Infographic Links Might Be Discounted In The Future?

[linkbuildr]

So I'm sure a lot of you folks recently heard that Matt Cutts mentioned that infographic links in the near future might be discounted...at what rate or specifically why we won't really know. I do see a lot of folks using "money anchor text" and even hiding the links, so I can see why. As well, a lot of them are not too factual and I can see that as a problem.

With that being said, I don't think that the folks doing truly great ones and are NOT manipulating the anchor text will always be fine.

[linkbuildr]

I guess I should have put in his exact quote:

Matt Cutts - "I would not be surprised if at some point in the future we did not start to discount these infographic-type links to a degree. The link is often embedded in the infographic in a way that people don’t realize, vs. a true endorsement of your site.

[Marketing Guy]

There's lots of complaining over at SER about this, but realistically it's a fad technique that the link building industry basically ruined by mass producing poor quality work.

As with forum posting, blog commenting, guest blogging and even the much reviled directories - those who do it right do well from the exercise, the rest just try to do it cheaply / quickly and end up forcing Google to adapt to the spam.

[CainIV]

Well said Marketing Guy. It's all in the adherence to quality and delivery.

Crap, boxed and wrapped is crap.

[martinibuster]

Wow, has it been almost three years since I examined viral link strategies and debunked the myth propagated over at certain places that if Google devalued viral linking it would harm the link graph?

Don't wait for Matt to tell you something might stink. Use your own nose. I did a post in 2009 discussing what is wrong with viral and link bait strategies [webmasterworld.com]. Here is a quote, but you yourself a favor and read the entire post:

Link Bait as a link strategy goes deeper. Link baiting has been accepted by our industry with only superficial consideration. It's time to take a serious look at it because it's our duty to investigate whether something is useful or not.

Search Engines use the web graph to determine what content is relevant. This is why links are referred to as "votes" because each link is a vote for the content it is linking to. However you cannot use that explanation to justify viral links. It is naive to think that every link should and does count. The reality is that every link is not equal. The truth is that some links count very little and some links don't count at all. Does Google dampen viral links? Yes, there is no question about that. It's a known fact, for example, that Google dampens the viral links from Google Bombing [google.com]. Google bombing is an example of a viral link situation where Google devalues the links. It contradicts the assertion that Google does not devalue viral links. Google does indeed devalue viral links.

Links do not necessarily equal a vote for the content it is linking to. Links do not always indicate authority. This is why Google analyzes the context of the link, to find out why one site links to another. Google does this to return relevant SERPs. Google analyzes the links to determine the reasons why a piece of content is being linked to. It is untrue to assert that dampening viral links will negatively affect the link graph. It would be a slippery slope if Google did not dampen viral links.

I shouldn't be giving this stuff away. I'm keeping you three years ahead of the curve, LOL.

[CainIV]

I remember the post well martini.

Very similar to how footer badges and widget badges worked so good 3-4 years ago, poorly done infographics could be next years link disease and Google agenda

[martinibuster]

Here is the link to the Eric Enge interview [stonetemple.com].

The link is often embedded in the infographic in a way that people don’t realize, vs. a true endorsement of your site.

The longer version is this:

The other thing that happens is that people don’t always realize what they are linking to when they reprint these infographics. Often the link goes to a completely unrelated site, and one that they don’t mean to endorse. Conceptually, what happens is they really buy into publishing the infographic, and agree to include the link, but they don’t actually care about what it links to. From our perspective this is not what a link is meant to be.

The process of dampening has already been happening. The comment above is addressing an issue that is apart from Infographics, it's an issue that addresses a major problem with viral link campaigns.

So number one, infographics are not getting discounted. They have already been subject to dampening. Matt is not really saying anything new. He is simply pointing out what I pointed out three years ago, that one of the negative things about viral links is that they aren't necessarily votes for a site.

[edited by: tedster at 10:00 pm (utc) on Apr 26, 2013]
[edit reason] fixed link [/edit]