Is soliciting links for 'stuff' ok with Google?

[Planet13]

Hi everyone:

Paid links are bad (maybe) but how about links in exchange for stuff?

Saw a site for cooking utilities, and near the footer they stated:

Please Link To us:
Link to Widgets Recipes today! Send us an email with our link on your website and get a free Widgets Recipes cook book sent to you!

Would such a blatant link request be punished / filtered by google?

(And a polite request: Is it ok if we keep this discussion to what we have observed google doing, as opposed to what we THINK google should do?)

Thanks in advance.

[tedster]

A roughly parallel situation might be "free" templates that contain an embedded link. Google expressed a problem with that but free template offers with sneaky 64-bit embedded links are still ranking.

[goodroi]

google isnt happy about it. the more blatant you are about it the more likely something bad will happen. google currently has a hard time of filtering these links, so most people get away with it. a safer version of this scheme is to offer free content to websites with your links embedded in the articles or offer to guest blog on industry blogs.

[freejung]

On the other hand, another parallel situation would be licensing content under a Creative Commons license and requiring a link as attribution. I do this, and have seen quite a few other well-ranking sites doing it, and I haven't heard of a penalty for it.

Of course, creative commons content is very much in line with Google's philosophy -- it's basically the equivalent of open source software in the form of content. Linking to the copyright holder would be viewed as similar to an academic citation in line with the intent of PageRank.

I don't know whether a different standard is applied to free physical goods as opposed to free content or software.

[indyank]

I don't know whether a different standard is applied to free physical goods as opposed to free content or software.

I do believe they are treated differently as you have rightly explained just above it.If google has problems with free software then it should find the same with free content too.

But linkbacks to free software usually carry much lower weight than linkback to free content because of

1)where they appear.
2)anchor text used (in the former it is usually the brand name of the product and in the later, it is more targetted anchor text)

But, both definitely help.Free software/widgets are used more as a brand promotion tool (to gain trust) while free content (guest blogging, etc) directly helps in ranking the target content.I guess google has recognized this and they should be fine with it.

[FranticFish]

If think about the recipe book example, I'f be surprised if Google have a problem with that.

When you syndicate content or guest blog etc - what are you doing? Giving away content for a link.

Is there anything different about emailing an eBook in return for a link?

Added: How does Google know which of the IBL owners have received eBooks and which haven't? And don't say Gmail please.

However, I know of sites that have been dumped from AdSense for carrying text on them asking for people to click the ads. I don't know if this was detected algorithmically or not.

[indyank]

in guest blogs or syndicated content, you give away content relevant for that link...but in cash or physical goods, there isn't any relation, unless you build relevant content around it...

[goodroi]

if googlebot visited 100 different sites and it sees identical anchor text pointing to your site. plus right next to that link is identical javascript code for a widget. it would not be hard for google to guess there is some sort of manipulation going on.

generally the more natural variation you introduce the harder it will be for google to develop a filter to catch you.

[FranticFish]

Who said it had to be identical? Who said it had to be a Javascript widget? There are many many sites that have 'link to us' scripts. I personally think it unlikely that Google would consider it a bad thing that people are linking to a site that's giving away content they want. I mean, if they don't want the eBook they won't link - so that makes the recipes worth having and the site therefore noteworthy, no? Isn't that what Google is supposed to reward - popular content?

[Planet13]

...generally the more natural variation you introduce the harder it will be for google to develop a filter to catch you.

Who said it had to be identical? Who said it had to be a Javascript widget?

Just to clarify, the website in question didn't specify HOW to link. It just said, "send us an email telling us where you put a link to us on your site, and we will send you an e-recipe book." So I am sure there would be some natural variation.

But in your opinion, if a web site displays a "please link to us" request, does that somehow diminish the value of external inbound links to the site? Has anyone ever done any A/B testing with this?

And by the way, seems like that aside from trying to get external inbound links,it was also designed to get email addresses from people, so that one could add them to their mailing lists...