts at advertising real estate agencies myself. Theme was broken to begin with.

But where a link is pointing to a site about WordPress, WordPress templates, another personal blog, a designer website... there's nothing wrong with it.

[Simsi]

To be honest, even if the themes did point to real estate or retail, so what? No way Google would penalise everyone for linking to a site that isn't on the same topic as theirs. They might discount the link or devalue it, but they're not dumb enough to penalise the site doing the link or else every "personal" blog out there would be stuffed.

[edited by: Simsi at 3:23 pm (utc) on Aug. 16, 2007]

[Miamacs]

I'd agree.
Besides I didn't say they penalize you.

...

On the other hand let's say the blog is brand new, and doesn't have much coverage, no inbound links.

It does however have like 10-25 posts, and a footer linking to a completely off topic site with an ultra competitive keyphrase.

... might invoke some kind of action.

The worst case I've seen related to linking was when some evaluator pushed a button, and a site stopped passing link juice. It wasn't banned, PR stayed, its pages kept on ranking, but no link from it would be accounted for. So... this devaluation thing can too be an interesting issue. On whether you'd call this a penalty or not, I leave it up to the imagination of each and every SEO out there.

If you're not going to use it when promoting your other sites, it certainly doesn't matter.

[torson]

Searchengines should be able to detect sponsered themes and devalue the links without an losing a word. Their are tons of services in the internet for gaining links like sponsered themes. Itīs daily business of searchengines. What Matt said within the last year about links, makes me more and more think that Google is trying to change the internet for the possibilities of their algo. This will not work.

[wanderingmind]

So is the consensus that it is OK to link to the designer, and not to the sponsor?

I am asking because I have been using a wordpress theme that links to the people who 'created' it. But there is no way really for me to ensure that they are the ones who created it - the link says "Created by Blog Tools site" while actually it might have been created by an anonymous designer. What then?

From my reading, what I have understood is that the relevancy of the links is not the issue. The link itself is.

So how about Powered by WordPress? If the link says Powered by instead of Sponsored by, will that solve the problem?

Or will Google at some point announce that even Powered by Wordpress is not allowed?

The fact is, if I use a Pligg script or wordpress script or a theme, it comes with a link to the author. Is Google smart enough to identify who is the author, and who is the sponsor?

I don't think they can. But they will believe or act like they can, and some of us will get caught in it. It has happened to me an year and a half back when Google could not understand that I was the author of the content on my site, and started subdomain spam instead of my pages.

So no trusting them for good or bad. Here I go, and remove the "Created by" links.

[tedster]

Matt was talking about a loss of trust - that most likely means losing the ability to pass PageRank. My take is that we're talking about out-and-out commercial links to a third party site that sells products, not credit to the designer.

<added>
I hear that it's common to see a bundle of such links in a sponsored theme, not just one, but they are coded in such a way that they are not obvious in the template. Reputable sites such as download.com will not even list this kind of deceptive sponsored theme. It's deceptive because the average user doesn't have a clue that these ads are piggy-backed into the template.
</added>

[wanderingmind]

I appreciate Google's capability to distinguish between links to designer and links to sponsors. However, I have an even better appreciation of G's propensity for errors, inability to respond to desperate pleas, and a tendency to let those 'collatereled' languish for the better part of an year.

Don't trust what they can do, Murphey's Law is what would help you in anything to do with Google.

Play safe. Delete all links an idiot machine might think is spurious. That way lies salvation.

[whitenight]

Big Goog-brother has spoken again.

<insert rant about a general pattern of Goog here, that would be considered noise>

Indeed, it's more "noise" and FUD from MC.

Like always, I'd wait til I see some major blog players with "sponsored links" themes get penalized before I'd make any rash decisions.

[trakkerguy]

Matt was talking about a loss of trust - that most likely means losing the ability to pass PageRank

I must not understand that correctly. I thought lack of trust could end up hurting your rankings in the serps, hence a penalty.

I thought a "trusted" site could "get away" with things that might cause a less trusted site to be hit with -950 penalty, for example.

So my take was, Matt implies that using a sponsored template can get you penalized. I don't believe Google will actually do that.

Either I'm mistaken about what "trust" means, Matt mispoke, or he is just spreading a little FUD...

<edit> looks like you beat me to the same conclusion, whitenight.</edit>

[Marcia]

I think it's a sneaky, rotten, lowdown thing to do, for a designer to be giving away "free" themes and sticking in links to either their own clients or people they've sold links to.

Sorry, it's a flat-out linking scheme and makes problems for other people. It also is taking advantage of innocent people who don't have any idea about these things. It may benefit them, but it can hurt a lot of other people who have legitimate footer links.

[buckworks]

Some people think it's sneaky, low-down and rotten for users to feel entitled to freebies on the backs of someone else's work.

If a theme designer includes a link to his/her own site and/or the business who commissioned and paid for the work, there is nothing immoral about that as long as it's clearly explained. If keeping such links in place is one of the conditions for using the theme, it's dishonest to take them out. If you don't like the links, don't use the theme.

[Marcia]

I'll happily link to the designer of the theme, as is traditional and has always been done with design; but see no reason to link to sites they've sold links to. They're sold links for which the person using the theme doesn't get paid. The majority of people wouldn't even realize they're displaying sold links.

IMHO it's no better than selling a used car with a bad transmission by putting sawdust in so the slipping can't be detected.

[buckworks]

Notice that I didn't mention selling links to just any old site that bought a link. I specified the business that commissioned and paid for the work. I also specified that the presence of the link was clearly explained. Nothing hidden!

It would make perfect promotional sense for Wilma's World of Widgets to commission some themes that would appeal to widget hobbyists with blogs.

[buckworks]

for which the person using the theme doesn't get paid

But the person IS using the theme. They either honor the terms under which it was offered or they don't.

[Marcia]

Are leaving those paid links in clearly stated as the terms, or is it just assumed by the average person using them that it's part of the theme, without even a second thought? Most who use it don't know enough to read or wouldn't understand, even if they are there.

Besides, pulling the wool over someone's eyes doesn't make it right to do, just because they're ignorant of what they're doing. People who work for $5 an hour may agree to do it, but the fact that they don't know minimum wage is $7.50 doesn't make it the right thing to do, to hire them at that rate. There's a class action lawsuit right now here in Thousand Oaks of that very thing.

They're probably COUNTING on the ignorance of most theme users to get away with selling links on other people's sites. Taking advantage of people who are ignorant doesn't make it a moral or ethical thing to do. Not in the book(s) I read.

Added:
The average person will just start browsing and downloading, and won't bother to click "more"

[themes.wordpress.net...]

They're right on the Wordpress site itself to download, why would average, non-webmaster people assume there's any "danger" in not reading the fine print, when the site is considered a trusted source?

[edited by: Marcia at 1:27 am (utc) on Aug. 17, 2007]

[buckworks]

pulling the wool over someone's eyes doesn't make it right to do

I'd agree with that in cases where that's what was actually happening, but don't weave that wool into a blanket statement which assumes that sponsored themes are always intrinsically evil.

[whitenight]

Simply infuriating.

Of all the "moral" issues to worry about...

The same 99% of people who download free themes are...
The same 99% of people who don't know the PR bar is incorrect...
The same 99% of people who barely know who MC is,
let alone read his blog to know they could be penalized for using a free theme.

Your moral indignation is misdirected.
You should be upset at Goog's silly FUD campaign.

Here in the "real world" -- the same world those 99% live in--,
people understand nothing is ever really "free"

No different than your "free" tv and radio programs...
oh yea, paid for by those ads which are proven to influence you.

(Before I hear any counter-arguments, do you only buy generic products or is there at least 1 name brand product in your house right now?)

No different than the ads associated with every sporting event.
which generally have nothing to do with the sport. Especially in Europe, where insurance companies and banks advertise at football stadiums

Do I need to mention the Car commercials with Google advertising in it?
Huh?
You mean instead of just going to brandnamecarcompany.com,
99% of the people will first go to google and then type it in?!

Again, the real question is:
why is Google penalizing the 99% of people
who are absolutely clueless that they would be penalized for using a free theme.

[tedster]

Not every free theme is a sponsored theme -- not by a very long shot. I've heard that download.com pulled all sponsored themes completely as soon as they realized exactly what they were.

Matt Mullenweg himself, developer of the WordPress platform, said that "all sponsored themes should be removed from themes.wordpress.net" before the WordCamp conference beginning on July 21. He spent three months polling the Wordpress community about this, and was not happy that he ever accepted sponsored themes in the first place -- Wordpress was supposed to be free, after all.

His decision was reported as getting "widespread approval in the WordPress community." The link Marcia posted above, as far as I can see, contains no sponsored themes at all today.

more: [linux.com...]

So I see this mention from Matt Cutts as a friendly heads-up that sponsored themes can spell trouble for the end user. It was part of his presentation at that very same Wordcamp conference in July 2007 that Mullenweg made the deadline for removal.

[whitenight]

My point isn't about whether wordpress should allow sponsored themes or not. That's been debated to death on their forums.

The point is. 99% of people who would use a "free" theme, instead of buying their own custom-made one -
Aren't reading MC's blog or wordpress blogs.

They just want to write their content on a "cool-looking" theme.

Why are they being penalized?!

[edited by: whitenight at 3:09 am (utc) on Aug. 17, 2007]

[anallawalla]

I always use rel=nofollow in such theme templates. That way I still link to the designer or his favourite causes, but do not pass PR. I haven't seen an author who insists on an unmodified link but they might exist.