Has Google Taken Away Your Right to Vote?

[Golgotha]

Google has taken a hard-line stance against non-natural links and this is making life difficult for some websites. But, is Google justified in their stance?
Are non-natural links really negatively effecting their results?

Read this article (http://www.search-this.com/google/has_google_taken_away_your_right_to_vote.aspx) and share your thoughts here. Thanks

[rustybrick]

Classic topic, I don't know if there is an answer.

[I, Brian]

Google hasn't taken away link votes as yet - it simply appears to value links according to different parameters. Certainly you raise areas where Google has sought to devalue links, but I do not at all think we're faced with a serious situation where link votes are entirely discounted.

Presuming we're not gong to be pedantic and as what "natural" means (I'm sure most of us know the difference between basic link manipulation and natural acquisition through third-party placement), then if Google were to actually only allow "natural links" to impact its search, then you would have a crippled search engine.

Most subject areas are so heavily saturated that it is immensely difficult to accrue natural links, and this is especially so for commercial sites where there is less focus on information and content, and instead on product/sales presentation.

And then, of course, there is Mike Grehan's excellent paper Filthy Linking Rich (http://www.e-marketing-news.co.uk/Oct04/RichLinking.html), which demonstrably argues that new content is trapped in a loop of not being able to get good relevant rankings through failure to accrue links - but cannot accrue links without good relevant rankings.

Whilst I would certainly agree with any argument that extreme link-building can be harmful to search engine results, my own personal philsophy is that when I link-build for clients, it is because they have quality content and unique products/services of use to surfers looking for information on the keyword-targeted areas.

So long as Google is still susceptible to some degree of link manipulation, then at least newer content I work with has a real chance of developing respectable exposure through natural search, which benefits everybody concerned.

Of course, I'm sure Google may disagree - but I'm still very much of the opinion that SEO is founded upon accessibility issues, not least for associating relevant keywords to content in a way that search engines can usefully work with.

2c.

[Golgotha]

...

Most subject areas are so heavily saturated that it is immensely difficult to accrue natural links, and this is especially so for commercial sites where there is less focus on information and content, and instead on product/sales presentation.

for many business-to-business sites, it doesn't matter how much content you have, nor how relevant it is, people just typically don't link to you. When was the last time you linked to a business site?


Whilst I would certainly agree with any argument that extreme link-building can be harmful to search engine results, my own personal philsophy is that when I link-build for clients, it is because they have quality content and unique products/services of use to surfers looking for information on the keyword-targeted areas.

right, we all know there is some harmful link-building and that should be stifled, that's not in question here. But, If I want to pay a site to include a link on all 100 of its pages to link to a site that sells POS software with the anchor text POS software then this shouldn't hurt results in the slightest. And I don't want to see Google devalue those links now leaving me little opportunity to move up the natural results.

Heck, the other day I wanted to pay a well respected site to link to my site without doing a redirect and they said they wouldn't do it because that is messing with search engine results! That's where it's now gone. How is linking to a site that provides Internet Marketing Articles with the anchor text Internet Marketing Articles effecting search engine results negatively?