Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
So I pinged Google, and they confirmed that PageRank scores are being lowered for some sites that sell links
and
In addition, Google said that some sites that are selling links may indeed end up being dropped from its search engine or have penalties attached to prevent them from ranking well
and
Google stressed, by the way, that the current set of PageRank decreases is not assigned completely automatically; the majority of these decreases happened after a human review.
Seems like big news to me. Did I miss someone pointing this out already?
[edited by: tedster at 5:32 am (utc) on Oct. 9, 2007]
[edit reason] copied from another location [/edit]
1) "Almost illegal" is legal.
That's fantastic EFV :) The best thing I've read in a while.
...and then I could find very interesting websites I have forgotten about because Google "penalized" them for some reason.
Some time ago I compared their attitude to an old nun with an 18 inch wooden ruler, smacking students who they perceive as misbehaving -- given the observations in this thread, I'm sorry to say that comparison still stands.
................................
Who can't sit down right now among us and find a few thousand examples of blackhats bypassing aging, trust and all the other gibberish with slick blackhat methods all these years later?
Have you ever known Google engineers to think ahead? I don't know of a single big SE issue where it didn't take years for them to figure out and deal with--and even then it's hardly impressive. The anticipation skills are so low.
If you put Blackhats in a competition with Google's best, the score would be Blackhats 99, Google 1. Blackhats move very quickly and adapt to everything. The opposite of Google.
p/g
One thing I can say as the internet has evolved over the years is that it has been one big roller coaster ride as many of us real old timers know real well. Remember the first directories, the first search engines? From day one of the internet you had to learn to change and evolve to survive. If you can not adapt to change, you will die, if you are good at adapting you will live on and reap the benefits of those who died because they could not change. At least Google was nice enough to give everyone a heads up that it was going to happen. They did not need to make that information public knowledge months ago and kept it secret like they do with so many other parts of their algorithm.
Search engines come and go, the real lesson here is to evolve and follow the one with the most traffic. Will Google always be the king? No, something newer and better will come along eventually. Something always does.
Will Google always be the king?
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I constantly get emails from people offering to pay for links. People who just have hobby sites and aren't as up to date on the ins and outs of linking and its penalties as we are might think it's a great deal and take it.
I also have to wonder if GMail has something to do with it. I know Google says they don't look at people's emails, but half of the crap I get from people who want to buy links comes from Gmail accounts, so how hard would it be for Google to be looking at that and see not only who is trying to buy links, but who agreed to sell them too...
[edited by: tedster at 6:15 am (utc) on Oct. 10, 2007]
Fair warning was given
I must have missed that - can you point that out somewhere? Everything I ever read was how link sellers would see their ability to pass PR taken away. Nothing about sites losing PR, or position in serps.
Losing 1 TBPR is no big deal. And it sounds like only a few were hit with loss of rank. But I find it curious how abrupt the change was, and the backdoor "announcement" of it.
but half of the crap I get from people who want to buy links comes from Gmail accounts, so how hard would it be for Google to be looking at that and see not only who is trying to buy links, but who agreed to sell them too...
Darwin's theory at work in the serps.
As far as I can tell, most textlink buyers competing with our sites do even better today.
The only difference is the latest Google.com tweak that ranks lowest end sites from all over the world, whatever their language, along with them very often.
I am the paranoid type so I think that all of this will end up with just a few sites penalized for 1 month or 3 for the example.
That way Google keeps webmasters busy not thinking about all the 'weirdeness'(let's be polite) going on on Google.com results for a few weeks.
For example, lots of hotel affiliate programs no longer require any affiliate ID in the querystring -- just a link across is enough to get the link. Many websites don't mark these links as nofollow, so is Google going after these as well?
Seems a very slippery slope to my mind.
I there any public statement by any bona fide Google employee on this matter.
And in any case ,
IF Google where manually altering the Computation of Page rank and or TBPR, where has this information being officially disclosed to other parties who could be reasonably be expected to rely on the publications of this first class , Listed American company.
why is a blog un affiliated with Google being accepted as the source of official information by commentators on this thread
Cause I'd trust Danny Sullivan (and many of the commentators) any day of the week over MC/AL/GG about
"what Google is really doing".
Need I repeat - Google employees/blogs do not have your (read: generic webmasters) best interest at heart.
Either way, there are more than enough examples in the article and comments to see that indeed Goog is hand-editing/removing PR for certain sites and was confirmed by Adam Lasnik, himself, in the comments.
Which underlines the earlier post about Why haven't they "officially" announced this?
Evil(FUD) genius marketing? Or blundering intra-company confusion...
Or both?
As the owner of a niche directory, which also writes more original content daily news content in the same niche than any competitor, we have seen a PR reduction of 1 across all pages, including those with our original content. Home page down from 6 to 5 after several years.
Am I to understand that if we had offered banners instead of highlighted links in the Directory part of the site to generate our income, we would not have been penalised? How daft is that?
One can understand Google wanting to stop the link farms, but does anyone know their policy on niche directories.
Fortunately all our competitors have also been hit by an identical PR reduction, and our overall SERP results do not seem to have been affected - as yet.
But it's scary stuff when your financial future depends on the whim of an individual in Google who probably has to look at thousands of sites a day.
My guess is the "penalties" being applied are merely a reduction in the SERPS power that having outbound links affords the webmaster. Google is probably simply enforcing the previously stated reasoning that selling links shouldn't be for SEO puposes, which makes perfect sense.
Basically put, it probably simply means there will be no SERPS advantages to be gained for either buyer or seller and consequently those sites that previously saw an advanatge will drop. Not so much a penalty as a levelling of the playing field.
[edited by: Simsi at 12:38 pm (utc) on Oct. 10, 2007]
This is normal routine. When Google changes the algo to get rid of spam it always hurts good sites too. It's just a machine and can't tell the difference between good sites with paid links and spam sites with paid links. It's time for them to stop counting links, it doesn't work.
The results in Google were good right up until around 2005, and then, it seemed as if they fell off the edge of the earth. Google has been all over the board every since.
The payout with regard to Google was never that great anyway. Even when they went about the usual business of *search... you know... back in the day when they were a *real search engine, paying traffic just wasn't there. It never has been for us.
Another thing about branding?... Why on God's green earth would I want to put someone elses name on any of my sites? I already "don't" put external links to other companies on any of our home pages, it's just not good business to do that. So why should Google be any different? Fact is... they aren't. I'll keep their link off the home page just like I do with everyone else.
As far as ganging up with millions of *noindexes?
P.T. Barnum once said that, "...there is one born every minute...", and Google knows this.
So long as there are foolish people on this earth, Google will have an income.
So long as people are willing to buy into "hype", entities the likes of Google will remain.
I don't care how much money Google has or wants... Money won't make you any smarter or any more ethical than the next guy.
The search engines are there for us. Yahoo, MSN and Google are there to provide "me" and "mine" with a service. My company absolutely "will not" do the bidding for any search engine.
Oh.. and about advertising?... I advertise in the real media anyway.. and leave search engines completely out of the ad budget.
I advertise in the real media anyway.. and leave search engines completely out of the ad budget.
The "real" media is in decline in terms of audience share. TV, newspapers, and magazines are all losing ground to the internet. So I wonder how long you will find it effective to maintain that position?
So I wonder how long you will find it effective to maintain that position?
I'd say we still have quite a few miles left with traditional advertising methods. :)
So, when will Google stop accepting Ads for the selling of links? It just doesn't seem right searching for "links for sale" and finding a plethora of companies using Google's AdWords to sell links.
But if the NYT buys my web site and pays me a salary, then the identical same links are no longer paid links, just company internal links, so they don't need to be nofollowed and should count towards search engine rankings.
Does that really make sense? Should the status of links depend on whether someone is a contractor or an employee, or on the transfer of intellectual property rights?
We've got a good long while before the *real media goes away.
The internet, though pervasive in many areas, still hasn't accomplished all of what the "hype" would have you believe.
If your business is soley internet based, then chances are good that that is all you are ever going to see.
I feel bad for those who depend soley on the likes of Google, or the internet for their income. Our business depends on results and to date, the internet, collectively, has provided mixed or marginal results. The internet, on it's own, is good for what it can accomplish, but we are diversified enough to not having to worry much about what Google thinks or does.
Essentially, any money we get out of the internet is free money. Not much, if anything really has to be done to get it. I do look at where the money comes from on the net though, and out of 5 internet search engines, Google has been at the bottom in earnings even back when they had a real search utility.
Our SEO started when our sites started. And we put the real thing on our sites... true to form and relevant to our business. If Google has a problem with that, then that's fine... Google's problems are not ours, because, as I said, we're diversified enough to not having to worry about Google.
Our terms are relevant and we list well across the board for what we promote, even in Google.
Search engines are like the *phone book in so many ways, in that, so long as the listings are free, there will never be any reason for me to throw money at them.
We were here long before Google came along, and chances are good that we will still be here long after they are gone. Sure, I might miss the .03% of income that Google might produce for our company, but I can assure you... I won't miss it too much..LOL
If the New York Times pays me to link to their web site, then those are paid links which shouldn't count towards search engine rankings.But if the NYT buys my web site and pays me a salary, then the identical same links are no longer paid links, just company internal links, so they don't need to be nofollowed and should count towards search engine rankings.
Does that really make sense? Should the status of links depend on whether someone is a contractor or an employee, or on the transfer of intellectual property rights?
Well put Danny, Never even thought about that but that is absolutely true.
Must say I like seeing them, sort of confirms that search and advertising are separate and distinct services.....
And, I think it's great that Google continue to accept advertising from those who sell links. If you guys want to snitch on yourselves, go for it. I think its rather hilarious that you are still advertising after these types of announcements. Rub it in some more why don't ya? ;)
