Matt Cutts Confirms that Paid Links Killed Your PageRank

[TrafficProducer]

Matt Cutts Confirms that Paid Links Killed Your PageRank
Google's most "Vocal" engineer and contributor to the algorithms, Matt Cutts, finally admits that recent page rank drop was a result of Google’s campaign against paid linking.

Matt Cutts Confirms that Paid Links Killed Your PageRank

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Are Google AdWords Paid Links??? They should ban themselves.

[sparky]

I do not believe that Adwords from Google increase your IBL count, but shouldn't Google penalize any and all directories, including Yahoo, who charges for listing in their directory? And my main question that I have to this whole paid link ordeal is the Googlebot is just that. It crawls a site, reads the site and sees links. How can it tell if one has paid to have that link there or not?

[saikatblogger]

Originally Posted by TrafficProducer

Are Google AdWords Paid Links??? They should ban themselves.

It's again the same story I guess. Paid links without nofollow/Paid links not in JS are creating the problem. The same issue which caused Link Selling directories to be penalized.

[mjtaylor]

Originally Posted by TrafficProducer

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Are Google AdWords Paid Links???

No, Adwords are not paid links in that sense.

Google Adwords are apples and "paid links" are oranges because they pass PR - which from now on should be called Orange Juice or OJ ...

Seriously, they are not the same thing because there is no PR passed in Adwords - there is no 'vote' counted for the website that buys the ad. Google is trying to stop webmasters from buying PR to manipulate results ... not unreasonable, in my opinion. If I had a search engine and my business was dependent upon returning the most relevant results, I wouldn't like to have it influenced by factors outside my control. On the other hand, I hope I would have kept my PageRank formula to myself.

Cheers, MJ

[brandrocker]

Updates in Google Algorithm, whether Search Engine, or Page Rank, or Adsense have always resulted in many-folded effects. First of all, it must be fair enough to say that paid links were spoiling the spirit of Google PageRank, which prefers to see editorially given links, and not paid/exchanged links to a website. So Google has just taken the measures to maintain significance of PR. Webmasters, who do not have/want to invest money for purchasing links, must get certain relief. On the other hand, bloggers, or directory owners will definitely find it more difficult to sell their ad spaces. So like every other Google updates, someone is going to win, whereas some other is going to pay the bills.

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by TrafficProducer

Matt Cutts Confirms that Paid Links Killed Your PageRank

This is pretty dated news.

[TrafficProducer]

This is pretty dated news.

May be, this Emphasise the issue.

The qusestion now becomes how will webmasters generate an income.. (except via AdSence, bias)

If webmasters can no longer generate an income then websites will be taken down...

Is this the start of the end of the Internet?

exchange links, (already lose PR), affiliated links, ppc links, banner ads, etc... may all soon be classes as Paid Links.

[mjtaylor]

Originally Posted by TrafficProducer

May be, this Emphasise the issue.

The qusestion now becomes how will webmasters generate an income.. (except via AdSence, bias)

If webmasters can no longer generate an income then websites will be taken down...

Is this the start of the end of the Internet?

exchange links, affiliated links, ppc links, banner ads, etc... may all soon be classes as Paid Links.

Many, many reciprocal link pages have already lost their PR ... it was not just paid links that were targeted. It started last April.

[ctabuk]

Originally Posted by TrafficProducer

May be, this Emphasise the issue.

The qusestion now becomes how will webmasters generate an income.. (except via AdSence, bias)

If webmasters can no longer generate an income then websites will be taken down...

Is this the start of the end of the Internet?

exchange links, (already lose PR), affiliated links, ppc links, banner ads, etc... may all soon be classes as Paid Links.

This does not make a huge amount of sense to me. How many adsense sites rely upon natural search in the first place?

If a site has been paid to be up - it will remain up - Google is not deleting sites!! This issue relates to natural search results and not paid for advertising sites.

[TrafficProducer]

My 2 cent:

How many adsense sites rely upon natural search in the first place? If a site has been paid to be up - it will remain up - Google is not deleting sites!! This issue relates to natural search results and not paid for advertising sites.

If you pay, then it's more cash for Google, any other paid methods will be so low in visits, (because Google will limit their listing if at all), they only get 100 vists a week.

Google is not deleting sites!!

May be not, but visitor levels could be so low it makes that site uneconomical to keep alive.. end of that site... end of the Internet.

If you pay Yahoo, MSN, Ask, etc... Surely Google will start to limit these links at Google because Paid Links, (exchange links) go against the Page Rank Philosophy.

OK one is Paid one is Natural

But is this a case of if you bribe Google with cash you are OK, if you give that cash to anyone else you could lose visitors .

[ctabuk]

No - sorry I have to disagree. If anything the Internet is in it's infancy. Within 2 years we will be seeing Google TV stations coming on line. TV receivers with Search - more adverts than ever. If anything natural search sites will fall by the wayside except for the more discerning searchers.

Google has been caught out - guilty of its own 'entrapment' it created a false, misleading and inaccurate system on its own toolbar which duped tens of thousands - now it is trying to disguise its fault through a series of 'knee jerk reactions' why else has it introduced Matt Cutts to the forum world?? And should we really heed every word he say's - well I never believed the toolbar so I'm hardly likely to be fooled this time.

[TrafficProducer]

Google; TV receivers with Search - more adverts than ever

This trouble is Google, this Google That, Google we Rule the Internet.

We, Google, will do what every we like with the Internet, including stop showing sites, in China for example.

When any one business becomes so big, it's a danger.

[ctabuk]

I agree with that - it's Orwellian - and it will backfire - but not yet.

[Tubby]

ctabuk asked.
' How many adsense sites rely upon natural search in the first place?'

Mine do, old Mate.

I simply have no option other than to believe that Google is trying to get better and fairer results, I can not think of a reason why they should do otherwise. I also think that Google will continue to keep separate its ppc section, here also I can not think of a sensible reason why they should not do so.

Nobody really knows what Google will or won't do in the future. But I think discarding any thoughts as silly as destroying what they have successfully built up over the past few years, would be a good starting point.

Google wish to improve their position.

As for Matt Cutts. . Why do you read what he says ? ? ? ? In Queensland we used to have a Premier, who referred to his daily meet with journalists. " Feeding the Chooks (chickens)" I expect Matt cutts considers his postings are much the same. . There are far to many people willing to swallow up every word he says. . ( it even amuses him to pluck obscurities from mid air) Just Feeding the Chooks!

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by Tubby

As for Matt Cutts. . Why do you read what he says ? ? ? ? In Queensland we used to have a Premier, who referred to his daily meet with journalists. " Feeding the Chooks (chickens)" I expect Matt cutts considers his postings are much the same. . There are far to many people willing to swallow up every word he says. . ( it even amuses him to pluck obscurities from mid air) Just Feeding the Chooks!

Great point Tubby!!! After all, I am glad to hear that someone agrees with me, and who is not claiming that Matt Cutts is an authority or is his believer.

... with a Matt Cutts here,
and a Matt Cutts there,
here a Matt Cutts,
there a Matt Cutts,
everywhere a Matt Cutts...

[Lawrence]

Paid Links Are Still Dominating Google Search Results - SEO Case Study

I recently read the article in Forbes (online October 7th, 2007) titled, “Google Purges Payolla” . As a SEO consultant, I was curious as to the continued effectiveness of paid links. I found a perfect case study with a company called “Bankruptcy Home” (www.bankruptcyhome.c*m). registered backlinks for Bankruptcy Home shows over 900 backlinks in Google and over 120,000 backlinks Yahoo. These are very respectable numbers and can easily justify the top organic keyword rankings related to bankruptcy for Bankruptcy Home. However, further investigation finds that a large portion of these backlinks have been created by utilizing classic “paid link” or “sponsored link” techniques. For example, Google and Yahoo currently credit Bankruptcy Home with back links from the following sources: The Charleston Gazette, Times Record News (Wichita Falls News). The paid links are always found near the bottom of the page for these online newspapers with a 30 to 40 character text hyperlink. A simple keyword phrase unrelated to the other content on the page is repeatedly placed on the online newspapers website. The power of this strategy comes from various factors:

(1) Paid links “bleed” ranking factor from these power web pages to the targeted url.

(2) Each day’s publication becomes a new set of paid links creating a tidal wave of backlink volume and off page ranking factor.

Examples of the ranking results to Bankruptcy Home (www.bankruptcyhome.c*m) from using paid links can be seen in its high ranking for extremely competitive keywords:

(1)Bankruptcy - Ranked 5 out of 83,500,000 competition in Google

(2)Bankruptcy - Ranked 8 out of 82,000,000 competition in Yahoo

(3)Bankruptcy Attorney - Ranked 1 out of 19,100,000 Competition in Google

(4)Bankruptcy Attorney - Ranked 6 out of 18,600,000 Competition in Yahoo

An example of the paid backlinks indexed in Google and Yahoo can be seen in the following hyperlinks:

(1)Google - http://www.wvgazette.com/section/News/2007102223

(2)Yahoo - http://sundaygazettemail.com/section/News/2007061911

This seems to prove that paid links continue to be highly successful in ranking for competitive keywords. It is also obvious that the major search engines are constantly “tweaking” their rules to ensure the best quality, relevant and natural results. The gray area between optimization and manipulation continues hang over these rules. Of course, when there are large dollars available in a market, these problems will only be intensified as web site owners looks at the risk / reward scale. It will be very interesting to see how this plays out over the next 12 months as the search engines attempt to update their rankings by automatically filtering out the use of paid links.

[TrafficProducer]

their rules to ensure the best quality, relevant and natural results.

natural results= None paid for; Non Exchange, None Submitted.... No Java Script, No Dynamic... No counters, no tracking code...

The list of 'no-no's' starts to build and Build

Maybe Google should say the only time we will list you, naturally, is if you Do Not have a website

[Webnauts]

Have you noticed Googles updates here? Webmaster Help Center - Why should I report paid links to Google?

Old:
“Buying links in order to improve a site’s ranking is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results.”

Now:
“Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results.”