Is Google Penalizing for "Advertorials" On Blogs?

[staker2]

I recently read this article on the Business Week site:

Blogola: The FTC Takes On Paid Posts - BusinessWeek (http://tinyurl.com/pqjph8)

I found the second part about Google more alarming than the first bit about the FTC. How exactly is Google penalizing? I write blogs all over the place and need to know what exactly to change to prevent any issues with Google. Is there somewhere I can go to look this up or is it just a mystery shrouded in Google's algorithms wrapped in a riddle? Is it just the mainstream media getting a tech story wrong, which happens?

[Niche]

Looks like they are after paid posts. Unfortunately, this statement 'Many have turned to the blogosphere, offering cash and products to amateur journalists in exchange for glowing reviews about their products.' implies that they have paid all review articles with the same brush

[AlexNewell]

I take everything in the press with a dash of salt and cynicism!

Is your blog losing RSS subscriptions or traffic?

Are you dropping like a stone in the rankings for your keywords?

If not dismiss the article!

All The Best

Alex

[SemAdvance]

First BusinessWeek has no clue about anything related to SEO.

Google does not downgrade paid blog posts unless the paid blog posts were done to manipulate organic search results.

For Businessweek to write something so irresponsible is why less than professional journalists are cutting the throats of traditonal media and forcing newspapers to close.

Inane articles without any basis for their claims and unproven statements such as the one in BusinessWeek would be a reason a newspaper editor would not publish such rubbish.

Seems BusinessWeek wants to join the fate of newspapers publishing fallacy without confirming their source....

Stupid is as stupid writes in its magazine.......

[jordy3738]

If these things are being done under the table how is Google going to sniff out the advertisers blog posts?

Are they just going to through all reviews in the same bucket and plunder the rankings if you have a tag that indicates a "review?'

[staker2]

Heh - based on the comments here and on the Business Week site it looks like my best bet is to write the article off. I took it seriously because it was in Business Week - I'm sure lots of others will make the same mistake.

I completely agree with the statement about irresponsible journalism. What a crock.

[promar]

You wont be penalized for posting in blogs. Blogs that don't use "nofollow" could be.

From Matt Cutts statement:

"If link in a paid post would affect search engines, that link should not pass PageRank (e.g. by using the nofollow attribute). Google — and other search engines — do take action which can include demoting sites that sell links that pass PageRank, for example."

[ChiefLee]

Google says a lot of things promoting "best practices" that they truthfully can't factor into their algorithm. I wouldn't be concerned by this.

[ronchalice]

staker2 - Irresponsible journalism is blatantly painting a "review" specifically designed to sell a product as "journalism" or "consumerism" or some other kind of "ism" - an ad is a freaking ad and should be identified as such.

SemAdvance - Newspapers may be struggling, but at least most of them follow the rules about tagging as "ADVERTISEMENT" some bogus "news" article that's nothing more than 500 words of shill. Google would be smart (and they probably already are) to anticipate FTC regulations and find ways to identify, if not necessarily downgrade in search results, articles that exist for no other reason than to push a product.

Just because anybody with a dialup connection can create a blog doesn't lend squat to either their credibility or ethics.

[promar]

Again fron Cutts:

"Google found multiple bloggers that violated our quality guidelines and we took corresponding action. Those blogs are not trusted in Google’s algorithms any more.

We do take the subject of paid posts seriously and take action on them. In fact, we recently finished going through hundreds of “empty review” reports..."

We talk, we read rumors, we often assume and we experiment - this is the nature of the industry. But if there is a clear "don't do it" warning form Google, I wont.

[ZackBrandit]

From my previous experience, I know that Google penalized paid links. How? I am not sure to give you the right answer answer but a look at the article from Matt Cut of Google
about "how to report paid links" may put us on the track.

Are paid posts like paid links?
Disclosing compensation for promoting a brand could be the starting point to create a win-win situation for bloggers ,brands and shoppers:
- brands pay for promoting and get ROI
- bloggers are paid for writing articles
- and shoppers get access to the RIGHT information
This win-win situation can be realized via a platform where bloggers are free to promote the brands they really like and share the advantage with shoppers.

Yes it is possible!

[deepsand]

Business Week is far from being the only source that has reported on this issue. See ftc web advertorial - Google Search (http://www.google.com/search?q=ftc+web+advertorial&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a)

The FTC has publicly made it quite clear that it deems disguised "advertorials" to be deceptive, and that it intends to attempt to crack down on such.

[simonm]

Whenever I read shock storys about Goggle doing this or that, I think it is wise to remember that Google indexes billions of pages! It has to do all of this automatically and batched ahead of any particular search. Though the algorithms Google use are pretty amazing and with processing power/speed getting ever faster, practically able to do ever more things. I really can't see that this comes within practical - yet!

[submissionnow]

I think FTC and google are focused on different things. FTC cares more about disclosure for sponsored reviews, while Google could penlise a blog if no nofollow is used for links in a paid post.

[Stephen Agbaka]

i think simonm sound professional and since google simply index billions of pages relying on it will not be a sound way of marketing, diversified your effort for maximum exposure and the fuss about google done this or that will not bother you much.

[NJ]

I received a solicitation to place a good comment about a book on Amazon.com because I had given kudos to some other books. The author offered me a copy of the book. I think that this is a pretty normal practice in print too. However, I do wonder how many reviews/comments are paid and not just a grassroots response to a product or service. I find this to be especially problematic when trying to find out whether a web host is any good.

[SteveGerencser]

I wonder how many people question reviews that they read in magazines or see on TV.. Seeing how all those people make their living from advertising (paid reviews)..

[Terry Van Horne]

I wonder how many people question reviews that they read in magazines or see on TV.. Seeing how all those people make their living from advertising (paid reviews)..9 out of 10 times you know it is advertising... on a blog you never know as there is no way to know. Google warned about this a long time ago, likely because they remember how the FTC reatced to sponsored links when Se's tried to disguise they were paid advertising, It is the law... bloggers aren't above it.

[ZackBrandit]

9 out of 10 times you know it is advertising... on a blog you never know as there is no way to know. Google warned about this a long time ago, likely because they remember how the FTC reatced to sponsored links when Se's tried to disguise they were paid advertising, It is the law... bloggers aren't above it.

I agree .If blogs visitors know the posts they read are paid It won't change anything to the perception they have of the bloggers. Quite the contrary, bloggers need to know, regarding the way and the reasons they write their posts, the perception the readers have of them.

[megri]

I do not think its easy to identify the paid and free posts

[SteveGerencser]

Terry, I think you are missing my point..

I used to publish a game review magazine in the late 80s early 90s.. All reviews are paid for in some way.. Directly or indirectly.. Do a good review and you stood a better chance of getting advertising money or more product to review.. I've had companies pull adverts because of bad reviews.. And I have seen companies increase advertising for good reviews..

I know everyone wants to pretend that money does not influence reviews.. But it does, always, at some level..

But then I also think that anyone reading a review on a blog and not just assuming that it is paid for is naive..

[douger]

Looks like "big brother" is coming. Soon.

[rdarling]

This is a good topic and one that will increase over time IMO. I the travel industry, writers have been getting "fam" trips (paid trips) and then they write nice glowing articles. The same thing is happening with blogs - and I am blogger and huge fan myself. There are several problems, of course, many of which have already been mentioned. None of us is an independent as we think we are, when someone else is paying the bill.

All around, I would rather see sponsors offer NPR-type support to those who cover their industry, rather than pay them for fluff pieces on their specific products, services, destinations. Give the quality blogger some real income and support so s/he can be an investigative reporter and afford to pay for their own trips/stuff.

Otherwise, the blogger should have a little icon on every post that links back to a page explaining the compensation received for said trip/stuff. That way readers can understand and use all available information, and Google too can do as it wishes.

When everyone is just straight up, it's a win for all parties. I am so tired of advertisers (and their co-conspirators) masking the reality of the situation, People can handle the truth - and in many cases it actually adds to the story.

[rdarling]

@Feydakin - people are not necessarily naive. I was reading a travel blog recently and she talked of getting laid off, and decided, what the heck, I am going to get away to Hawaii to deal with all this turmoil. She went, and has written several lyrical posts about all her excursions and hotels, etc - with links of course. Very personal, from the heart - she is a great writer and has a loyal fan base. But she blogs about all kinds of stuff, not just travel. And because it is so personal, I really doubt anyone knows that her entire trip to hawaii was paid for by a tourism organization. It sure does not come across as a "review." I think that slows down progress in communication and marketing.

The agency should be proud to support aka sponsor bloggers, and bloggers should stop pretending they are immune to editorial standards of disclosure. If a big company did this - like Walmart did with its fake videoblogger/RV across america tour a few years back - they would (and did!) get nailed for it in public.

[LinksAndTraffic]

Looks like they are after paid posts. Unfortunately, this statement 'Many have turned to the blogosphere, offering cash and products to amateur journalists in exchange for glowing reviews about their products.' implies that they have paid all review articles with the same brush

I think google wants to penalize advertorials in blogs, but the trick is to be able to identify those advertorials through the google algorithm.

Personally, I think it would be extremely difficult to identify a paid review versus an unpaid review.

Matt Cutts of Google fame is always saying that Google does not want to tinker with individual websites in its search results... Instead, when it identifies a problem, Google seeks to find a common thread between problem sites in its search results, and then they try to adjust its algorithm to automatically solve the problem.

This is the challenge of finding a solution to paid reviews... What is the common thread that Google can identify as the string that holds together the paid blog review universe?? That pesky string theory is always a pain in the arse.

I suspect that any algorithmic solution would only be effective for finding sites that provide paid product reviews in every post. However, if a blogger is smart and only occasionally promotes a particular product, then it would be nearly impossible for google's algorithm to identify the paid reviews from the given reviews...

And the blogger who sells every blog post likely does not have much of an audience anyway...

As to your main question, how does google penalize a paid review in a blog? I don't believe that "penalize" is the correct word... I think the more appropriate description would be "ignore".

[Terry Van Horne]

Terry, I think you are missing my point..

But then I also think that anyone reading a review on a blog and not just assuming that it is paid for is naive..I missed it a bit but comparing a magazine to a blog is well... a stretch as to how aware the user is that what they are reading may or not be affected/biased by cash. In a magazine I know there is a chance what I'm reading may have been influenced by cash. I could assume all blogs are influenced that way but isn't that contrary to what the bloggers are saying and I know that I must be naive but I assume a blogger flogging a product is doing so free of bias, if they aren't then they better tell me or I will feel duped, I think it's an honor system. Bloggers are pretty much saying they want to continue to deceive the users, I think that's whacked and only results in people losing trust in what they read on the net.

[SteveGerencser]

Viral Conversations ? Get People Talking About Your Products and Services (http://www.viralconversations.com/)

[Villa]

Pardon my "newbieness" but I'd like to share some of my friends' experiences.

I think the issue about paid posts and Google's dislike for them has been around for more than two years. Many of my blogging friends didn't think much of it and have continued posting paid posts without using the no follow tag. Some of them however have lost their page ranks and they think it is because of their paid posting activities. One friend has shared though that it took some time for Google to catch up with her.

I don't know how Google is doing it but it seems they are after those who have paid posts in their blogs.