Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
So are paid links without nofollow now acceptable to Google? No, not at all - it just means they can't identify all purchased links, or that even if identified, they do not always remove the ability to pass PR, or at least not quickly.
i thought g was clamping down on those buying tons of links?
What google says, and what google does are two totally different things.
If google devalues relevant links it will destroy their SERPS.
If google devalues relevant links it will destroy their SERPS.
Surely you aren't suggesting that all relevant links are purchased?
On Google most competitive keywords are flooded with link buyers, and I don't think they don't know it, they just let it go.
Take the most obvious: search for SEO or internet marketing related terms :).
Textlink = always SERP manipulation. Period.
Some people tell me textlinks are for advertising purpose and I say this is ridiculous.
Surely you aren't suggesting that all relevant links are purchased?
Surely you are not suggesting all recip/traded links, links from site-owners other sites, or free links are relevant?
Surely you are not suggesting all recip/traded links, links from site-owners other sites, or free links are relevant?
I'd suggest that, for Google's purposes, links are relevant and meaningful when they comply with Google's guidelines.
One problem with what google is trying to do is that some of the rules they want to enforce are based on intention. It is very hard to detect intention
True, but Google can detect patterns and can (if it chooses) attempt to gauge intention from those patterns.
I'm not Google, and I don't play Matt Cutts on TV, but if I were enforcing the guidelines at Google, I'd take other factors (such as site history, type of content, and types of inbound links) into account when writing an algorithm that was designed to gauge intent. A site with a "shadiness score" above the norm and a clear economic incentive for cheating would be given very little slack; a site a low "shadiness score" and no obvious reason to cheat might be given the benefit of the doubt. (Remember, Google's judgments of intent don't have to be perfect: They merely need to be good enough to make the overall quality of search results better instead of worse.)
Don't let a billion dollar company tell you how you can and can't advertise. Buying links is still a great way to get rankings if done properly.
First, Google isn't telling how you can or can't advertise. It's telling you how you can safely implement links in your advertising if you want to comply with Google's guidelines.
Second, isn't it just a bit thoughtless to tell other people that they should ignore those guidelines when you can't possibly guarantee that Google's techniques for identifying bought links--or for identifying what Google thinks are bought links--won't improve over time? Why should anyone want to take risks that aren't necessary (assuming, of course, that a site isn't so lacking in intrinsic value that no one will link to it without being paid)?
Well...in theory at least :)
But what is the risk for buying links?
There might be some risk to your "trust score" that could come back to haunt you. Nobody knows. But the more obvious risk is that what's tolerated today might not be tolerated tomorrow. Google has made it clear that it doesn't like paid links, so it seems obvious to me that--if you can't easily afford to throw your "sweat equity" in a brand away and start all over again--it would be wiser to comply with the guidelines than to flaunt them. (Especially since you don't even have to flaunt those guidelines to do well in Google.)
wiser to comply with the guidelines than to flaunt them
Correction: you "flout" rules or guidelines, you don't "flaunt" them.
How on Earth does Google know whether a link has been paid for or not!?
Information Retrieval Based on Historical Data
There's a patent from Google that gives us hints at how they be able to detect whether a link has been paid for or not.
It's a Cat and Mouse game. Keep in mind that Google also have 10,000 Human Editors babysitting parts of the index on a regular basis.
Link inventories are being infiltrated every day. New link inventories are a churn and burn type environment. Some links may be good for a short period of time, others a bit longer. But, think about this...
Here your site has been sitting with a certain number of IBLs/OBLs. Then all of sudden one day there's a bunch of new links pointing to the site and there appear to be some more OBLs. The algo flags it, investigates, detects new link inventories, etc. I'm sure there are all sorts of neat things in the algo that detect this stuff.
And, since most paid links are grouped together on most sites, there's another easily detectable signal.
Buying links works as is clearly evident by the daily manipulation of Google's SERPs. It may be short lived for many in terms of PR issues but the links were probably purchased for the sheer volume of visitors that the site could send anyway so its no big deal. ;)
There is another method of buying and selling links that Google probably has a very difficult time with and those are natural appearing links or what I've heard referred to as Inline Links. Since they don't follow your "typical bought link footprint", I can only surmise that those types of links are probably the ones with the least amount of risk and the highest probability of success.
The mission of Google Search is to help people find information. If you do a good enough job of supplying that information, you won't have to buy links or use other tricks that might or might not get you into trouble.
And yes, that's true even if you're running an e-commerce or affiliate site. Try investing money in real content, and you'll achieve two goals: You'll attract more inbound links, and your site will become a resource that gets mentioned in the press and by word of mouth.
Why fight search engines when you can profit by helping them fulfill their mission?
If you do a good enough job of supplying that information, you won't have to buy links or use other tricks that might or might not get you into trouble.
Right... Why spend thousands of dollars per month on AdWords when you can hire professors and industry leaders, build the content for less, then sit around for a week until Google discovers your link-less site and ranks it at the top for all your keywords?
First, Google isn't telling how you can or can't advertise. It's telling you how you can safely implement links in your advertising if you want to comply with Google's guidelines.
Second, isn't it just a bit thoughtless to tell other people that they should ignore those guidelines when you can't possibly guarantee that Google's techniques for identifying bought links--or for identifying what Google thinks are bought links--won't improve over time? Why should anyone want to take risks that aren't necessary (assuming, of course, that a site isn't so lacking in intrinsic value that no one will link to it without being paid)?
As for why risking it? Because that is business. We all take risks and judge the severity of them based on the potential rewards. I see sites everyday that rank highly based on carefully purchased paid links. I am certain they aren't upset with their decision. I see newspapers and television stations that have blatantly sold links for years with no negative impact. I think the result of being caught buy or selling links is much more benign than Google states. It would be catastrophic to be able to hurt competitors by simply purchasing them some links. Not to mention the quality sites that do buy and sell advertising for traffic purposes. There are some Fortune 500 companies that receive links through advertising and corporate sponsorship. Shall Google remove their sites from the index because the NBA team they sponsor chose not to use a nofollow?
The fact is that paid links work if done properly. People should do what they feel is in the best interest of themselves, not the best interest of a billion dollar company.
And yes, that's true even if you're running an e-commerce or affiliate site. Try investing money in real content, and you'll achieve two goals: You'll attract more inbound links, and your site will become a resource that gets mentioned in the press and by word of mouth.
they can simply improve their soda
I think they could have sold any sugar based fizzy drink with that kind of marketing money - they don't have content to improve, they have huge marketing budget to push whatever drink they have - you just need to sustain this funding for a few decades.
[edited by: Lord_Majestic at 11:42 pm (utc) on Sep. 1, 2007]
But I don't see any value in letting another thread fill up with potshots at Google or ethics wars between webmasters of different backgrounds and experiences. That's what our Forum Charter [webmasterworld.com] calls "Google Noise", and the paid links topic has already generated quite a few threads filled with such.
So this thread is locked.
