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It is always interesting to view the threads about individuals pointing fingers about what constitutes "artificial" inflation of page or PR relevance in Google..
If you alter your content, or purchase links/directory listings for the specific purpose of increasing rank, then you are guilty.. It doesn't matter if you buy a link from a PRAdNetwork or a Yahoo directory listing. They are one and the same...
Guilty of what? Trying to be successful, with an engine that has a 65+% market share currently?
Most of the sites that sell text links, don't have a clue that the purchaser's main intention is to build PR w/ Google, and they don't care. The only thing PRAdNetwork did was publicly market the fact, behind their business model. Google penalized SearchKing and "NOT" PRAdNetwork, because they knew the sites were co-owned by the same entity, and penalizing PRAdNetwork would have no effect on it's success.
Engines such as Inktomi and AV have also given relevance boost to sites with external links (Long before Google was on the radar). They just didn't publicize the fact.
External links are always going to be important, regardless of the source and the engine. It's the only way that a site can place some sort of popularity weighting into their algorithm. IMO, reciprocal links will have less weight in the future, than one way external links, as SE's continue to tune their filtering for link farms, etc... Also, they will increasingly continue to filter one way external links, ie; GB's, Blogs, etc...
If a site calculates to PR8, but has relatively little traffic - compared to other PR8 sites - I would assume that what makes them stand out is their link campaign, not their content. And I would downgrade them accordingly.
This would be so much easier than doing the sorting out manually. They have very accurate data on traffic, due to their toolbar.
This approach would work in both ways. Another example: I read in a thread here, how guestbook spamming gets a site banned. Brett (if I remember correctly) pointed out that in his case, it didn't hurt him when a competitor spammed guestbooks with www links. Again, I would bet it's the traffic data - Google knew the site is very popular on its own and doesn't need spamming techniques - or a penalty.
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Either way, I would bet that within the next couple years, checking the Alexa stats will be part of a link campaign as much as checking PR.
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I agree with your speculation, but I think they will do it based on click activity from the SERP's, as not everyone has the toolbar installed, and G. already tracks click activity from their SERP's..
To me, the bottom line is - if a site underperforms, PR-wise, it's probably helpful to get some on-topic sponsored links, or at least it can't hurt. For example, if you're PR2 with a new site, trying to get to PR4/5.
But if a site already has the PR it can hope to have - e.g. PR6 for a site with little original content - it won't help buying links en masse.
Nice post. I also believe that that existing traffic is a missing factor that could provide a sanity check for ordering the SERPS. Or maybe it's not a missing factor - maybe the so called authority sites are doing so well post-Florida because they are higher trafficked sites.
To do this right, the factor would have to be non-Google originated traffic (as you wouldn't want to double count), so it could be tricky.
Although it's not always the highest traffic sites that are the best, or most relevant to a search, traffic certainly could be a proxy for legitimacy.
I wouldn't be surprised to see Google snap up Alexa from Amazon one of the days.
I'm just thinking of outrageous cases, as caveman puts it. I don't see reciprocal links as an issue.
I do believe that the prominent, high PR sponsored link sellers that Vegas21 mentions, with a bunch of casino, mortgage and pharm sponsored links have been a target for manual flagging by Google.
The 'mon and pop' type of site with a link to a small local business who sponsors it isn't likely to have a problem IMO.
I also don't see why a new site with a link from a high PR10 site can't get PR10 just as a site with other links would benefit. That's not to say it'll suddenly rank highly for anything competitive of course, home page PR is vanity for many webmasters.
I do worry that Mom and Pop are out of the game. I turned down a small business wanting SEO today, because it was going to be too much hassle persuading them of the need for links etc. All the small sites I know that are not regularly worked on, are steadily loosing visitors.
The competition is going up.
SearchKing was "not" selling PageRank, or anything else.. It was a completely different entity with common ownership.
The thing that was unique about SearchKing's accusation, was that they claimed Google penalized SearchKing for the PRadnetwork openly selling links to build PR.. (I don't agree/disagree with either SK or G on the issue), I just wish people would get it straight what really occured..
On the Yahoo example, the shoe is on the wrong foot. It's the sites buying Yahoo directory listings, for the sole purpose of increasing PR. The same for DMOZ. Who would place importance on submission to DMOZ if it didn't boost PR, and get higher ranking in Google?
Whether it's a paid link in Yahoo, or PRAdNetwork, or any other site, the main focus during the last year was to increase PR. The guy that buys the Yahoo listing to increase PR, calling foul on the guy that buys a PRAdnetwork link, is a hypocrite, plain and simple...
But the PR target has moved over the past few months, and toolbar or no toolbar, PR's weight in the G. ranking algo. has definitely decreased in importance.
Pick an obscure set of words or phrases and run adwords on them for several months.
Watch your backlinks and your PR for the page the ad sends people to.
It is easy to see if you can afford to keep the ad running all the time.
Once you see how it works on a relatively inexpensive set of phrases, I'm sure you will all start paying the big bucks to use it on the money words.
It may not last because they may figure it out and fix it but it has been working well for quite a while now.
It is pretty easy for google to weed out these people becuase 90% of the incoming links to the site are coming from 1 referrer. And most likely 1,800 of the links are inbound with the same link text to the same url on your site.
With simple statistics it is pretty easy to see that something fishy is going on.
You mean the ad passes on PR?
I've seen a BBC site do this in 2 updates. This approach is flawed.
Not from Google itself George. I don't think that any major site has Google spiderable links to PPC redirects, but some of the smaller partners do.
I doubt that PPC listings could give a positive return on investment for PR purposes.
