Hidden links
Most people understand hidden text is something like white text on a white background, and know to steer clear of it. Let me show you an example of a hidden link. Normally a hidden link could be in several forms:
- hidden text that also happens to be hyperlinked, e.g. white text on a white background, and the text is a link
- using CSS to make hyperlinks that are tiny, like 1 pixel high text
- hiding links in something like the period in the middle of a paragraph of text
Now there’s nothing bad about changing the style of a link to some degree, but let me show you an example of going overboard. Here’s a paragraph of text on a site that I recently saw:
You see the two normal hyperlinks, right? Do you see any other links in this paragraph? A user wouldn’t see any other links, even if they moused over every word in the paragraph. But if you happened to click on just the right word, you’d get whisked away to a hardcore porn site. Here, I’ll show you what you’d see in the instant after clicking on the hidden link, right before you head to the porn site:
See how the word “mission” has a little box around it? It’s a hidden link. If you view the source of the page, here’s what you’ll see. I’ve highlighted the relevant link:
Someone went to a fair amount of trouble to hide the porn site link. The status bar gets set to empty using the onMouseOver action, so when you mouse over the link, you don’t see that it goes anywhere. And the style of the link is set so that the cursor doesn’t change when you mouse over the link as well. In my opinion, this is a good example of a link that crosses over into deceptiveness and violates our quality guidelines.
As long as we’re talking about links, this seems like a pretty good opportunity to talk about a simple litmus test for paid links and how to tell if a paid link violates search engines’ quality guidelines. If you want to sell a link, you should at least provide machine-readable disclosure for paid links by making your link in a way that doesn’t affect search engines. There’s a ton of ways to do that. For example, you could make a paid link go through a redirect where the redirect url is robot’ed out using robots.txt. You could also use the rel=nofollow attribute. I’ve said as much many times before, but I wanted to give a heads-up because Google is going to be looking at paid links more closely in the future.
The other best practice I’d advise is to provide human readable disclosure that a link/review/article is paid. You could put a badge on your site to disclose that some links, posts, or reviews are paid, but including the disclosure on a per-post level would better. Even something as simple as “This is a paid review” fulfills the human-readable aspect of disclosing a paid article. Google’s quality guidelines are more concerned with the machine-readable aspect of disclosing paid links/posts, but the Federal Trade Commission has said that human-readable disclosure is important too:
“The petition to us did raise a question about compliance with the FTC act,” said Mary K. Engle, FTC associate director for advertising practices. “We wanted to make clear . . . if you’re being paid, you should disclose that.”
To make sure that you’re in good shape, go with both human-readable disclosure and machine-readable disclosure, using any of the methods I mentioned above.
g1smd Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 2:28 pm
Google let the Linking Genie out of the bottle, and now it is proving hard to get it back in there.
Hopefully your words aren’t falling on deaf ears. There are still a lot of people dreaming up “linking schemes”.
yves Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 2:33 pm
Interesting, thanks.
“Google is going to be looking at paid links”. It’s a real change and a good news for many “little” webmasters
Matt Cutts Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 2:45 pm
g1smd, I don’t think this will fall on deaf ears. Good disclosure on the web is good for anyone that processes data on the web, not to mention that it’s good for users and surfers as well.
yves, I agree that more action on paid links will tend to help mom/pop webmasters.
Chaaban Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 2:50 pm
Well interesting maybe … but it does mean less money for webmasters …
graywolf Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 2:53 pm
“Make pages for users, not for search engines.”
Are you going to be adjusting your guidelines to reflect this change in opinion?
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769
Deceptive links break that rule but so does adding machine readable disclosure you speak of.
JohnMu Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 2:58 pm
What bothers me about nofollows is that the normal user does not recognize them. They don’t see any difference at all, but for the search engines it is not a normal link, it is a signal that the webmaster does not trust the other party. That is, in my opinion, also a form of “hiding links”.
How would the average Wikipedia user feel if they knew that the Wikipedia does not trust any of the resources they link to and use as references?
graywolf Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 2:58 pm
oh and don’t forget
“Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”
Chaaban Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 3:01 pm
Graywolf try to understand that if google can be better , it will help the web community .
If all people start buying links and backlinks is one of the top factor in S.E , Google will be worthless in term of results and all top results will be SPAM or BS .
Joe Tamargo Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 3:08 pm
Hey Matt -
Here is a question
kinda on / off topic
what is the deal with “tags” on your own site linking to inner pages of your own site…
Is this ok?
For example, I just started a totally clean, white hat site,
I am taking all my years of personal plumbing experience and putting them on the web ( My own website )
I just recently added a tag system to help users find stuff faster
My site is http://www.plumberhelper.com
Is the “tags” or “tag cloud” hurting me?
Second question
will buying text link ads from places like text-link-ads.com hurt me
Please advise if you can
Happy Saturday!
Great pic of the cat in the last post
Joe
Bob Gladstein Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 3:10 pm
This may seem like an odd question, but I assure you there’s a real world example: what should I do about an unpaid link that looks like it must be a paid link? The word “sponsor” even appears directly above it. Its purpose is twofold: to promote a site owned by a friend of the owner of the site that’s linking out, and to suggest to users that the opportunity to sponsor other sections of the site (with real paid links) is available to them.
I don’t want to tell Google that it’s a paid link via some machine-readable indicator, because it isn’t. Its real purpose is to recommend a site to the reader. I could take away the “sponsored” note, but it’s a banner. It’s going to appear to be an advertisement anyway.
Kenneth (Dreyer Media) Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 3:14 pm
Hi there Matt,
How about links hidden in div’s with zero height?
graywolf Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 3:19 pm
Chaban so it’s ok if google pulls a “because I’m the mommy and I say so” with you? You’re ok with people telling you to do one thing and then really doing something completely different because it makes the web community “better”?
Where I’m from we call that “hypocrisy” not “better”.
Matt Cutts Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 3:34 pm
JohnMu, this is a post that shows an easy way to make nofollow links visible:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seeing-nofollow-links/
graywolf, you seem to be interpreting “Make pages for users, not for search engines” to mean quite literally “don’t ever do even a single thing on a page except for users” and since I helped draft our quality guidelines, I can say with 100% certainty that that’s not the intended spirit of that phrase.
Users don’t see meta tags, but they can be helpful. Users don’t care about whether a page is well-formed or validates, but writing valid code makes a page easier to maintain going forward. Providing disclosure for paid links is a good practice according to the FTC and Google, and I think most people can understand the logic behind that guideline, even if they disagree with it.
William Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 3:45 pm
graywolf, I laugh at you.
Read about the “Semantic Web”.
1 Reason why we use XML/XHTML: Computer software can read it.
The audience of a web page isn’t just our traditional “user”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web
JohnMu Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 3:46 pm
I can see the nofollows, but the average user can’t — and even if they could see them, they wouldn’t understand what they mean. I am certain that even the majority of the active webmasters don’t know what they mean. Does the nofollow even mean the same as they used to in the beginning? That is something that has to be cleaned up. (why is that link to your page nofollowed? :-))
PS whatever happened to your neat image in the top right?
graywolf Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 3:59 pm
>you seem to be interpreting “Make pages for users, not for search engines” to mean quite literally “don’t ever do even a single thing on a page except for users”
So we’re going to say what Google says isn’t really what Google means, instead it’s open to interpretation? Wow that’s a slippery slope to get on quite so early. Can we apply this “loose” interpretation to other things like Google’s cloaking policy too, I seem to remember that being a lot more by the book than by the spirit or intent.
Matt Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 4:00 pm
Well, at least in IE7, you can’t set the text on the Status bar, anymore…
Matt Cutts Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 4:19 pm
JohnMu, I got dugg one day and the image was slowing things down, so I took it off. I never got around to putting it back up.
graywolf, you have disclosed when you did paid posts with phrases like “This post has been a paid review” and “The preceding post has been a paid review” so I’m assuming that your objection is to providing machine-readable disclosure when you do paid links? I’ve been pointing out that paid links should be done in such a way that they don’t affect search engines for years, so I wouldn’t think this post is that surprising to you. The only thing that’s especially new in this post is the info that Google will be turning more attention to paid links in the future.
recep Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 4:20 pm
What about hidden texts in web sites ? l was also using hiddent text on my olde sites like about 2 years ago, they were also good ways if you want to hide some keywords, also l may say l was tring to cheat the crawlers with that. :p
But nowaways these techniques are very dengerouse and google can very easyly take you our of the line. and we dont try black seo : ) Thanks for the article. its great.
graywolf Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 4:59 pm
While I don’t think human readable disclosure should be a law, I think it’s a good idea. When I do paid reviews, I do disclose them, I’ve actually rejected about 40% of them for one reason or another, kind of like the Yahoo directory.
I’m pretty sure I’ve pointed out this hypocritical and arbitrary interpretation and selective implementation of “web justice” on many occasions and the adhocracy that’s been unintentionally created, so it’s not a surprise to me. Now we both know you can “scare” a lot of people into compliance with the occasional post like this, which to be quite honest we both know makes Google job that much easier.
NetMidWest Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 5:02 pm
Matt, what is that litmus test? If it’s paid, it violates the guidelines? All search engines? All paid links?
You then go on to say
This seems confusing… one could simply add a comment in the source code, but you are asking that webmasters not affect the search engines. Seems to me I remember websites linking out long before Google was around… the only thing that has changed is that Google exists. Larry and Sergey created the Google algo partially based on the fact that webmasters do link to one another… it does not seem that they were concerned with paid or unpaid links at the time.
It’s kind of like the 302 hijack problem - it was a perfectly valid method of clicktracking, but now we must utilize methods to keep Google from screwing the site linked to, because Google refuses to fix their own problem once and for all… just like paid links, not everyone will block robots, not everyone will use 301’s, and not everyone will follow the advice given as a defense against the exploit (linking relatively is perfectly valid, but due to the problem, one should link absolutely and use a 301 redirect to a www or non-www version). The problem is Google, not the webmaster… Google prefers the 302 status code producing url to the actual source given in the header, and eventually dumps the redirect target site.
Another thing: I don’t really see anything about links in the FTC statement, just endorsements and reviews, which I can agree with. I think most surfers are smart enough to understand that a simple link out to another site may be a reference or endorsement - paid or not. It seems the search engines are the ones having problems telling the difference. Google assumes all links are an endorsement of some type. There may also be many usable, acceptable references, and payment may make the difference in which one gets used.
Matt Cutts Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 5:05 pm
recep, hidden text is bad for users and search engines alike; Search engines have gotten better about lots of different types of spam, so I’m glad to hear that you’ve stopped doing that.
Aaron Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 5:17 pm
I have to date thought of “rel=nofollow” as an indicator that I can’t vouch for a site. I don’t know that search engine algorithms will lose much information if paid links are marked with “rel=nofollow”, but if a redirect URL is used it has the potential to deprive the algorithms of information about the editorial integrity of the site.
Let’s imagine, for example, a popular website which runs a pay-for-inclusion directory. I can see how it would benefit a search engine to know which sites were added for free due to their being deemed highly valuable, as opposed to those which were included because they paid a fee for inclusion. Discriminate use of “rel=nofollow” would pass that information along to the algorithm, but a redirect probably won’t.
Perhaps there should be a “rel=paid” standard? That way a directory which is comprised of links from an outside source (e.g., DMOZ) combined with editor-selected free links and pay-for-inclusion links could identify each source (the third party links by “rel=nofollow” and the paid links with “rel=paid”). (And what of the barely exercised editorial discretion reserved by some major pay-for-inclusion directories? Does that exempt them from having to tag their links?)
Chris Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 5:23 pm
Matt,
Will this effect the shady beacon links that so many analytic companies are doing for their free versions of their software. Those seem like hidden links to me. Most inexperienced users don’t even know the software is placing links.
ted sullivan Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 5:30 pm
I have a FREE directory. How do I make sure Google knows it is free? You say don’t do this or don’t do that. How about just telling us what to do to be clear it is free. Maybe put a feature in the webmaster tools.
It just seems to me Matt that you are dancing on a pin. How can anybody at your office be 100% sure it is paid or free.
Give us a simple obvious fool proof way to say it is free/paid and then maybe more people will trust your colleagues algorithms.
Johnny Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 5:39 pm
Thanks Matt for the info
JLH Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 5:41 pm
Matt Cutts, As far as hidden links go, most of the time when I’ve seen them, they’ve been “injected” in the site by somebody other than the webmaster…hacking, shady SEO, shady designer…etc. In the case of hidden links, this may be a good example of when Google should notify the webmaster and not just penalize and ruin the site. It may be just as much of a surprise to the owner of the site as the person that found it.
Graywolf, cloaking is alive and doing well in the index. Found two yesterday, entire site require log-in to view any content that was shown in the snippet.
feedthebot.com Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 5:53 pm
Hello Matt,
Thank you for the clear and descriptive example.
One other thing.
the nofollow instruction as you have explained it multiple times, still to this day does not exsist in any official Google source.
Please please have someone include it have you seen the thing I wrote last Decmber about this?
http://feedthebot.blogspot.com/2006/12/matt-cutts-we-nofollow-what-you-mean.html
Sorry, was and is a pet peeve of mine that you make recommendations on your blog, yet tell people that your blog should not be considered an official resource.
Take care and thanks for all the posts your poor in-laws had thousands of people waiting for them to leave and that is funny.
aaron wall Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 6:03 pm
>Providing disclosure for paid links is a good practice according to the FTC and Google
Why do Google’s pay per action text ads only display disclosure after scrolled over? pot kettle etc
Carsten Cumbrowski Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 6:06 pm
shoot, please delete this and my comment above.
the comment was meant for this post.
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-to-report-paid-links/
I added it there already again. Thanks
I am Sorry for the inconvenience.
Halfdeck Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 6:15 pm
People just don’t believe paid links can be detected, so tagging them with nofollow would be like admitting I stole something when no one in the world knows I did.
Is nofollow used to help Google detect paid links, or are they there to protect my site from getting penalized?
I understand why Google is pro-nofollow at this point, but in the long run, I think it would be better if Google neutralized paid links algorithmically. That would prevent selling/buying sites from being penalized (IMO they should be) but then again they also won’t be gaining anything..
Matt Cutts Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 6:23 pm
“Matt, what is that litmus test?” NetMidWest, paid links should provide some form of machine-readable disclosure (e.g. redirect through a url that is forbidden by robots.txt) so that search engines aren’t affected by the paid link. Human-readable disclosure is good, but not required to abide by Google’s quality guidelines.
ted sullivan, if you run a free directory then I wouldn’t worry about this issue.
Happy to help, Johnny.
JLH, we’re going to be reaching out to the site that had these links in my example, so we’ll be trying to communicate with them about these particular links.
feedthebot.com, that’s good feedback. I’ll ask Vanessa and see if someone on her team might have time to look at adding more to the documentation. Thanks for mentioning that!
aaron wall, those links do provide both human- and machine-readable disclosure (mouseover alerts people and the link goes through a redirect). See the image from http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/012809.html as well if people are interested. If you’ve got a suggestion for how to improve the disclosure on those links, I’ll definitely mention it to that team though.
Carsten, I’ll go ahead and delete the comment then. I hate it when I lose comments I’ve typed, whether it be because of a reboot or some weirdness on a web page.
graywolf Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 6:28 pm
>paid links should provide some form of machine-readable disclosure
C’mon that’s the exact opposite of what’s written in the guidelines, they say don’t do anything differently if you’d do it just for the search engines.
Asia Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 6:49 pm
“g1smd, I don’t think this will fall on deaf ears. Good disclosure on the web is good for anyone that processes data on the web, not to mention that it’s good for users and surfers as well.”
The FCC has always used these same rules for broadcasting, a good example would be political advertisements. When I was in broadcasting, I used to laugh when we voiced over the “paid for by blah…” lines, cause they were sometimes inaudible. I hardly find the FTC’s decision to monitor links and paid advertising as a suprise - it was only a matter of time before it became a rule. I wonder if they will eventually get around to rules on payola, it’s essentially the same thing well, slightly different.
Matt: In regards to the Hidden Link structure, often times a website utilizing CS S may keep links such as “html lists” in the same color - many current news websites utilize these form of lists - such as golf dot com - the Top stories listing, it’s indistinguishable by glance until you highlight over it. We utilize it in some our websites as well. Would this be looked over since they are linked to our own website? Or is hitting a gray line somewhere? We utilize similar link structures to highlight over an entire “article excerpt” - the links are in the same color as natural text. Should this form of CSS design be forgotten as well?
feedthebot.com Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 6:51 pm
Greywolf,
excellent, excellent and excellent point
Aaron Pratt Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 7:11 pm
I have no problem with following clearly stated rules for ranking in Google.
Clearly
Stated
Rules
Graywolf and others - Think of it this way, if it is ok to buy youself into organic search via paid links your SEO would be easily crushed by those who have larger budgets, right?
EGOL Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 7:30 pm
I read a lot of info for webmasters and this is the first time I have heard about the FCC wanting paid links marked…. so it would not surprise me if an awful lot of webmasters are totally in the dark on this topic.
I would like to see the Search Engines cooperate with the FCC and come up with some clearly illustrated guidelines for linking and disclosure. Helpful would be acceptable methods for designating the links for both machines and humans. It would be nice to see the “Bible” on this - published early - so folks can do what is needed and get on with business and pleasure.
Are affiliate sites covered by this if they are pay after action rather than paid links upfront? What if I have an image link that is nofollowed and the image has the word “sponsor” on it (but not in text that machine would read)?
I can see a lot of affiliate sites that will need some major creative work done on them.
Matt Cutts Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 7:40 pm
Asia, I wouldn’t worry about menus that use mouseovers to reveal options. I gave that hidden link example to show the sorts of things that people should definitely avoid.
By the way, bonus points for mentioning the FCC in addition to the FTC. The FTC was the agency that had the staff opinion about clear disclosure of paid reviews. But the FCC also recently announced some fines to send a message about payola, e.g. see here:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9521092
From that article: ” The Federal Communications Commission announces the details of a settlement with four of the nation’s largest radio broadcasters — Clear Channel, CBS Radio, Citadel and Entercom — over the practice of payola, the practice of accepting payment from record labels to air their artists without disclosing that arrangement to listeners.”
Dave (Original) Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 8:14 pm
RE: “Most people understand hidden text is something like white text on a white background, and know to steer clear of it”
=========================================
I don’t agree with that Matt. IMO “most people” (Webmasters) pay a “SEO” to boost their rankings and have no clue what has been done to achieve this. Why doesn’t Google treat the illness (black hat SEO) and not the symptoms (sites who paid for SEO) who they no doubt found via a Google search?
BTW, there are VERY few SEO out there that always stay within Google’s guidelines and thus are black hat.
Dave (Original) Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 8:19 pm
Graywolf, the 2 quotes;
“Make pages for users, not for search engines”
and
“Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”
*Re-enforces* Matts’ post and doesn’t need changing. How can a user know to click a link if it’s hidden??
Tony Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 10:02 pm
Wouldn’t it be better as described up above to have more rel tags?
“Paid”
“Untrusted”
“Trusted”
“Comment”
“Designer”
I am sure there could be others as well each one would give a clearer reason for the link. Some people say nofollow means untrusted but what if you trust the site but don’t want to get caught in some reciprocal linking scheme or something?
Dave (Original) Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 10:35 pm
RE “Wouldn’t it be better as described up above to have more rel tags?”
=========================================
You mean rely on dishonest people to be honest? These people profit from being dishonest, so I can’t see them getting morals anytime soon.
SEO Mash Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 10:44 pm
In all other forms of media the line between paid promotion and non-paid is virtually non-existent in many cases. Certainly the Coca-Cola cups that Paula and Simon drink out of on American Idol are paid placements, but to the best that my eyesight allows on my HDTV the cups are not labeled as such. Morning DJs extol the virtues of their new Cingular phones, but again no statement is made that their comments are part of a paid plug. General Motors likely paid a king’s ransom to have their vehicles used exclusively in the upcoming Transformers movie, but somehow I doubt there will be a disclaimer at the beginning of the film. Anyway, you get the idea …
Paid sponsorships are worked into the media we are exposed to in many natural ways without anyone batting an eye. Why does Google feel the need to create a different set of rules for on-line media? Can it be anything other than the fact that paid links ruin the basis of the natural linking strategy that their algorithm is based upon?
Walter Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 10:46 pm
I am not changing anything. Google is not the end all be all.
Reader Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 10:56 pm
1. Would it not be easier if google just decides that all SEO is bad? Since SEO is obviously there to influence the ranking for search engines. Or is the difference just in the word “paid”? because google wants more people to use adsense instead of paid links. I agree, maybe there should be a “rel=paid” attribute.
2. There are a lot of directories that obviously charge for linking to external sites, so will google be banning all these sites? Why is Yahoo any different since they also charge a fee for review/inclusion yearly? Will all directories need to have a nofollow attribute?
3. I “bought” a link and used black on black, but it was for CREATIVE reasons (to get traffic) rather than to trick google. I don’t even care about the backlink in this instance. So will my site be penalized or banned because of this or will the PR just not count toward the site.
Reader Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 11:02 pm
One more question: Do sites get penalized for having the word LINK in the url?
LaCabra Said,
April 14, 2007 @ 11:22 pm
Dear Matt,
I’m going to be very direct and hope you can appreciate what I am about to say.
I find it quite interesting that Google is trying to tackle the “paid link” problem, yet for 3 years I have complained and submitted spam reports regarding some blatant violations (3 different URLs ,owned by by a publically traded company, with the exact page content on all URLs - ie: styles,graphics,copy) and have yet to see ANYTHING done about it.
Furthermore, your PageRank (PR) algo is completely flawed. Although the intial concept was valid and remains such,”the importance of a page”, Google has managed to create a commodity out of PageRank. People buy and sell links based on PageRank “vanity”. I see MFA sites with higher PRs than sites owned by govermental bodies or associations. I can’t understand how your algo can’t differentiate between MFA sites and sites of governing bodies in a particular niche and assign PR based on their true merit and status.
Additional, as back-links are a major factor in the Google SERPs algo, Google is once again creating a commodity. There are literally dozens of schemes and networks out there promoting link building (paid and free). Folks are gaming social sites in order to game the Google algo. Unfortunately I can’t see it changing for the better. Do you have any idea as to how many useless link directories are out there and being launched daily? Thats a dirrevative of the Google algo! How about Tags/Cloud sites?
Spend a little time on Yahoo … you will see that their SERPs are substantially better now than G’s SERPs!
If you are so inclined to investigate the issue discussed in my first paragraph, please feel free to email me.
Bill Platt Said,
April 15, 2007 @ 12:01 am
I have always used “text-decoration:none” on my sites, because I just think it looks better. Are you suggesting now that I can be penalized for not putting the underline on my text links??
Rupert Bowling Said,
April 15, 2007 @ 12:02 am
Matt,
I hear what you say, but it many respects “paid links” are honest and clean compared to some of the methos still working on google:
For expample my link here links.
I even see these being cloaked and working.
Would it not be better to get those out first? If not why not?
Nick - I think the original Nick here. Said,
April 15, 2007 @ 12:08 am
I don’t see why it’s okay for Google to make money from search but it’s not okay for webmasters to make money from selling links. I mean look at the new ads on the Google search page. The lighter colour on the ads that appear above the results is a subtle change but I’m sure Google is making much more money for their “paid links” without any benefit to the regular user. There paid ads in a really light colour before you get to the real search results? Come on. Who are we kidding here?
Besides, the people that care about quality and so on will follow these rules. The people that try to game the system are going to break the rules anyway, so what’s the point?
The worst part of this will be the poor bastard that has no clue about SEO and doesn’t read these blogs. He’ll probably be the one paying the price for Google having to punish paid links.
I guess my point is that Google is the one with the billions of dollars so they should figure this out on their own. Leave the webmasters alone to create their sites and make money any way they legally can. Paid links are not tricking the user in the way that hidden links are.
Hidden links are bad. Paid links are the right of the webmaster and it’s up to Google to deal with it in their own way. The way I see it, it’s a person’s site. It’s their content. Google makes money from ads when it displays the site in the search results. So if they want to sell ads or space on the site, shouldn’t it be their right to monazite that in the best way for them?
Those are my two cents in any case.
Jim Said,
April 15, 2007 @ 2:43 am
To be honest since the first part of your guidelines is “Make pages for users, not for search engines.” and I truely believe that is the way to go, I find it better to sell text links than having adsense on my pages, for the simple reason that I have editorial control over the ads I put on my site. I don’t sell links to sites that I don’t like but I can’t block every crap site advertising using adwords. Of course as you said there are ways to make those links non readable by the SEs however you forget one thing. That is possible only for big websites or network of sites that can relatively easily find direct advertisers, what about the small sites? If it was so easy finding advertisers people wouldn’t use places like Text-Link-Ads paying 50% commissions. So in reality this will hurt the small sites where webmasters prefer to have control over the advertising that appears on their sites. In addition to that I really doubt that this will have an effect on bigger websites that are buying and selling links. Are you going to ban every newspaper on the net since almost all of them are selling links, every blog network etc? Even if you do how long will it take for it to get unbanned? I would guess a day or two (like BMW). The ones that are going to get hurt are the Mypersonalblogwhereiselladvertisingtocovertheexpenses.com type of sites.
Tim Wintle Said,
April 15, 2007 @ 2:47 am
Matt,
Clearly most pay-per posts are designed for getting links, so many people are not going to follow your advice. That means you are going to have to come up with another clever algorithm to detect paid links, but I hope that you test it very hard against false positives, as links are so important now, it would be unfortunate to loose out on some PR because the massive blog that did an article on your new site looked (to a machine) like it could be a paid link.
Similarly, I can think of many cases where I have designed links that are the same colour as the text on the page for design purposes. While they may not be in the middle of continuous text, they may be in the same P tag, separated by just a BR (for tagging, references, etc). Simple example but I am sure you can think of more.
Just to make things clear:
a) Is the hidden link detection run supervised, or can we expect some false positives?
b) Same question, only for detecting paid links.
c) If a site sells links, do the other links on the site still carry PR, or is the penalty imposed site-wide.
d) Are sites selling paid links seen as spammy sites in the same way as link farms, i.e. could the site being linked to incur a penalty, or just not have that link counted.
Lee Mccoy Said,
April 15, 2007 @ 3:38 am
I’m interested to find a definitive view of “paid links” in the Google sense.
Does it just mean “paid for a post or article”?
Does it mean “I’ve been paid $100 for this text link”
Does it mean “This is an affiliate link, I’ll earn 3% of what you spend”?
Or is it one or more of them?
It’s just that there’s many different ways that a webmaster could earn from a link.
DaveN Said,
April 15, 2007 @ 3:39 am
what about bigmouthmedia their homepage has always been like this
DaveN
DHN Said,
April 15, 2007 @ 6:23 am
Hi Matt
This is a bit offtopic too, but just thought of the question reding alle the comments regarding the hidden links.
I was searching google for something the other day and stumpled across a site not using hidden links, but using hidden H1. 75% of the page i was looking at was written in H1 and the styled down too look normal when viewing in the browser.
I’ve read the Google guidelines, and I believe this is not good ethics, but will they get punished for doing this or will google not be able to detect this.. ok the last question I know you won’t answer
I won’t put their link in here, but if you wan’t to have a closer look, just send me a mail and i’ll send you the link to the site.
Cheers
lots0 Said,
April 15, 2007 @ 8:36 am
Lame Matt, real lame.
Why don’t you guys just fix the problem (other “Lesser” search engines have…) instead of trying to get webmasters to do all of the work for you?
What about all that talk about google being able to detect paid links?
So I take it that, “Looking for linking patterns that suggest money is being exchanged for links” was a failure? I just gotta say it DUH!!!
You guys at google are so dedicated to your link analyzing algorithm that the real world is slipping by… Why try to keep an obviously flawed algo going? Why not work on some NEW ideas for a change?
tybi Said,
April 15, 2007 @ 8:48 am
What about hiding links like this?
Keyword
My competitor made about 20.000 webmasters to link to him like this.
And for my surprise Google is putting him higher and higher…
Rupert Bowling Said,
April 15, 2007 @ 8:53 am
mmm,
seems your code took out my noscript tags
tybi Said,
April 15, 2007 @ 8:56 am
Oops my previous post should be like this:
What about hiding links like this?
span style=”display:none;”
My competitor made about 20.000 webmasters to link to him like this.
And for my surprise Google is putting him higher and higher…
Dominykas Said,
April 15, 2007 @ 9:29 am
IMHO it is totally wrong for Google to request that we mark paid links. Real world example: I work in a dot com, we have an outside blog, which covers the topics related to our business. It’s not a big deal - but it is in my job description that I need to update that blog. Every now and than I include a link back to us - when it is relevant to what is getting blogged. I get my salary. I’m getting paid for including the link back to our main site. Is that wrong? Should we get punished for that? This is called advertising - and one of the reasons we do it - of course for google to pick it up. Most of bloggers/other sites would not EVER mention our website without getting paid - because we are in a niche market. And I am proud to say that people who are in our target market respect us - but they are not geeks, who blog and include links and share and open source and all that crap. They are businessmen, they are rats, and they rarelly tell their friends about our service - because they have good benefits out of it (sort of their business secret). So paid advertising is the only way for us - if we want to stay on top of link farms and scammers in the search results page.
I’m really angry about this “policy” of paid links from Google - I tend to see you as good guys. Why don’t you first weed out the bastards that create link farms, have hidden links etc etc - so that we, normal guys, don’t have to FIGHT (and go into the gray area) them just so we can survive. The paid links sometimes are the only way to do it.
Matt Cutts Said,
April 15, 2007 @ 10:31 am
“In all other forms of media the line between paid promotion and non-paid is virtually non-existent in many cases.” SEO Mash, I’d disagree with that. For example, newpapers/magazines have ads that are clearly distinguished, and ads that look like faux articles are often marked with “Advertisement.” Even if your statement were true, having clear disclosure on the web would still be a good thing for users and anyone that uses web data to provide a service.
LaCabra, I dropped you an email to get more details about the duplicate pages that you mentioned.
Bill Platt, my guess is that your links are quite different than the example I showed. You’re removing the underline, but you’re probably not changing the color to be the same as text, removing the mouseover messaging, and changing the cursor to look the same.
Rupert Bowling, I’d enjoy hearing more info; I’m not sure your links got encoded right. Ah, you commented later about noscript. Google does a pretty fine job of handling text noscript/noframes so that it doesn’t cause problems in scoring. If someone is putting text into a noframes section, I would avoid keyword stuffing, gibberish text, or trying to load the noframes/noscript section up though. Even though our scoring handles that well, users still don’t like it and complain to us like you did.
Tim Wintle, part of the reason that I asked for feedback in a later post was to collect data for testing out some new approaches. We would definitely take care in those approaches to make sure that a technique was doing what was intended and wanted.
Lee Mccoy, for now I’d be perfectly happy to get feedback on the “I paid $X for this link” variety, whether it be directly for a link or as part of a paid post/article/review.
DaveN, you might need to provide a longer comment; my DaveN->verbose English decoder ring is in the other room.
DHN, I dropped you an email to get a little more details. My guess is that our scoring algorithms handle this pretty well though.
lots0, part of the reason to put out a call for feedback is to test out some approaches that we’ve been looking at. We have been looking at some new ideas and wanted to try them out on some independent data.
tybi, the regular spam report is a great way to give us feedback on sites like that. I’d use your name “tybi” so that someone could look into it more.
Dominykas, just curious: is your blog on the same domain as your regular website? I wasn’t clear on whether your blog says “This is the Company X blog” or whether it was completely separate with no way for people to know that Company X was behind the blog.
tybi Said,
April 15, 2007 @ 11:00 am
Matt said:
tybi, the regular spam report is a great way to give us feedback on sites like that. I’d use your name “tybi” so that someone could look into it more.
Hmm, I did a report once few weeks ago but nothing hapenned… Now I did it the second time… Hope someone will have a look at it.
Thanks,
tybi
supersize-optimize Said,
April 15, 2007 @ 11:15 am
Ok, but what about those instances where you get free links on “free” directory sites like that of Ted Sullivans, but then down the road, those free sites now charge for a submission? That is now a paid link (as after that date, all new submissions would have to pay).
But I got it for free, before Ted or whomever got a decent amount of links in their directory and before their webmasters perhaps realised that their directory is turning out quite nice, filtering out the bad sites, etc - and that they could charge a little and maintain a bit of money to cover the work that they put into it. So even if the directory is working well, and is a nice tidy directory trying to keep resource available by charging a little, it becomes a bad link?
I think thats a dangerous area, as there is a lot of crossover. Same goes for sites in general. Whos to say they werent friends of mine who dropped me a link to say thanks, or liked an article, a tool, resource on my site, and so one. Or were they strangers who were in a similar industry, wanted a bit of money for the mention, and then dropped me a link to say thanks.
Directory links whether paid or free require effort, are done by a lot of “mom and pop” sites (as someone else called em) and deserve to be a factor in an algorithm. However, buying massive amounts of links in one go like via Textlinkads, etc, that appear as footer text links on loads of random websites, that is what needs to be patrolled better.
Joe Tamargo Said,
April 15, 2007 @ 11:47 am
Hey Matt,
Could you look at my site, and tell me the deal please, please
Danny Said,
April 15, 2007 @ 12:11 pm
Matt : “I wouldn’t worry about menus that use mouseovers to reveal options”
Does that include JS or CSS based menu/submenu systems that reveal all submenu links to Googlebot on each and every page while the submenu links remain invisible for JavaScript disabled browsers ?
Matt Cutts Said,
April 15, 2007 @ 12:36 pm
tybi, did you do the report to the authenticated form or the unauthenticated form? Please use your handle (”tybi”) as well. I checked the unauthenticated form, and the last tbyi report was from 12/31/2006; a German report about citybikes.
mblair Said,
April 15, 2007 @ 12:46 pm
Matt, I think one of the problems with this is that you are trying to draw a distinction between paid/editorial. While you are correct that newspapers that stake their reputation on the line, do draw this distinction on overtly paid advertisements, there are many ways in which money can buy placements in editorial contexts.
For example, it is common practice for newspaper editors to be more receptive to their larger advertisers when a press release passes over their desk. I think this is human nature at work.
How does all of this gray area between paid and unpaid translate to the web? Is the fact that money crosses hands the determinant factor, or is it the fact that editorial judgement was utilized? To give you an example:
Suppose that I run Google AdSense on my site, and Google pays me a check each month. Then suppose that I periodically post links to Google press releases that I find interesting — should I mark these as rel=”nofollow” because we have a financial relationship as well?
And if not, how is that different from some fellow that sells widgets that I love and strongly recommend, yet pays me a hundred dollars a month to make the link to his website larger, bolder and closer to the top. In this situation, isn’t it dishonest of me to annotate that link in a way that implies that I don’t vouch for it and am not willing to stake my reputation on it?
And if Google penalizes me for this, aren’t they making a misjudgment that in some small way negatively affects the SERPs?
Dominykas Said,
April 15, 2007 @ 1:13 pm
[quote]Dominykas, just curious: is your blog on the same domain as your regular website?[/quote]
It is on a separate domain, the blog is titled “A blog about Things in our Business”, the blog audience is much wider than our business target audience. Mostly because we ourselves are not willing to provide the services to everyone. It is a perfectly legitimate content website the way I see it. Yet we know that a) just by accident there will be people who don’t know our business (traffic) and b) obviously linking back to ourselves with keywords is good for SEO. It is our website, but we do not actively say that “this blog is created by company X, we do business” for several reasons. Think about it this way - Microsoft is giving free copies of their software to education institutions, so that the graduates will buy the product. Gray - sure, but is Google the one to judge this?
The point is that when starting a new business, a new website you have to get the incoming links if you want to do at least something. I have started a couple of websites this year (personal), and all of them had grown out of communities which already existed, so it was easy. But if I didn’t have that - I would need to go spamming digg, delicious and all other places just to get at least that one person who will tell about the website to someone else. Yet if the startup has a budget - what is wrong about paid links for search ratings?
I just want to reiterate - building up quality non-payed links is only possible between geeks and about services for geeks. The real world average Joe does not blog. He only searches. Do you imagine anyone linking to a funeral service website? A website which gives reviews of um… diapers? They simply won’t unless you pay them.
And don’t get offended - but I’m getting paranoid, as the only way to promote a business will be using AdWords in the searches OR black SEO tactics (i.e. going against Google’s guidelines, by, say, buying a blog article which does not use “nofollow”) - while I totally see google wanting that, but what about “Don’t be evil”?
tybi Said,
April 15, 2007 @ 1:36 pm
Matt:
“tybi, did you do the report to the authenticated form or the unauthenticated form? Please use your handle (”tybi”) as well. I checked the unauthenticated form, and the last tbyi report was from 12/31/2006; a German report about citybikes.”
It wasn’t me… (shaggy)
Few weeks ago I used unauthenticated form without “tybi”.
Today first time, I used unauthenticated form with “tybi”.
Today second time, I used authenticated form with “tybi”.
I hope this is enough :).
Anyway, I don’t understand how can be links hided like this:
tybi Said,
April 15, 2007 @ 1:40 pm
Anyway, I don’t understand how can be links hided like this:
span style=”display:none;”… being counted. Isn’t this clearly spamming?
tybi
Joel Strellner Said,
April 15, 2007 @ 2:30 pm
Can you guys create a new rel=…. tag? How about: rel=”paid”?
This would allow us to use the nofollow when we don’t trust the link and tell you that it is paid when it is paid. If it is paid we trust it (at least we should since we are linking to it), but need to disclose it.
This would solve both the trust issues and the paid issues.
Gath Said,
April 15, 2007 @ 3:28 pm
Tybi,
“Anyway, I don’t understand how can be links hided like this:
span style=”display:none;”… being counted. Isn’t this clearly spamming?”
I sometimes set up links/divs etc like this and have them made visible through javascript. The point being that I want some information available to the user, but only if they tick a box etc.
If google start handing out penalties based on this sort of thing, then I hope they make it *extremely* clear about what they are looking for.
Elaine Vigneault Said,
April 15, 2007 @ 3:36 pm
Here’s an idea: next time Google comes out with a new search engine that makes it easier for people to steal my content, how about they report that information to me, on my site? Please make it available in both human readable format and in bot-readable format. You have my email. Thanks.
Elaine Vigneault Said,
April 15, 2007 @ 3:44 pm
In case it’s not clear, my point is that trust goes both ways. The more Google gives in to advertising, the more they create searches and other tools that make it easy for people to steal content, the more Google behaves like an authoritarian telling web developers what to do, the more Google’s monopoly grows, the more ties Google has to disrespected companies, the less we trust Google. Why should we buy your “trust” spin?
IncrediBILL Said,
April 15, 2007 @ 5:31 pm
Looks like I’m good then, but I’ve been doing it this way over 10 years.
What’s old becomes new again
Amitav Roy Said,
April 15, 2007 @ 8:30 pm
well i would like to ask that if we have a div in which i have links and by default it is hidden but when a user clik on it, the div display is on and we can see the layer so, is it spamming or google take it properly. i would like to know because one of my client has very important links on his site like this.
and about paid links - what has the webmasters done to google that they are giving more imp to paid links.
he he he
any ways thanks for the wonderful article
Amitav
Dreamer Said,
April 15, 2007 @ 9:49 pm
Ok Matt, I was looking at a dhtml sidebar company for my website. They had a pr8. All their links come from their copyright notice within the sidebar coding and it is an invisible hidden link but google clearly reads it ( i mean they get links from a lot of newspapers and some major Fortune 500 companies and such but no where on the screen or cached text or regular copies on google will you ever see the link. I am not even sure those companies realize the link is there. Would you consider that a bad hidden link?
Kirby Said,
April 15, 2007 @ 11:26 pm
“For example, newpapers/magazines have ads that are clearly distinguished, and ads that look like faux articles are often marked with “Advertisement.” Even if your statement were true, having clear disclosure on the web would still be a good thing for users and anyone that uses web data to provide a service.”
The LA Times has a real estate section. It ranks #1 for “los angeles real estate”. You can look for homes, agents, lenders, etc. They charge a fee to be listed as a lender or agent. They will include a link if desired. How is that link not relevant?
What about the link to the mom and pop business from their local Chamber of Commerce where they had to pay to join? How is that not relevant and worthy of being counted by Google?
I deal with lots of mom and pop types. They don’t go to SE conferences, don’t read your blog, and don’t have a clue about the social web other than checking Myspace to see what their kids are up. The figure if the link is from a relevant, related site, it should be good. I don’t see how you think this helps them.
Help me help them.
Dave (Original) Said,
April 16, 2007 @ 12:05 am
RE: “The LA Times has a real estate section. It ranks #1 for “los angeles real estate”. You can look for homes, agents, lenders, etc. They charge a fee to be listed as a lender or agent. They will include a link if desired. How is that link not relevant?”
======================================
It is relevant and should bring the advertiser some good traffic and give a good ROI. If not, they shouldn’t be advertising on that page/site. However, advertising should *not* make the page more relevant in the organic SERPs. If it does, then those with the deepest pockets will always dominate the SERPs and Google is no longer objective, but subjective.
Same goes for your “Chamber of Commerce” example.
This all really commen sense stuff IMO.
Vivek Said,
April 16, 2007 @ 12:33 am
I’ve also seen hidden links using scroll delay. Very smart technique :). They keep the scroll delay for marquee text and hide links using this technique.
Vivek
Craig Francis Said,
April 16, 2007 @ 1:21 am
Hi Matt,
Going along the lines of hidden text, I was wondering about using CSS to off-screen content… if this was allowed, then it would be an easy way to do keyword stuffing… however, on most of my websites I usually have a Navigation that is not visually shown on the page, but helps screen reader users understand the structure of the page (as in, the links which follow are for the site navigation).
The off-screen CSS being…
#nav h2 {
position: absolute;
left: -5000px;
}
For more uses of the off-screen technique, see…
http://webaim.org/techniques/css/invisiblecontent/
http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-WCAG20-CSS-TECHS-20050630/#creating-invisible-labels
Michael Martinez Said,
April 16, 2007 @ 1:26 am
Matt, Google can easily resolve the problem with paid links and improve the quality of its search results considerably at the same time: just stop passing link anchor text.
Google should be focusing on relevance and not rewarding basic spam techniques. Link anchor text in no way improves relevance regardless of how much silly propaganda Google publishes that says it does.
Andy Davies Said,
April 16, 2007 @ 1:34 am
It’s worth remembering that not all hidden links are bad…
Hidden links have an important role to play in accessibility e.g. access to alternate content, shortcuts for screen readers etc.
Any scheme which tries to crack down on hidden links for SEO reasons must ensure it doesn’t penalise those providing features for people with accessibility needs too
Dave (Original) Said,
April 16, 2007 @ 2:53 am
That would be treating the sympton and not the disease! It would also likely be a case of the cure being worse than the disease.
Besides, anchor text from SOME pages is likely only a small bit of a big picture.
Paul Annett Said,
April 16, 2007 @ 4:39 am
Matt - what’s Google’s policy on ‘hiding’ screen-reader-useful text off the left of the screen (with absolute positioning or negative margin) to be replaced by an image containing more visually meaningful content? This can be done with links, or any element (commonly replacing an H1 site name link with a logo image). Also, simply hiding links which are only meant to be displayed to screen-readers (’skip to content’ etc). As I understand it, this kind of thing could result in a site being automatically penalised by Google, even though they’re useful techniques with legitimate purposes.
James Galway Said,
April 16, 2007 @ 4:50 am
Have never seen devious links like that before…
Hmmmm must watch out…
Tim Wintle Said,
April 16, 2007 @ 5:25 am
Thanks Matt, good luck.
Michael Martinez - how would not passing anchor text improve search results. If there is a reference you can cite I would be very interested. I can think of several cases where the passing of the anchor text definately improves accuracy, and very few situations where it would not (if you take out black hat tactics). True, they are prone to abuse, but so are tags, which are being used all across the web with some efficiency.
Danny Yee Said,
April 16, 2007 @ 5:32 am
I agree 100% that all paid links/content should be marked as advertising - I’d never include it on my own sites without marking it. But I’m wary of NOFOLLOW and weird javascript links and click-track redirects - I’ve never felt I really understood the effects of these, and I don’t like them as a user myself, so I’ve avoided them and kept my own links as simple as possible.
But I’m less worried by nofollow than the other methods, so I may start using that more extensively. (BTW, how do I nofollow my google_alternate_url adsense links? I think my site got burnt several years ago because Googlebot followed those.)
Ian Cowley Said,
April 16, 2007 @ 5:42 am
Devious links? What about this one. I know of at least one example of someone “sponsoring” a free visitors counter. The free counter is distributed with the hidden link in it. I know of one competitive term where this has tactic has resulted in number 1 rankings.
MPATEL Said,
April 16, 2007 @ 5:48 am
I don’t agree with this. Google likes to mint money and even in their SE results now they have changed the color for sponsored links so that users are now more driven to click on sponsored results rather than Organic. So ITS OK if google plays with such techniques but if WEBMASTERS tries to earn some money using his/her own web property by selling link spaces then Google has objection to it. This is just brutal…
dsom Said,
April 16, 2007 @ 6:38 am
does a text (eventually with link) genered trough a external js function and also included (for SEO reason) by a div with display:none, be parsed as spam?
does google automatically sign this stuff as spam or a human control will ensure is a “valid trick”?
many ajax apps require this kind of tecnhique, does google admin this kind of stuff?
i’m doing some test there : http://www.aicube.net/blog/2007/04/seo-test-js-e-indicizzazione.html
just some guy Said,
April 16, 2007 @ 6:40 am
“If you want to sell a link, you should at least provide machine-readable disclosure for paid links by making your link in a way that doesn’t affect search engines.”
Matt, didn’t you mention before that web sites should be built for humans, and that search engines would take care of themselves?
If Google wants everyone to follow your suggestion, then please take the first step with Google.com. Ban all AdWords for paid text link services. That way Google will take a hit in revenue, and encourage some of us web-masters to also follow in taking a similar hit in revenue.
Michael Martinez Said,
April 16, 2007 @ 8:22 am
Dave (Original): “That would be treating the sympton and not the disease! It would also likely be a case of the cure being worse than the disease.”
Tim Wintle: “Michael Martinez - how would not passing anchor text improve search results.”
LOL! Yeah, and the Brooklyn Bridge only costs $5.
How many of you even TRY to achieve search engine success without the use of links? What, no hands?
That speaks VOLUMES about the quality of Google’s search results.
Let’s see what history has to say about Google and link anchor text.
LINK FARMING: Bad for Google, good for participants until they get caught.
EXCESSIVE RECIPROCAL LINKAGE: Bad for Google, good for participants until they caught.
LINK DROPS IN BLOGS AND FORUMS: Bad for Google, good for droppers until they get caught.
Google’s response: Please do our work for us and use “rel=’nofollow’” on all your automated outbound links because we’re the biggest search engine and our results suck when you spam the index with link anchor text (I’m summarizing, not quoting any Google statements).
Why does Matt Cutts, on his own blog, use relevant anchor text for Googler content but irrelevant anchor text for other people’s content?
Could it possibly be that he doesn’t want to inadvertently impact Google’s search results by passing competitive link anchor text to third parties? Maybe he should just autonofollow all outbound links so that he doesn’t have to worry about that.
Not that NOFOLLOW ever solved the bloggers’ problem anyway. People still use robots to link drop, but Google has at least now gotten SOME software and service providers to help do its work.
Like I said: Google could easily solve this problem by NOT allowing any links to pass anchor text. That’s not necessary for determining natural relevance anyway.
Todd Said,
April 16, 2007 @ 8:36 am
Lumping paid links together with hidden links is like lumping CPA with malware or e-mail spamming - it just does a disservice to everyone involved.
antoniocapo Said,
April 16, 2007 @ 8:38 am
Gosh - I am thinking about all those publications that not only get paid to write reviews (with links to the product sites) but to actually list useful sites in their directory for a fee.
Are publications like Business Week or CNET going to be penalized for having a set of “paid inclusion links” in their articles?
This seems to be a case of “do as I tell you not as I do” from Google.
Ganesh Said,
April 16, 2007 @ 9:38 am
Matt,
The hidden link has a very logical pattern of background of the page to hide itself and I’m a developer myself and I would be easily able to differentiate.
So its a plain open fact Google is not impressive at identifying the quality of the page for the content. Instead it still relies on the simple outbound and Inbound links to quantify a site.
Additionally on Google Adwords, you guys display the ad without real link popularity (since its a javascript) and people spend money on it… Tomorrow people may ask why shouldn’t they gain the link popularity in Google for participating in Google Adwords? When you guys climb the fact Google Adsense is displaying the link on the content targeting with relevancy, why shouldn’t the Google Adwords Advertiser gain a link popularity in Google itself.
Like Michael Martinez saying, when something is not capable of Google, then it becomes bad for everyone and not everyone is going to agree with that. Instead of asking people to write nofollow tag, invest the time and money on the research of how better Google can be providing the natural search even at a worst case like you mentioned above on the article.
I could show you plenty of websites especially news websites make money out of this sponsor ads as link popularity schemes and I could say why shouldn’t they make money out of this.
If you guys haven’t started thinking about it, atleast start now, otherwise someone will emerge with a standard like I mentioned.
Jay Said,
April 16, 2007 @ 10:14 am
Let me first thank you for this great one!! One who has been punished by Google ( with / without knowledge) for hidden text and hidden links would really agree with Google’s Mantra- ““Make pages for users, not for search engines”!!
First of all such hidden text or links would leave bad impression on daily readers and later new visitors. So directly you loose your trust.
It is really difficult to get your site in reinclusion process if Google stops indexing your site as punishment for such cause. So beware!!
Kirby Said,
April 16, 2007 @ 11:08 am
Dave, my examples of the LA Times and local CoCs don’t give an edge to the bigger boys because they are not local and unable to be promoted in that medium, so the edge goes to the mom and pops. They are both relevant local authorities.
Dave, the big dogs have the budgets to buy links that you and Google can’t ID as paid, so this backfires. I doubt that those who know how to camouflage a paid link are going to give them up. All you will get is the low hanging fruit.
Its like gun control, where only the cops (Google) and the bad guys (those with $$$$$) have the guns.
Matt, your phds need to study the law of unintended consequences a bit more. You really will kill the mom and pops with this. I’ll prove it to you.
Taltos Said,
April 16, 2007 @ 11:39 am
Matt,
How are you to going to address all those external links in peoples sites that don’t use the nofollow tag, but are obviously not paid? For example, user submitted content like topics in a forum? Also my site, for example, has databases of known windows startup programs that in each entry’s description we link to the reference where we got the information about the program. Are we now supposed to go through all those entries to add nofollow tags to them even though they are not paid links?
Also will you be penalizing the sites hosting the paid links or the sites that you link to? Or both?
Last but not least, not that I am here, how is a webmaster supposed to get support from google such as clarifying if you have a penalty. In the past you have said to post to the Google Webmaster Help group. I have done so, but never received a response from when I posted on March 22nd.
Kirby Said,
April 16, 2007 @ 2:29 pm
>will you be penalizing the sites hosting the paid links or the sites that you link to?
Anything other than simply devaluing the suspected links would be a mistake and open up the web to all kinds of sabotage.
JohnMu Said,
April 16, 2007 @ 4:10 pm
What about javascript URLs that are recognized by Google + co but never shown anywhere? Would that be a hidden link, if technically it is not really a link but just a javascript string?
Example:
script type=text/javascript
var what=”http://somesite.com/”;
…
I realize that it is probably not passing that much link-value (and certainly no anchor-text), but as long as it passes anything (and it seems to be enough to get pages crawled and indexed) it could get abused.
The other problem is that some people use this technique to keep URLs from being indexed (or at least from passing value), perhaps for a paid or irrelevant link… They might be trying to keep it from being indexed, have it accidentally get indexed anyway (through the javascript source) and then (perhaps later) get penalized for linking :-).
Is keeping our javascript in an external file (blocked via robots.txt) a solution?
Jake Said,
April 16, 2007 @ 4:55 pm
Wow, I really want to troll this one. I’ve never commented here, so I’ll try and hold the expletives rolling around in my brain as I read this (ridiculous) thread. I’ve caught this blog a few times, and I usually appreciate what I read. This, however, is ‘baloney’.
A couple of people have tried to gently broach this subject in the comments above, but really this is counter-productive. It sounds to me like Google will be trying to kill off their small-time competition for advertising. The ‘mom and pop shops’, as it were.
Any small site that marks their paid links as paid in a fashion which causes indexing bots to ignore them will no longer be able to contract for paid links. At a minimum, the value if the service will be decreased by orders of magnitude. That is, after all, a primary purpose of paying for a link. Many link buyers are just as concerned (or more) with the SERP listing (inbound link) as any traffic they may get from a small site’s traffic.
Trying to chase paid links out of the organic SERPS really comes off as strong-arming webmasters to pay for adsense/adwords placement. If the site is keyword-relevant and well formed, how those links got there is really none of your business as a ’search engine’.
I can see how it really matters to an advertising company, though. Remember kids, it’s not kewl to buy those links unless you buy them from Google!
If I want to start a business, I have two choices. I can try and do everything by word of mouth, or pay for some advertising. Google is not concerned with the ‘word of mouth’ piece (yet) but now they’re wanting to punish people who have sold/bought advertising?
Back to my hypothetical business, if I can convince or pay 100 small shop owners to put my business card in their store I may opt to do that instead of paying ClearChannel for one billboard. The way I’m reading it, the only difference here is that ClearChannel doesn’t have any way to punish the small shop owner for costing them potential revenue, where Google does.
The fact that you’re trying to convince business people to cut THEMSELVES off at the knees so Google can profit by selling more ads and/or placement is pretty funny. Why don’t you take some time to fight the blatant rampage of 100% scraped-content MFA sites and similar Adsense-spawned web atrocities out there, instead of penalizing people who are working together to mutually grow their business?
Oh yeah, it’s because trash in the SERPS increases the value of adsense campaigns, that’s right.
If people actually working to promote their site without paying Google is so damaging to your business model that you want to actively curtail its effectiveness, maybe as a company Google should consider getting out of ‘organic’ search. Trying to present a business tactic which harms your competitors in the “commercial web” as “good for the social web” is silly and deceptive. A recipe for backlash indeed.
mrg Said,
April 16, 2007 @ 5:12 pm
Some CMS’ are just aweful when it comes to css. I understand and applaud Google’s initiative but can only wonder what criteria will the spam team use when watching for culprits. Take osCommerce which is the perfect storm for hidden links (this way, anyway). I go out of my way boldening and underlining hypertext I want to highlight as link, as I want users to be able to clickthrough. But I am never sure if I can accomplish this change sitewide… And as anyone familiar with osCommerce knows, better not mess up with the script. So where does this leaves us, Matt?
kpaul mallasch Said,
April 16, 2007 @ 6:03 pm
What I don’t get.
Someone buys advertising (in text link form). As webmaster, I check the site out and make sure it’s not sketchy. If it passes, I allow it and put it under a ’sponsors’ heading. Why would I put a nofollow on it, basically saying it’s not trustworthy?
Also, what about Yahoo charging, etc. Heck, I’ve even heard it sometimes costs to get into DMOZ.
I don’t like spam either, but this really seems to me like Google wants their hands in all advertising monies on the intraweb…
-kpaul
Sam I Am Said,
April 16, 2007 @ 6:17 pm
I have a site to report; Yahoo Travel.
On numerous occassions the manager of content there has contacted us about paying for links …. this really seems to be a bit too hard to me to end up being policed, but from a site whose point of view is to create useful content it’s good news
Lucia Said,
April 16, 2007 @ 7:16 pm
Matt said:
“For example, you could make a paid link go through a redirect where the redirect url is robot’ed out using robots.txt.”
Could you explain what you mean? (A link to the explanation would be sufficient.)
Dave (Original) Said,
April 16, 2007 @ 7:38 pm
Michael Martinez, you seem to have a chip on your shoulder about Google. Is it only Google, or any big business?
IMO Google do use some anchor text on some pages to determine what the linked to page is about. Makes perfect sense to me as when they get it right (likely more often than not) it improves search results.
However, your entire post misses the point that Google main concern is its *users*, not webmasters, not directories, no forums, not blogs etc etc. To top that off I believe they take a bottom up approach to runnning their business. That is, they focus mainly on their users (advervisers excluded) and in doing so the rest falls into place nicely.
Dave (Original) Said,
April 16, 2007 @ 7:52 pm
RE: “Dave, my examples of the LA Times and local CoCs don’t give an edge to the bigger boys because they are not local and unable to be promoted in that medium, so the edge goes to the mom and pops. They are both relevant local authorities.”
======================================
Agree, but what is your point then. I read your post as Google should count these links as votes and not advertisements. In my mind there is NO doubt they are the latter.
RE: “Dave, the big dogs have the budgets to buy links that you and Google can’t ID as paid, so this backfires. I doubt that those who know how to camouflage a paid link are going to give them up. All you will get is the low hanging fruit.”
=======================================
They are *working* (perpetually) on automaticallly differentiating paid links from votes. Google is one of the “big dogs have the budgets” to maintain the qaulity of their search results. They cannot afford NOT to IMO. If they ONLY get “low hanging fruit” that is better than nothing.
RE: “Matt, your phds need to study the law of unintended consequences a bit more. You really will kill the mom and pops with this. I’ll prove it to you.”
======================================
As you *already* know all about this, why not inform us on the details on what and how Google is going to tackle this?
Kirby Said,
April 16, 2007 @ 8:11 pm
Dave, it’s clear that you don’t get it, but big deal.
The only opinion or response I’m interested in is Matt’s.
Dave (Original) Said,
April 16, 2007 @ 8:28 pm
I get what Google is trying to do and what Matt has said, it’s only you I don’t get. Anyway, I’ll leave you to Matt….you might want to grab a seat though
JLH Said,
April 16, 2007 @ 8:36 pm
@JohnMu, Have you considered Law as a new career? Or sales for that matter? Where it’s always a virtue to never ask a question you don’t know the answer to.
I think this has reached critical mass and I guess I am only adding to the confusion now…
Bill Platt Said,
April 17, 2007 @ 4:08 am
Matt,
I have a potential solution for this issue that will solve itself forever with a day’s work on your end of the equation….
Stop publicly advertising a page’s PageRank. Make that feature disappear from the toolbar by closing off the port that feeds that data to the toolbar. Instead of showing (0/10) for hidden pagerank, replace that code with a (disabled) tag.
If buyers cannot see the PR for a page, then they will not be buying advertising for the purposes of influencing PageRank. Buyers will be forced to remove PR from their buying decision considerations.
Of course, this might hurt the seller’s sale price for a link, because people will have to make the buying decision based on the content of the page and the traffic numbers offered by the seller concerning their website or web page (this is the actual definition of links bought for advertising purposes).
The only reason there is a market for buying links on PR pages is because everyone can see a page’s PR and they all know the inherent value of that number.
If you simply take away the number from public viewing, then the whole issue will resolve itself in short order.
We know that you already have the ability to hide information from the public. The existence of a public backlink record, via a link: search in your search engine and the webmaster’s private backlink checking tool, tells us upfront that you can divide the information that you show to us.
All you need to do is to hide the PR value from the end user, and you will take away the incentive of all buyers who pay for links to influence PageRank.
If you are serious about this issue, then that is your answer.
Bill Platt
Danny Sullivan Said,
April 17, 2007 @ 4:35 am
Matt, so I’m clear, are you now suggesting that in addition to something like nofollow, site owners that want to be within Google’s guidelines must also provide some human-readable disclaimer? That’s a pretty big change, if so.
I understand the FTC’s guidelines on paid links. But are you specifically saying that those concerned about Google rankings need to do this as well, have some human-readable disclosure?
I’m OK with the idea that people ought to make appropriate disclosures but less so with the idea that Google might be trying to dictate this on the human readable side.
Furthermore, if this is the guideline, then Google’s new pay-per-action text links violate this. Yes, they aren’t impacting search rankings. But when they came out, there was quite a bit of buzz about how Google itself was suggesting these should get worked into regular copy:
==
http://services.google.com/payperaction/faq.html
“Text links are hyperlinked brief text descriptions that take on the characteristics of a publisher’s page. Publishers can place them in line with other text to better blend the ad and promote your product.
For example, you might see the following text link embedded in a publisher’s recommendatory text: “Widgets are fun! I encourage all my friends to Buy a high-quality widget today.”
==
Yes, a mouse over will have the Ads by Google info popping up, but not everyone agrees that’s enough.
Dave Said,
April 17, 2007 @ 6:47 am
William
Maybe you should read this article. It might shed some light on your life!
http://www.webdevout.net/articles/beware-of-xhtml
Brien Said,
April 17, 2007 @ 7:08 am
Matt,
I share a lot of Danny’s sentiment about human readable. You are actually starting to feel like all practices must be disclosed to Google as opposed to the user. I understand you have significant influence over this space, and I see that you likely consider yourselves to have as much or more at stake then many other sites, but at times it feels a little to proprietary in the first incarnation/recommendation.
On this topic I have also seen cases where Google AdSense links and texts have corrupted the content of some real pages I have. An example of this is the milking process in the agriculture industry actually finds advertising relating to prostate milking. In using the XML implementation I am able to ensure broader browser and device compatibility of the ads, but then I need to undo this value by wrapping the ads in JavaScript so that they become invisible to Googlebot lest the ext corrupt my page content in the actual index.
Because the advertising house and the organic search house must remain separate, and because any additional hints from the pages themselves could be used to intentionally mislead the engine and users, we still must hack our way to high quality results.
I agree with your mission and I recognize the challenges you face, but I do see quite a few iterations and try and fail approach before you can turn this ship…
Brien
dsom Said,
April 17, 2007 @ 7:31 am
Danny Sullivan said :
==
Matt, so I’m clear, are you now suggesting that in addition to something like nofollow, site owners that want to be within Google’s guidelines must also provide some human-readable disclaimer? That’s a pretty big change, if so.
==
Maybe google has some problem to pay quality rater that know html
Chris Said,
April 17, 2007 @ 6:37 pm
I havent read all the comments simply too many but I choke on the claim this is all about…
“What would you do if search engines didnt exist?”
Why I would have to buy paid links of course!!!!!!
And because in my mind Google is marginalised thats EXACTLY WHAT I DO! No money changes hands but I network with certain people and in return we share links.
Paid links are a valid form of “networking” like leaving your business card on the counter of the local friendly shop.
It is another method of advertising.
I agree that one should disclose “commentary” on links as being bought and paid for. if one reads “hey go to xyz site they have the best deals on footwear” one would expect it to be noted as an advertisment which is what paid commentary is. Radio announcers get pinged for it over here all the time.
But if I have links at the foot of my page and no commentary then thats my choice paid or otherwise.
Of course google survives by paid links.
The pages adwords are placed on in other words the SERPS. google is Paid to display those links. not by the websites themselves but by the adwords on those pages. They are in fact paid links.
Once again Google is trying to manipulate the market in its own favour
Get back to serps. let webmasters look after their own affairs
Chris Said,
April 17, 2007 @ 6:43 pm
Oh and another quicky. If I created my page as if search engines didn’t exist I certainly wouldnt go the extra step of adding a robots.txt file and nofollow’s and the myriad of other things you ask us to do.
Chris
Dave (Original) Said,
April 17, 2007 @ 8:18 pm
Hmm, how did you come to any such conclusion??
Kirby Said,
April 17, 2007 @ 9:54 pm
Well said Jake.
Skelbimai Said,
April 18, 2007 @ 2:21 am
Selling liks is normal (but not hidden links). Main solution for such problems - strict manual links moderation before plasement. Automatic links exchange systems must die…
Cupid Said,
April 18, 2007 @ 2:19 pm
I understand your points Matts, but there’s a big conflict of interest here. It’s way too easy to interpret the attack on paid links as a way for G to get rid of the competing adertiser networks.
Also, if I put nofollow on a big percentage of the links on my site, will G penalize me for this? wouldn’t that mean that I risk being regarded as low quality site?
bob rains Said,
April 18, 2007 @ 5:35 pm
Human readable text on the page stating this is a paid link?
Really? I mean thats kind of like poppin’ a cap in a whole industry, not to mention potentially placing a choke hold on bloggers who need to make something off their blog just to help cover the hosting.
I guess they can just sign up for AdSense.
Oh… I get it
Drew Black Said,
April 18, 2007 @ 5:48 pm
What’s the proper way to do robotted-out redirects? I’ve seen them mentioned in a few comment responses over the past few days.
I had used a robotted-out redirect script for 4+ years on my site. Mine was unique, it was also an exit traffic tracking script too. In my system each user was presented a unique outbound URL for every outbound URL on every page refresh of every page on the site. Googlebot wouldn’t get unique links because of the overhead in generating all of these unique links. Every outbound link was presented to Googlebot as click.asp?dest=0 where a user would get click.asp?dest=[unique_numeric_identifier]. Click.asp was robotted-out. If click.asp?dest=0 was actually clicked by a user they would get a polite “This page is for bots that ignore our robots.txt exclusions.” error.
I used this mechanism for 4+ years until recently. I think it tripped up some type of cloaking filter because Googlebot was being given links than the links users were seeing. I changed the redirection mechanism and a week later it seems like some type of penalty has been lifted.
So is there a proper and improper way to do robotted-out redirects?
Dave (Original) Said,
April 18, 2007 @ 7:01 pm