

It's Time For Google To Take A Stand On Paid Links - fallentimes
http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-conductor-ceo-besmertnik-on-paid-links-link-building-seo-2009-9

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coderdude
I cringe every time I hear "violating Google's terms of service." What
service? The one where they index your site at your cost so they have
something to serve their users?

This is starting to sound more like the RIAA complaining about a new business
model undercutting its revenue. Google is not keeping up with people or
technology in this case. People have figured out how to exploit (to a great
enough degree) Google's ability to tell a spam site from an authority, and
their response is to declare that people are in violation.

~~~
motoko
What is the tell between a spam site from an authority?

~~~
fallentimes
In general terms:

 _Spam:_ thin site, lacks original content, few pages indexed, crawled
infrequently, ranks for a small selection of keywords, weak backlink profile

 _Authority:_ many pages indexed, thick site, loads of original content,
crawled frequently, ranks for a variety of keywords, diversified backlink
profile

Page Rank used to be a strong indicator of this, but currently a better
indicator is how often your site is crawled. That's why one authority link can
do worlds more for you than hundreds (or thousands) of spammy/low quality
links.

~~~
dhimes
I guess it's all about how you define "thin," "few", "small," and "weak." A
page on how to eradicate your home of carpenter ants would possibly look like
all of these, yet may be the most "authoritative" site on the web on the
small, niche subject.

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joeyo
If it _is_ authoritative, then you would expect it would (eventually) get
linked to, no?

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dhimes
Perhaps, but not necessarily that much. How many people would put a link to
how to build a dog house on their web page? Anybody who would probably has
links to other dog house things (buy a book on Amazon, keep it smelling fresh
with this goo from WalMart) etc., diminishing your algorithmically determined
authority.

Not everybody blogs about everything going on in his/her life.

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dejb
When you have things of value that can be sold or exchanged you will allways
have a market. If some authority tries to ban the exchange then it will be a
'black' market. The harder Google tries to enforce their policies the more it
will drive the selling or exchange of links underground. Maybe this would be a
good thing but there is certainly no way they can stamp it out.

I personally think that the problem lies in the rules of Google's system. A
more robust system should be able to account for and adjust for the market
realities created by it's own rules. Maybe it is technically impossible but I
doubt it. I'm sure the clever people at google have thought of this as well
but perhaps they are starting to face 'legacy' system issues themselves.

~~~
halo
Perhaps Google already algorithmically detects and quietly penalises such
link-farming, or has tweaked their algorithm to minimise its impact. From
their quality guidelines
([http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en...](http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769#3)):

 _Google prefers developing scalable and automated solutions to problems, so
we attempt to minimize hand-to-hand spam fighting. The spam reports we receive
are used to create scalable algorithms that recognize and block future spam
attempts._

~~~
dejb
I'll bet they do but they can only detect the most obvious cases. It would be
possible for website to sell links that even a human couldn't identify as
sold, so there are limits to what their algorithms could achieve.

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halo
I'm often wary of those complaining about Google's policies because they're
based on the idea that being listed on Google is a right and not a privilege.
This, to me, is faulty logic. Unless they're deliberately taking part in
anticompetitive behaviour by blocking competition, I think it's perfectly
within their rights to delist or demote you for pretty much any reason they
can think of.

I think Google have made it pretty clear that as far as they're concerned they
don't want people selling links to other sites in a way designed to manipulate
search-engine rankings, and if you do so you may be delisted or have a lowered
ranking on their site in the future. I think that's specific enough,
personally, and think that anyone wanting a more specific policy either wants
to work around them to violate the intended spirit and complain if and when
Google punishes them for doing so.

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DanielBMarkham
I used to be a bigger Google fan than I am now, and it's all because of this
pagerank/link business.

It's fine to have an algorithm to prioritize sites. And it's fine for sites to
manipulate that algorithm to their own ends. Both of these things are
completely natural.

Trying to keep this list of who's cool or not -- secretly updated by god knows
who -- and forcing the rest of the world to do as you say or suffer economic
punishment by de-listing from your engine? Not fine, although Google is
certainly in their rights to do so.

A better strategy is for Google to adapt, not dictate. As it is, they've
created this entire system where everybody games the system but nobody talks
about it, and that's counterproductive for the net as a whole.

~~~
jacquesm
Exactly.

Google should become better at what they are doing, work harder on identifying
spam sites. Crawl more frequently to get a better grip on provenance.

Maybe set up an 'announce' service where you can dump a url before linking it
to establish provenance for your original content.

Dictation is not a solution to anything it is a show of weakness.

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gojomo
With apologies to Sigmund Freud:

Google forbids us to sell links not because it wishes to do away with
linkselling, but because it wishes to monopolize it.

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jonknee
Google has no problem with link selling--Google has a problem with PageRank
selling. Sell all the links you want, just use nofollow.

If someone wants to buy a link but isn't interested in only receiving the
traffic it brings (and not any pagerank), they are probably up to no good
anyway.

~~~
ericlavigne
I just checked the paid links on Google's search page. They do not use
nofollow. This fact, combined with your arguments, is consistent with gojomo's
hypothesis about Google wanting to monopolize paid links.

~~~
nostrademons
Google's search results page blocks all crawlers (including Google) using
robots.txt, so it's a moot point. Nofollow's only relevant when a page might
appear in a search engine.

~~~
gojomo
And isn't that convenient? Google's main kind of link-selling is unaffected by
their rules, but other kinds of link-selling is disadvantaged. ("Use a
standard we invented to make our job easier, or risk being frozen out of 70%+
of all search traffic.")

And similarly: "We crawl your stuff; but our search results are off-limits."
Of course, anyone can block Google, but given the asymmetry in business models
and market power that's not much of an equalizing factor.

I like Google and think they mean well. Individually each of these policies
has a reasonable basis. But Google is now so dominant -- and the positive
financial rewards they get from self-serving policies so large -- that their
actions deserve close scrutiny.

(The Freud-inspired quote I led with was originally about the state; Google's
influence on the net is so large that they are a lot like the net's
government.)

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onreact-com
This issue has been resolved years ago. Google even has a report paid links
form in the Webmasters Tools. High profile sites get their PageRank and
authority diminished whenever paid links get discovered.

Most reputable SEO firms refrain from paid links nowadays and rather focus on
"killer content" creation to get links naturally.

