Is Google Wrong to Hate Paid Links?
Posted on October 12th, 2008 by Gabriel HarperGoogle is against paid links. They have made this clear by asking Webmasters to report sites that sell links, repeateadly blogging about how paid links are bad, and by evidently selecting sites to torture in their search algorithm for participating in link sales. Obviously a lot of people are upset about this – publishers want to sell advertising on their site as they see fit, and not hire programmers to understand things like “nofollow”. Search engine marketers don’t want to be subjected to Google’s guessing games. Who will be next for Google to torture?
I think an experienced Web professional understands that links are bought and sold in many ways. So many in fact, from simple verbal promises to offline commercial alliances, that it’s hard to believe Google can handle this monster with an algorithm. This leaves me feeling like the monolithic search engine is more concerned about their own PPC pie, and sustaining PageRank as the powerful publicity tool that it is.
If text links are just one factor of Google’s algorithm, how do we cope with all other aspects of commercial involvement? Are commercial Web sites with highly skilled authors paid to blog going to be penalized, or required to use nofollow tags on their content? Will commercial sites eventually have to wrap their entire Web site in nofollow? I can see Google’s new Webmaster Guidelines suggesting the change now…
If you have money, please add this to your <BODY> tag:
<body rel="nofollow">
I’m being silly, but in the opinion of one Webmaster who has been at it for many years – Google can’t stop paid links, Google won’t stop paid links, and their efforts so far are unfair to site owners. They seem more intent on stirring up publicity and hand picking culprits, instead of dealing with the issue from an algorithmic standpoint.
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October 13th, 2008 at 8:47 am
[...] Gabriel Harper’s Blog Business, Web Sites and Life « Is Google Wrong to Hate Paid Links? [...]
March 14th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
It really is amazing that some things never change
April 20th, 2009 at 7:38 am
Very well written. This is the kind of information that is useful to those want to increase their SERP’s. Keep up the good work.