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It looks as if there are the same 20 paid links on all pages, so I'd estimate they are pulling in about $200000 a month from this.
I'd imagine google knows about this by now and has decided not to penalise for this. Since the Searchking lawsuit perhaps google has decided to back off on link penalties for fear of the legalities of doing so.
Due to it's pagerank income whether rightly or wrongly, this website would certainly have the financial clout to sue them, as penalising this website would have a massive financial effect.
Could this open the door to websites blatantly selling pagerank?
The one thing about PR is that it is (with some exceptions) not influenced by human discretion. It is simply a mathematical formula.
(Exceptions come down to blocking/unblocking sites that spam/cloak/etc...)
If Google were to sell PR (anyone selling Snow Blowers in hell?) it would largely discredit PR as a valid relivance ranking device.
Besides, Google does sell PR (in a way) -- It's just called AdWords.
Sorry, daroz - i can't see your point here ... why do you think selling adword means seeling pr? Adword have nothing to do with a mathematical formula to calculate a site's relevance / popularity ...
[edited by: Yidaki at 9:44 pm (utc) on Feb. 18, 2003]
No, but it does get you on page 1 of SERPs. Which would be the point of buying PR.
<rfgdxm1>This is a fair point. One can make a pretty good argument that the Yahoo! directory today is largely PageRank for sale. </rfgdxm1>
I have a yahoo listing on a page that has quite low page rank - not worth to buy for pr reasons. You'd say bad deal. Yeah but it wasn't sold and wasn't bought for PR reasons! Sorry, page rank (PR) [google.com] has NOTHING to do with sponsored or payed listings in general! It's totally another thing!
High PR doesn't automatically bring you on page 1.
PageRank may not be perfect, it might make mistakes (through manipulation or Google Snafu) but it's one of the best factors for an algo as far as I am concerned.
Not the only one, of course.
ANd comparing Yahoo to sites that sell PageRank just doesn't work IMO. For one thing, Yahoo was there before Google, doing it their own way, before PageRank was even heard of.
yah, rfgdxm1, that's right. But all i want to say is: don't mix a yahoo or any other payed listing with a listing that is *obviously* only for pr reasons. If i buy a yahoo listing or a google adword i don't buy pr. Noboy does! ... or does someone?
Part of why I am using Google is that the search results are not bought! Google would lose a lot of their users and credability if they were going to sell pr!
(SEO,s?)
They are bought, just not directly from google.
With Yahoo! no longer giving results from their directory prominence when people search, in many cases I'd have to wonder if a directory listing is worth it today except for the PR value.
Yeah, sorta like the US Green card lottery that gets run every year :)))
Seriously though, That would be a mighty earner for uncle Google. If one site can turn $200k per month, imagine what Google could earn. 50,000 advertisers times $2000.....the wheels are turning in my head :)
What other reason is there for listing at Yahoo or any other large directory? People do this to gain page rank, period! The Yahoo directory brings next to nothing as far as traffic to my sites so that's not the reason.
It has been said many times on here that the best way to get listed in google is to have a dmoz or yahoo listing, it's next to impossible to get listed at dmoz so you are then paying to have a site link to you only for google's sake. This is the same thing.
The only problem here is that not everyone can afford to advertise on the bigger portals that have high ranking. This is it in a nutshell. If you can't beat them, complain!
I am sure there is a ton of traffic throught any site with a PR9, if I could afford to be listed on a bunch of their pages then I would be first in line to buy an add. It was stated that there are 20 text links on this site, hardly a link farm, could these 20 links spoil the search results internet wide?
I just thought about this. My main site gets over 100 hits from search engines on a slow day, and has a (free) Yahoo! directory listing. I get maybe a few hits a week from the Yahoo! directory. However, I get tons of hits from Google. This does make me wonder how valuable a Yahoo! directory listing is other than for PR.
For no reason that I can find .. The 300 buck per link site has not been passing pagerank to the "linkees". The 2k/link site on the other hand is not only passing pagerank but the "linkees" have been KICKING A$$ in the SERPS. Some are brand new sites that "came out of nowhere".
In an attempt to survive, I made a business decision and purchased some links on this site hoping that I can regain my edge and outrank them once again. Now we have a level playing field and we're all out at least 2k.
Can / will Google penalize ME for this type of incoming link?
I think there is a huge difference between paying a lawyer or paying the judge, don't you?
[edited by: NFFC at 11:47 pm (utc) on Feb. 18, 2003]
It didn't work though :)
Google has the number on that site already I guess. It was a nice try.
It does appear that Google tweaked the algo a few months back such that PR seems to be less important than before.
The day PR was not (easily) discovered by the average Webmaster, who is only recently starting to get interested in high PR links, this problem would disappear overnight.
This would also bring back the "natural" linking structure of the Internet, which is slowly disappearing thanks to Google.
Wrong!
At its basis Pagerank assumes that incoming links are "earned", not "bought". That a site made an independent decision to link to another based on the quality of info it offered for their own readers.
Link farms and reciprocal linking are ways to "get around" this; "pay for text ads on hi PR pages", is a way to exploit it.
PR to me seems *relatively* resistant to this sort of spam considering the massive amount of effort given to them. And it improves monthly, with such things as analysis of "credibility of outward links" now seeming more important to the algo and maybe soon- theming.
As far as i see it, paying for text ads for the express purpose of improving Page Rank crtainly does reduce the quality of the SERPS and is a legitimate use of the SPAM report. I cant see how you can argue that they dont lead to a deterioation in SERPS as they are really just another form of PFInclusion and sometimes indexing. Both reduce the relevance and value to the users of pure "SERPS".
Perhaps a citation measure such as PR should factor in depth. What is more important? One link and the only link from a PR9 page or 5,000 links from a basket of PR3 and 4 pages all on different domains? Which is really the more "popular" site?
But I have to agree with all the others that PR seems to be getting less and less emphasis in the algo. Maybe we're just wasting time talking about PR. Maybe it's already not that important in the serps!
I know exactly what site we're talking about.Three of those ads are mine. Many more of them are other people I work with and now we are all having to scramble to get them moved because it's just a matter of time.
I'm involved with some of the most competitive and profitable industries on the web and I just can't believe anyone would honestly expect me to go to my partners and tell them,
"Ok, we've got $200,000 tied up in getting the custom forms built, the site designed and optimized, now let's start sending out emails begging for links and in a year or two, we'll be able to see if we can get placed well enough to get some traffic".
I've been buying links for well over a year now,(and yes, it does EXACTLY what you would think it would do), and until everybody deciding to start talking about it and suing each other over it, you could get those links for an incredibly low price. I've bought 9's for $20 a month, (not since we all started discussing it with google guy!). When I bought my first PR ad, hardly anyone even knew what a toolbar was. Not anymore because SEO's can't keep their mouth shut. But, even so, all that has happened is the price has gone up because if buying PR is a threat to google, then it never worked right in the first place.
Can't we find something else to talk about without helping google gain more control?
