

Open Letter to Matt Cutts: On Penalties & the New Link Disavow Tool - bromley
http://www.hungrypiranha.org/blog/matt-cutts-link-disavow-tool/

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bromley
I am lucky that my business is in a fairly low-competition niche where having
a great site really is enough to get in the game. I've not noticed much in the
way of link buying amongst the sites in my niche, and link buying is not a
world that I've ever felt the need to delve into myself.

But I have friends running ecommerce sites in more competitive niches. They
compete with the likes of Amazon, Walmart, and other mass-market retailers
that sell everything (albeit rarely covering the niche products as well as the
specialists do). For years they have been insistent that, despite what
Google's guidelines say, they wouldn't stand a chance of being found in the
organic search results if they didn't buy links.

Since Penguin things have gone topsy turvy for them. Many of the competing
businesses with good sites and happy customers have disappeared from the
rankings after receiving penalties. Some are going bust as the margins are too
thin to make adwords work. The spammers with junk sites suffer (good), but
also the smaller businesses with good sites offering something extra that
can't be found from the big box stores. As a result, the consumers suffer too
(as all they see is a small selection of products on Amazon and a smattering
of link-buying businesses that have been lucky enough to evade the penalties).

I'm not familiar enough with this situation to offer a strong personal
opinion. But I wonder if this might be an issue that Google sweeps under the
carpet somewhat... That actually "build it and they will come" doesn't usually
work when you're up against companies with thousands of links (many of which
are paid links, whether they look like it or not).

