Matt Cutts & Maile Ohye on buying / selling links

[beu]

Matt Cutts and Maile Ohye offer "Information about buying and selling links that pass PageRank" in todays post on Google Webmaster Central's blog.

They say that buying and selling links results in:

"- Inaccuracies: False popularity and links that are not fundamentally based on merit, relevance, or authority
- Inequities: Unfair advantage in our organic search results to websites with the biggest pocketbooks"

Would you agree?

Is the business of link selling over?

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogsp...d-selling.html

[AussieWebmaster]

what is the difference between buying relevant links and asking someone to just give you one?

[Marcia]

Originally Posted by AussieWebmaster

what is the difference between buying relevant links and asking someone to just give you one?

In a word, MONEY!

What the Googler said:

- Inequities: Unfair advantage in our organic search results to websites with the biggest pocketbooks"

Ain't that the truth! And it doesn't necessarily mean they're the best or the most relevant sites for users, either. It just means they have more of a marketing budget.

[jimbeetle]

I still like the comment by Ask's Apostolos Gerasoulis in the Forbes article Google Purges The Payola that the Webmaster Central post noted. Basically, referring to Google's public anti-paid link campaign, he stated:

We know better than to say anything," Gerasoulis says. "The more pressure you put on them, the smarter they become. This war between spam sites and the search engines has no end.

[AussieWebmaster]

The intro is classic if not a little inaccurate: Googlers like to think of their company as the Web's library. But as Web sites come up with more ways to wring profit from online advertising and sales--often using methods that Google opposes--a better analogy might be the Web's watchdog. In recent months, that watchdog has barked at sites it accuses of shady practices--and it may be starting to bite. They are not the web's library unless they mean the books effort which is getting flak

[beu]

hehehe... Come on Aussie, even a library has security, locks on the doors and the right to decide which books it wants on the shelf.

I have wondered about image ads passing PageRank and if image links passing PageRank are more difficult to detect. Matt seems to answer that question in his latest post over on Google Groups:


"That email is asking link sellers to call things "Recommended" instead of "Sponsored," or to use no header at all. And if you do use a header, they ask to make it an image (maybe because an image is harder to detect than text?). So some people appear to be actively working to try to make paid links harder to detect."

[poksa]

Originally Posted by beu

hehehe... Come on Aussie, even a library has security, locks on the doors and the right to decide which books it wants on the shelf.

I have wondered about image ads passing PageRank and if image links passing PageRank are more difficult to detect. Matt seems to answer that question in his latest post over on Google Groups:


"That email is asking link sellers to call things "Recommended" instead of "Sponsored," or to use no header at all. And if you do use a header, they ask to make it an image (maybe because an image is harder to detect than text?). So some people appear to be actively working to try to make paid links harder to detect."

yeah, paid links i very hard to detect. But I think It's vice versa because Google is also very hard to Predict right?

[j0nyDzine]

You know, on some level this really chaps me. I understand Google trying to get a handle on things and all, BUT... this comes off the same way to me as if the Government knocked on NBC's door and told them they couldn't have "sponsored" ads anymore on one of their shows.

[AussieWebmaster]

The more relevant comparison would be NBC deciding all product placements in shows they broadcast be changed to generic labelling.... like Repo Man.

Obviously not going to happen as they rely on the advertisers of those products to also advertise with them.

But because the tv stations have more competition and viewers are more evenly distributing they do not have the clout to stop this.... shows would just go to another station.

With Google the advertisers will not walk away since there are no alternatives that offer the same traffic.