Adam Lasnik (a.k.a miniMatt) warns on Paid Links

[scanmonkey]

Is google about to crack down on paid text links?

I found this on http://www.seroundtable.com/

Adam Lasnik, of Google, wrote in a WebmasterWorld thread saying;

Advertising's fine
Buying links for PR: bad
Google senses much ;)

[stymiee]

Google has always said doing anything to manipulate their SERPs is a no-no. This really shouldn't be a surprise.

[incrediblehelp]

I seen Adam Lasnik post here before. Hopefully he can post more on this in detail, but stymiee is right, Google has always voiced hatred fro paid links for PR reasons.

Now you tell me how they can tell the difference in buying for PR reason and for traffic reason and you will win a gold star.

[scanmonkey]

I don't believe that the google algorithm can detect paid links, or at the least detect the difference in buying for PR reason and for traffic reason. The web guerilla has guessed that Google has dealt with paid links by hand manipulation at Forbes.com last March.

So does Google plan to roll out a new algorithm just before the Holidays that can detect purchased links?

Btw, I see that Matt Cutts has left a comment here

[incrediblehelp]

So does Google plan to roll out a new algorithm just before the Holidays that can detect purchased links?

LOL, they have been doing it every year, why not this one. I will guess November 4-5, right over the weekend, as usual.

[scanmonkey]

So does Google plan to roll out a new algorithm just before the Holidays that can detect purchased links?

LOL, they have been doing it every year, why not this one. I will guess November 4-5, right over the weekend, as usual.

I'm guessing that a new algo update is in the works as I am seeing some experimenting across datacenters.

Perhaps an algo update to coincide with a PR update.

Kind of funny that Adam Lasnik is raising this topic just before an update is due.

The main point I want to get across is that in 1-2 minutes, it was easy to tell whether a site was (over)doing reciprocal links or trying to buy links. One site said: “we used to be doing okay last year, but for some reason we’re just not doing as well this year.” And I was able to tell them why: they had no spam penalties, but Google is getting better at handling paid links, and the paid links that might have helped them last year just weren’t doing them any good now.

Matt Cutts Blog

Bid Daddy seems to handle reciprocal links, but, handling paid links is the question?

[incrediblehelp]

Bid Daddy seems to handle reciprocal links, but, handling paid links is the question?

Right this is the problem with the whole "paid links" things. I happen to buy a link from http://cbs.sportsline.com/ and link to my jersey website because I know the traffic is qualified and going to lead to sales. Now I should get penalized because http://cbs.sportsline.com/ may have a great PR? No, no, no....

Its Google responsibility to accurately identify paid links for the purpose of PR/ranking gains and if they have to do it by hand so be it, but I doubt it. That is why regular old webmasters that are doing everything right are asking "what happen Google?".

[scanmonkey]

W3C is selling links on PR9 pages in exchange $1000 and Matt Cutts in a recent September 26, 2006 interview has said that Google does consider it a violation of our quality guidelines to sell links that affect search engines.

W3C has now placed a meta "INDEX, NOFOLLOW" meta tag on the page.

Have they been warned by Google??? READ BELOW

I've said this before in a few places, but I'm happy to clarify. Google does consider it a violation of our quality guidelines to sell links that affect search engines. If someone wanted to sell links purely for visitors, there are a myriad number of ways to do it that don't affect search engines. You could have paid links do an internal redirect, and then block that redirecting page in robots.txt. You could add the rel="nofollow" attribute to a link, which tells search engines that you can't or don't want to vouch for the destination of a link. The W3C decided to add a "INDEX, NOFOLLOW" meta tag to their sponsor page, which has the benefits that the sponsor page can show up in search engines and that users receive nice static links that they can click on, but search engines are not affected by the outlinks on that page. All of these approaches are perfectly fine ways to sell links, and are within our quality guidelines.

"There's nothing wrong with purchasing an ad on a website that links back to your website. Advertising your site is good. Advertising it on popular sites where your target market hangs out is even better." Buying Text Links
by Jill Whalen

It's really up to the search engines to figure this out in their algorithm. Why is advertising bad. Its a $$$ vote for the site and the site owner is putting his money where his mouth is. That's my opionion. It's also my opinion that Google can't figure this out algorithmicaly and they are ticked off.

I see a lot of .edu sites selling links or page adds for between $30 to $100 a month. In effect you are buying “trust” and “authority”.

Perhaps Adam Lasnik can add some comments.

[flanok]

The only way I can see Google dealing with paid links is
1/ Manually. Sites that advertise the fact. If we can find them I am sure Google will invest a few hours finding themselves.
2/ Where a high perentage of your links have the same anchor text. If you buy 1000 links, it is liekly all these will have the same anchor text. Google probably knows how many diferent variations of anchor text there normall would be if these were created naturally. I have a site where 98% of its backinks are exactly the same. its does well in MSN and Yahoo (in fact number one on a competative search term) but terrible in Google.

However if you have a private deal with a website, that does not advertise the fact and it is a single link comming to you, I can't ever see how they can decide it is a paid link.

Mark

[aaron2005]

There is not reason why a paid link can not be a strong link if it comes from a trusted source. I believe paid links to game search engines are devalued when found just as they should be. Paid links that accurately describe a website in a like cocitation should be fine. It's all about honesty and trust, a really simple equation if you are aware.