I’ve talked quite a lot before about buying or selling links that pass PageRank. Today I wanted to walk through a concrete example of paid posts and show why the major search engines don’t want to be affected by links within paid posts. The problem is best illustrated by a serious example: suppose you just visited your doctor and got a scary surprise: you or a member of your family have a tumor. The doctor is throwing around words like steroids, surgery, chemo, and radiosurgery. Much of what the doctor says washes over you, but you remember the word “radiosurgery” and resolve to find out more when you get home.
At home, you fire up a search engine and type “radiosurgery.” If you go to Google and search for [radiosurgery], the results give a pretty good overview of what radiosurgery is (focused radiation that targets tumors). In the first several results, you have balanced information from the International RadioSurgery Association, an overview page on Wikipedia, a great background page from RadiologyInfo, even an introductory-level essay on radiosurgery from the Mayo Clinic. If you came back from the doctor and wanted to get an overview of radiosurgery, I hope you’d find the results useful.
Now, think about how you would feel if your medical search was influenced by pages like this:
The posts themselves don’t mention it, but entries like these often turn out to be what are known as “paid posts.” That is, someone paid money in order to receive a review, and the paid review includes a link with the word “radiosurgery,” for example. There’s no disclosure inside these entries whether these posts are paid, nor do the posts use the nofollow attribute or some other mechanism so that search engines aren’t affected.
Now I’m going to ask you to put on your regular user hat. If you’ve just learned that you or a family member have a tumor, would you prefer that radiosurgery overview article from the Mayo Clinic, or from a site which appears to be promoting a specific manufacturer of medical equipment via paid posts? My guess is that you’d prefer the Mayo Clinic.
In the example above, notice that the post says “I myself had never heard of this treatment process until now.” On a subject as serious as brain tumors, it’s troubling if someone is getting paid to review and link to a site, especially if it appears that they weren’t aware of this treatment until they were paid to write about the subject. In researching this incident, we saw lots of people doing paid posts about brain tumors who admitted that they weren’t familiar with the subject beforehand. Sometimes posts were even more inaccurate:
“Is there any new medical breakthrough in the treatment of brain tumore [sic]?” If the paid poster had researched their subject more, they would have discovered that this particular treatment has been around for two decades. In fact, the promoted site mentions that one of the main reasons to use their technique is because it’s well-established, not brand-new. If someone doesn’t do enough research for a paid post to know that a treatment is well-established instead of brand-new, how can you trust their opinion about brain tumors? Here’s another post that claims this treatment technique is new:
“happy and proud to introduce the GAMMA KNIFE”? Again, this is not a new treatment technique. In fact, anyone who read the first page on the promoted site would have realized that one of the selling points of the device is that the technology is well-established. But there are more noticeable mistakes than calling the technique new when it’s actually been around for decades. Sometimes the posts don’t even get the name of the treatment right:
Notice that this post consistently refers to the “Lesksell Gamma Knife” treatment. The correct name is Leksell. I also saw one person call it the “Gama Knife” treatment, and someone else called it the “Gamma Knive” treatment. If you’re getting paid to write a review, shouldn’t you at least perform the basic research to get the product name right?
I have a lot more snapshots I could show, but I hope these examples help explain my point. For this very important (potentially even life-or-death) medical topic, we saw paid reviewers admit that they knew nothing about a treatment before getting paid to post about it, or who didn’t research the subject enough to know that a treatment was decades old instead of brand-new. We saw people writing about brain tumors who didn’t even spell “tumor” correctly, and we saw people who got the name of the sponsor wrong.
If you put your user hat back on, I hope you’ll agree that you wouldn’t want a serious medical search for brain tumor treatments to be affected by inaccurate or uninformed posts. In fact, if you stumbled across these entries on the web, you might not know whether someone got paid for writing these posts. In the same way that a regular surfer would want disclosure to know if a post were paid, all the major search engines also want to make sure that paid posts are adequately disclosed to search engines as well. Google’s documentation for webmasters gives examples of how to do that. I believe the vast majority of our users don’t want our organic search results for something as serious as brain tumors to be affected by links in paid posts.
I hope these examples help to explain the motivation for our quality guidelines, and how those guidelines ensure a better experience for users. To read more about this subject, you can start at Google’s quality guidelines. Where you see the guideline “Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank” you can click on “participate in link schemes” to get more guidance. That page specifically mentions “Buying or selling links that pass PageRank” as being against our quality guidelines, and it’s also clickable so that you can read more about buying or selling links in our HTML documentation.
(Just as a side-note: I don’t normally send my blog posts to Google’s public relations or legal folks before posting. For this entry, I did get this post approved by Google’s PR/legal department first to make sure that what I said was an accurate reflection of Google’s opinion on this subject. If you’re concerned because this is a post on my personal blog, we also did an official blog post about this issue today.)
{ 600 comments… read them below or add one }
By the way, at SES San Jose I got feedback about “buy PageRank”-type ads in AdWords. I recently chatted with AdWords policy folks, and the AdWords folks have disabled ads for many queries such as “pagerank 8″ that would have shown ads before. I expect that we’ll probably disable ads for more “buy PageRank”-type queries as well.
Thanks to the people who provided that feedback at SES San Jose, and I’m looking forward to chatting with people more at the PubCon search conference next week as well.
This seems like a very specific example, I hope all is well with you and your family Matt.
Shawn, I did want to go through a specific example to ground the debate a little bit. My wife was out of town this week, so I got a little more time for blogging and to comment around the web. She’s back now though, so that will limit my blogging time a little bit.
I am looking forward to talking to people at PubCon though. It’s a good chance to chat with folks and get good feedback, so I’m pretty excited about heading to Vegas next week.
This is post is a master class – if you need to hammer home why a practice is bad – use a powerful example to illustrate it.
Thanks for this Matt.
Hopefully, those engaged in such practices might now “get it” – and hopefully hang their heads in shame at the same time.
When I say “hopefully” I am being optimistic, but there was no better way that Matt could put this point across…
Ray Burn, my hope was that a real-world example would help make the point. I’m glad you agree.
I think it is very useful to have a non-trivial example like this to get people away from the debate about “Amazon’s copy of 7 Habits versus one from B&N.”
So I think we can all agree that here this would be a bad place to have to wade through pages of *stuff*.
But, the *general* reason Google wants people to hit ‘the best possible page’ is so that they can make more money in the long run. (Not complaining, just saying.) The reason that the paid link manipulators want to control the movement is to make more money.
Unfortunately for the link manipulators, they’re playing inside the Matrix so they are usually at cross purposes to Google.
Which doesn’t mean that, in all cases, either of you are right, of course.
-OT
Wow it’s a good thing google doesn’t use KW rich outlinks with people they are in financial arrangements with, because reading this post someone could certainly get the wrong idea
http://googlecheckout.blogspot.com/2007/07/golfballscom-scores-with-google-product.html
While links like “Titleist Pro V1 Golf Balls” may not be as life safety related the principal is clearly the same
If Google can’t filter out pages that are achieving their rankings through such tactics and it’s concerned people reading those pages will get bad info, then why is Google not warning it’s users?
Maybe put something like this at the top of the serps “Warning: Google’s index can be manipulated. Don’t blindly trust site’s with high ranking. Use discretion.”
Then the note at the top of the serps can be removed once Google can spot paid links not using nofollow. Because I doubt that everyone will adopt the nofollow tag for such links and that means it’s up to Google’s algo to spot them.
graywolf, I appreciate your efforts to find some way to accuse Google of bad behavior, but that was a normal editorial blog post. I double-checked and the Google Checkout team linked with what they thought was accurate text, and no money was involved. They even offered to remove the anchortext if it would help.
By the way, we also put redirects in place on that Enterprise search appliance testimonial page, just to remove even the chance that someone could claim Google was acting improperly in that instance as well.
Maybe instead of looking for an anti-Google angle on this one, you could discuss whether doing paid posts about brain tumors is or isn’t the best thing for the web? If you were doing this search, would you want search engines to be affected by posts like the ones I showed?
“But, the *general* reason Google wants people to hit ‘the best possible page’ is so that they can make more money in the long run.”
Oliver Taco, I think this is an interesting point. I think Google has done a relatively good job of aligning our users interests with Google’s interests, so that doing what is good for users or people on the web in general is also good for Google.
I can say that for me personally, I’ve pressed for a lot of things that would decrease revenue to Google, at least short-term, because it would make our users happier. I pushed pretty hard years ago for a blanket stance against Google doing pop-up ads, for example. I’ve also pressed to reduce low-quality publishers in AdSense, too. Either one of those choices might mean less revenue short-term, but happier users and advertisers are likely to be more loyal in the future. Google has taken stronger stances recently e.g. to kick spammy sites out of AdSense, and I think that is better long-term for users and Google.
So for me personally, I’m glad that Google is taking this position because I genuinely think it’s the right one for the web and regular users. You’re welcome to believe me or not, but the ability to make a difference is one of the reasons that I still love working at Google.
by the way, Google Adsense has at least one customer from the Gamma Knife business. When I search for “Leksell Gamma Knife”, a Google ad from “InternationalGammaKnifeClinic.com” referring to a website titled “Surviving Brain Tumors” is shown…
OK, Matt it is not 1999 or 2003. Machines are “smarter” and can dedicate more CPU for semantical analyze… as you do already. For many users who use “wordpress” or some other platform and have WYSWYG do not even know how to go into code and rel=”nofollow”
Also it would be even more useful for both users and search engines if they would be treated the same way. What about simple human readable syntax that starts like this:
Ad: This is (sponsored|paid) (review|article|post).
Here post what ever content is paid.
End of ad.
This is much better way to think about both users and search engines and treat those links among Ad:.*end of ad.” absolutely like nofollow.
nofollow is ok for non-moderated comments etc. or paied links that users put in template (who knows to edit template source knows to add nofollow).
OK that is my feedback have good SPAM fight and thanks for posting my screenshots
>no money was involved
You don’t think being mentioned on the Google Product blog will drive traffic to that website which will result in sales? Since they are using Google checkout Google gets a % of sale somewhere down the line.
if you do a search for [brain tumors] the first he result is an unlocked wikipedia listing
http://www.google.com/search?q=brain+tumors
Since anyone, medically competent or not, sitting in front of a computer could edit that page I’d be more concerned about providing results with questionable accuracy more than anything else
This just illustrates what I’ve been saying all along, other than the two parties involved, no one has any idea what the motivation was for the link.
…and my wife just walked in the door. I’m going to be hanging with her tonight, but I’ll try to stop by this thread as well over the weekend. I’ll also enjoy talking about this subject more at PubCon with folks.
Great example Matt, it certainly hits home with me! My wife uses Google daily to find information on my 5 year ongoing undiagnosed neurology problems. My Neurologist has even warned us about the miss-information out there on the Web.
Searcher beware!
oh and if you don’t think wikipedia medical pages have inaccuracies look at the rubella page, especially discussion and history
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubella
The page claim rubella was eliminated/eradicated from the US which is incorrect a prominent US podcaster Cali Lewis contracted it earlier this year, which resulted in the editing war on the wiki where truth lost out to people in petty turf wars
http://www.google.com/search?q=cali+lewis+rubella
sorry for the link drops, just trying to illustrate my point
Dave (original), I know someone who has been coping with a possible tumor and what the best treatment is too. That’s what really made this example catch my attention.
graywolf, you’re welcome to view a Google Checkout blog post in a cynical way. I’m just telling you that I went and chatted with that team, and they didn’t see it that way themselves when they wrote that post.
Now when I do a search for brain tumors, I see medical information above even the Wikipedia page, e.g. ”
Treatment
Tests/diagnosis
For patients
From medical authorities
Symptoms
Causes/risk factors
For health professionals
Alternative medicine” and I think that information is pretty high-quality.
Regarding the Wikipedia page: yes, it’s true that anyone could edit that Wikipedia page, but in practice that’s a pretty helpful page for a regular user.
Ok, so now we have something official
I agree about paid posts, I have been spotting more of them recently, and started delisting some sites with the bad type from my directory, obviously its going to take a long, long while to check them all, and also some seem ok if they are clearly marked as paid posts etc.
However, I rely on a handful of paid links at the footer of very few pages on my site in order to pay for the hosting. As the site operates on a free basis, and does not generate any income from its users, it is the *only* way I can afford to keep the site running.
Non of the sites linked to are gambling sites, porn sites, brain tumour sites etc, they are all above board.I also check those links to ensure I vote for the sites, and if I dont agree, the link goes. I stopped running adbrite ads because they started publishing rubbish without my permission, but so far no footer links have been of the spammy variety, all sites I do not mind linking to. (to be honest, I find more objectionable adverts on the adsense ads I run on site!)
Does this mean, I now face two choices
1. Leave the links, but take a big hit from google
2. Remove the links and have to close the site when the hosting I have already paid for in advance runs out? Adsense would not cover the hosting costs, and I cant afford it myself….
3. Change the links, which may be in breach of the terms of the site that I got them through..
4. Start charging users for submission, and hope people pay, and also do a diservice as it would give those with money a unfair advantage, the whole point of my site is it is open for all – rich or poor to be able to submit their blog. I am very reluctant to change that, as I know what it is like to have very little money.
Also, when I started the site, googles main rule appeared to be design sites for the user, not the search engine. Having to change how you code or finance a site to suit a search engine seems to be changing that rule.
Are you going after all paid links, or just the people who are putting them into posts (which I dont do), and the people that are putting them into content, and have them all over the place where you cant tell what is real and what is paid?
My aunt made a very expensive purchase via a recommendation from a blog.
She was severely disappointed with the products and lost a considerable amount money due to shipping charges and restocking fee. Add to that all the time she wasted.
It turned out the blogger does a lot of paid posts through a company called xxxxxxxxxx. Virtually all her reviews were paid posts.
Being an online veteran, it didn’t take long for me to realize all her product reviews were fake. She didn’t actually have any experience with the products she was reviewing nor did she even do much research on products. My aunt had no idea.
I hope Google’s relevance algorithm is doing something to those kinds of posts even if they do have nofollow tags.
[Marc, I pruned out the name of the company. Please try to avoid calling out specific companies in the comments.]
*** I have a very long comment. Feel free (of course) to trim it and link to
I agree I wouldn’t give that post much weight. What if it were a pre-eminent brain tumor researcher that was posting while being paid by the Mayo Clinic (because they decided that was a good way to encourage publicizing content that would reach the public) and he suggested further reading at the Mayo Clinic. Then I would have no problem reading it and giving that content a high value and following his advice and reading more at the Mayo Clinic. The issue is the value of the content. Knowing the ways the author might be biased (who is paying them) is one valid thing to consider.
The idea for Pagerank came from the citation of academic papers. Google’s current position would be that citations from those papers that are funded by other than the author should be ignored. That is not how citation value is calculated in the academic world. An I do not believe it would be an improvement to do so, though I can believe there is a minority that believes exactly that.
…
And the same with ignoring the links recommended by lets say high authority sites that don’t exactly follow Google’s desires. Google could just choose to ignore the “votes” of those sites but if those “votes” are not of 0 value (lets say 100% corrupt) then Google would be throwing away valuable insight (by ignoring the votes of that site). Obviously that is Google’s choice but it seems to be pretty obvious that doing so is far from an ideal engineering solution. There is value (votes of an authority) being ignored. Too much ignoring of worthwhile information (even if that information is tainted by payment) and it provides an opening for competitors to make better use of that information to provide results. I just can’t see that as in Google’s interest.
Much more at:
http://curiouscatlinks.blogspot.com/2007/12/googles-search-results-should-factors.html
***
[John Hunter, I did prune your comment after the link to your post. No need to include most of your post here when people can click to read your post. Thanks, Matt.]
Matt, surely the blogs that are posting this rubbish (I believe that most paid posts are rubbish) don’t have enough authority to pass any PR anyway? Can’t Google just figure out which blogs are low quality and remove them from the index/stop them passing weight?
Right. Except that Google targets only the little guy who can’t fight back. It’s okay for Arrington to pass link juice to his “sponsors” but not okay when I do it.
Karoli (who hasn’t done paid posts for many months) explains it well:
http://www.drumsnwhistles.com/2007/11/30/behold-the-spirit-of-scrooge/
Looks like Google is the new Microsoft. And I mean that in a really bad way.
I am currently being penalized by Google for paid links. I see how something like TLA could be “bad.” However, I don’t see a problem with a site selling links that pass pagerank when the seller is an authority and checks out the other site / product.
I got rid of TLA, but I’ve kept my other ads. I have a long standing relationship with those advertisers and I stand behind their services. I think I am doing google and the rest of the web a service by KEEPING the links there.
Would I link to them without being paid? Yes, but in a different spot on the site — In return for money they get nice pictures that entice clicks.
I agree with you that mass buying of links promotes search spam. However, even advertisement links can be accompanied by trust. To analogize to the “real world,” you have celebrities who will endorse any old product, and you have those that will only endorse products that they believe in. In the long run, the ones that endorse quality products will develop a reputation for endorsing quality products. Why is this bad?
I totally agree with your perspective in this post. However, there needs to be some way to endorse sites. You’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
P.S. I think this whole pagerank penalty has been handled extremely poorly from a communications perspective. If you penalize someone for something, you should tell them 1) that it happened and 2) why it happened. Why don’t you use webmaster tools for this?
Dave (original) are you related to Matt? Everything he posts seems to have something to do with you.
I think the site shown is fine, frankly I am genuinely surprised that it’s not showing adsense.
So what do you recommend Matt? what is the answer that you are pushing for with all these posts?
Every website sits and waits to build organic links? whilst it’s competitors are out there buying them and getting vast amounts of traffic (because you can’t get anywhere now-a-days without paying for exposure) – remember adsense?….
Why do you sell links to all those crap sites?????????????????????????
Matt, this is a great example and I appreciate the time and effort you took to clearly define the boundaries and set up the case for the seriousness of medical conditions. Its the same reason I work to keep my site up and available – to help during a scary medical time.
Any luck finding out what might be keeping my indexed pages at 13K? Does Google ever limit a website’s pages in search results – especially since you have indicated to me that I haven’t been penalized? I keep scratching my head trying to make sense of this in why I can’t get the google bot to index more pages. Any help you can provide would be much appreciated so I can continue to help women with scary medical conditions. Thanks bunches!
Matt –
I applaud you for having long term vision – popups were probably as bad as PointCast (yes, I am old).. And I don’t think that making money is *bad* as long as the customers are satisfied.
I buy my clothes at Nordstoms because of the service not because of the price. But I buy my groceries at Sams because of the price. So I understand both sides of the debate.
I’m glad you guys are going after spectrum. I think you’ll be as good as being a regulated utility as SAS was at being a common carrier, but I think a lot of positives will come out of it.
I’m not anti-google, but I’m also old enough to look past both the fairy prince and savior-of-manking cartoon figures and see a savvy company making money.
-OT
I definitely wouldn’t want those types of pages influencing search results. Not because they have been paid for but because they’re nonsense. Looking at the first example I wouldn’t expect a site posting about car loans, colon cleansing and sausage pizza to have any clue about brain surgery.
In that instance whether the link/post has been paid for in my opinion should be well down on the list of priorities for how much value the search engines should give to any links.
As a counterpoint perhaps you could comment on the following scenario. A site specialising in cancer and written by a medical researcher (we won’t go with a doctor because (s)he probably makes enough money not to need to take paid reviews) specialising in the field posts an article reviewing this site. (S)he treats it like any other article and spends considerable time researching the product and then posts their honest opinion. The only ‘problem’ though is that (s)he was paid to write the post. How should google treat the link?
I like this scenario better because unlike the sites posted above besides the paid link issue it probably should be expected to pass ‘linkjuice’.
Matt,
What about paid directories like Yahoo! or any of the 1000’s of smaller ones? Would Google consider paid directories the same as selling links that pass pagerank?
Thanks,
Jim
Try reading with both eyes open, or even reading period.
John Hunter, from reading your post you appear to be suggesting that Google allow pages to buy their way up the organic SERPs?
Matt that’s exactly my point I can certainly have an opinion about why I think Google wrote that post and gave those links, but how true that opinion turns out to be, amounts to nothing more than a best guess …
One thing you happened to omit is the paid listing for Radiosurgery the first listing is a premium PPC slot. Why is it OK for that listing to pay to influence the SERP’s but it’s not OK for the person who paid for a text link advertisement you showed? The painfully obvious difference is that Google makes a profit in the “google approved” form of advertising and in the “google non approved” version they don’t.
Matt –
Thanks for this – mesothelioma cancer is even worse, 99% of the sites within this keyword are adword only sites or total spam, with adwords
J -
“Matt, surely the blogs that are posting this rubbish (I believe that most paid posts are rubbish) don’t have enough authority to pass any PR anyway? Can’t Google just figure out which blogs are low quality and remove them from the index/stop them passing weight?”
Patrick Altoft, Google does reserve the right to take action to protect the quality of our index. In general, that can include removing the ability of a site to pass PageRank, decreasing the PageRank in the Google toolbar to show that we have less trust in the page/site, all the way up to demoting or removing pages or sites that are sufficiently spammy — for example, practically no one would want Google to keep those spammy .cn domains that host malware in our index. What I wanted to do was post on the official Google webmaster blog to state our policy in really clear terms, e.g. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/12/information-about-buying-and-selling.html and then to talk through an example in this post to give more background on why Google has the policy that we have.
Dave (original), no need to be sarcastic. James, I don’t think we’re related. Lots of people have to deal with neurology and tumor-related issue. It’s amazingly stressful, and not to be taken lightly.
Graywolf – I wholeheartedly agree with you. I would feel uneasy at being presented with questionable content every time I searched in Google. The larger Wikipedia becomes the more search terms it is starting to cover and thus, the greater coverage the site gets. Unfortuantely Google doesn’t see it that way. The fact there is a *lot* of Wikipedia’s content duplicated on the net doesn’t make it seem very trustworthy either. But, at the end of the day, as you clearly pointed out – money talks.
Kathy, it’s good to hear from you again. I emailed folks in Google about http://www.hystersisters.com/ and it’s generated some good discussion, but no definitive cause for having a small number of pages indexed right now. Your case has been bumping around in the back of my brain, and I’m thinking a couple things:
1. I might need to learn more about SEO for forums, or to ask someone at Google what things we could do to improve forum coverage.
2. Some more PageRank on your site wouldn’t hurt. I’ve been meaning to do a “these sites are cool” post and thought I might mention http://www.hystersisters.com/ in that. I’ve been meaning to link to Robert Oschler at http://www.pleodinosaur.com/ for a long time too.
Matt,
Great post however you should also go after sites that are still selling paid links and actually did not budge as far as PR goes on the last culling.
For example, these 3 sites all have great PR, Interlink and continue to sell paid links that transfer PR:
(pruned)
If your going to get up on the box about paid links, you really need to drop the hammer. Those sites have been reported and continue to do well it making one think that Google has turned a blind eye to specific sites or industries.
[spamhound, I passed these on, but pruned the visible list. The spam report form is a better way to go. --Matt]
Oliver Taco, fair enough. One of the big reasons I still like Google is that I feel like I can help make a difference, e.g. the change that the AdWords folks just did to disable ads for lots of “buy PageRank”-type queries. I try really hard to pull Google’s goals to be in alignment with users wherever I can, and I know lots of Googlers who work to keep Google from being just a random big company. But I’m sure some Googlers just think of Google as just a place to work.
By the way, if PointCast makes you feel old, then I feel a little old too.
Isn’t it weird how that “push technology” kind of came full circle with RSS and feed readers?
“What about paid directories like Yahoo! or any of the 1000’s of smaller ones? Would Google consider paid directories the same as selling links that pass pagerank?”
Dito, I feel like I’ve already answered that question before — let me look. Ah, here it is. Is it okay if I just copy/paste my previous answer to that question, from http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-to-report-paid-links/ ?
Back then, I said
I hope that helps answer the question of how (say) the Yahoo directory is different from the examples I showed in my post. I hope it also answers the question of why a “bidding directory” that just gives the top slot to the highest money bid might not be as trusted by Google.
Matt, you told Kathy “Some more PageRank on your site wouldn’t hurt” – does that mean you’ll just laugh at my site? I’d even send myself cialis and viagra e-mails every day for 10 years for a PR5. Although admittedly I doubt PR will still be any real factor in terms of SEO. Although you have said countless times that PR is one of ~230 factors of a sites serp ranking, from what I gather the higher the serp you receive the higher the pagerank of that specific page will be (in comparison to a page on, say page 2). Or am I wrong, and Google have some devious plan to turn on our heads yet again?
graywolf is trying desperately to find any angle to attack Google and/or MC’s post, and it’s making him look pathetic.
Grant Glendinning, you may object to the fact that anybody can edit Wikipedia, but regular users do like Wikipedia. That said, if you want to exclude it from your own searches, just adding “-wikipedia” to your query should do the trick.
I was thinking the about this paid links discussion so prevalent across the web lately. At first I was on the side where I thought paid links should be allowed. But, as a small web site publisher, I thought again.
How would I as a small website publisher ever be able to compete against large corporations with seemingly endless budgets? They could simply buy their way into the SERPs wherever they feel like and I woud be assed out. Even though I am an expert in the topic my site is about, I would wind up virtually invisible when it comes to search.
I’m glad Google is against paid links. Remember the web is still very young. I think eventually there will be some sort of standard to indicate a link as being purchased.
Matt,
This issue seems more about the quality of the review than the issue of paid links. If a certain review is so piss poor, then it shouldn’t get the rankings that a well thought blog with competence should, sure. But to use this as a reason for broadly penalizing blogs who sell links seems a little irrelevant.
What if I have an authoritative blog, and I want to review a product? Most services give me the option of taking on the review or not. As a blogger and user, I would only choose products to which I would be able to give a competent review. I would be paid, and I would give my honest review, link to a product that I whole heartedly believe in, and then receive a penalty, or at the least have my PR passing ability taken away. Hardly seems fair.
What if I have a really authoritative blog on a subject, and am approached by another blogger getting into the game; I research the blog, love what I see, and agree to promote his blog. I like his site as a user, and would like to promote it as a blogger. So what if he pays me to do so? So what if giving him a great anchor text would help to move him up. I’m placing my name on it, and I like it. I’m trying to promote it for others to see anyway. As a user, I believe it should indeed rank higher. Isn’t that what you’re (Google) trying to do anyway? Return the results that we as the people want?
I can understand the bad apples that blindly link to others for the cash and little more. But surely there is another way to take those issues on instead of punishing the rest????
If the goal is to reduce spam, by all means more power to you. Google is the one to do it before the others IMHO, but I think the issue should be taken to without casting such a wide net.
Just my 2 cents, as a blogger, AND a user.
I disagree, in fact I believe was very light on what James is trying to imply!
Hi Matt,
Thanks so much. You are very kind to reply and let me know the Google brains are checking things out. Hystersisters.com used to be indexed quite well. Until my penalty. Since my reinclusion the indexed pages just haven’t been the same. (And I have plenty of forum owner friends who have 300+K pages indexed so I know that forum indexing is possible without tools like vbseo url rewrites) Is it possible that when I received re-inclusion I received a purgatory level instead of full grace?
As for page rank, this is a difficult thing too. Wiki article “hysterectomy” links to me as a resource. Other sites too like DMOZ and yahoo directory (back before it was a paid service) link to me. The main page of the site has been a 5 for years. I’ve been trying to figure out how to get internal pages to receive page rank but it eludes me. I don’t understand much about SEO but do what I can to maintain the site. I ignore the phone calls I get at my office almost daily with SEO offers for a price or those spammy emails. I keep trying to do what Google tells us to do: Add quality content and take care to address the needs of your visitors. SEO and PR should come naturally. I keep praying for a reversal with the indexing.
Please let me know if there is anything I can do to get the googlebot to visit my site’s threads. I would appreciate it soooo much!
James has a good point. If you legitimately have a useful site and want to increase it’s visibility, it makes sense to try to “prime the pump”, so to speak. I have a few sites like that – a volunteer project if you will, but also the same could go for commercial companies.
If I have a company that manufactures “fuzzy titanium widgets”, I’d like for people to find my site above the crappy, ad laden blogs in the same vein what Matt cites above.
The problem is that there are MANY people *cough* digitalpoint.com *cough* that basically attempt to make their living by creating such ad laden sites and employing all manner of legit and shady techniques to drive traffic, and since Google is the big daddy, everyone has their sights on gaming Google..
But, that puts those of us who want to promote our legitimate sites in a position of needing to try harder to promote our sites, or be relegated to the back pages.
So, it’s an arms race.
“How would I as a small website publisher ever be able to compete against large corporations with seemingly endless budgets? ”
I agree, Brent. Just to give you an example of your point, a few years ago there was a search engine that sorted purely by how much money someone was willing to pay for a certain term. If you searched for “Harvard” you would get test prep companies instead of Harvard University. I remember searching for the Red Cross on that search engine, and they’d had to create a fake $50 bid for redcross.org to make sure that the official Red Cross website would show up #1 for the query [red cross]. That’s just really awful, in my opinion. Very few people chose to go to that search engine, and it’s no longer a standalone business.
I think one of the strengths of web search is that with enough creativity and insight, a small mom/pop business can compete very well in their niche. Personally, I’d hate if websearch moved in the direction of that search engine that was sorted by pocketbook, and where Harvard University was nowhere in the top 10 for the query [harvard].
And how do you determine what constitutes payment? What about non cash transactions?
If I say James took me to dinner, linking to james is that bad? Is it a paid link if we went to McDonalds? How about if we went for Kobe Beef, foie gras, and truffles? What if we just just got thrown out of Applebees?
Dave (original), if James is trying to imply that we’re the same or even related, then he clearly hasn’t been reading here enough.
Kathy, I checked a while back and after leaving behind that particular link exchange, you got full grace.
It would be helpful if you would do a follow-up post on your site to talk about what you’ve done with vbseo type stuff. My best guess is that in the process of trying to do whitehat SEO or streamlining urls, some change was made in the site architecture that block some pages in robot.txt or causes other issues. So a post that says “my urls used to look like bla. Then I made this change and now my urls look like foo.” might help.
>“How would I as a small website publisher ever be able to compete against large corporations with seemingly endless budgets? ”
Eliminating paid text link advertising as option, isn’t going to drive prices down, when Google is the only place you’re “allowed” to buy advertising do you think the prices are going to go down and become more affordable?
graywolf, was I so clear about paying money for links that you start looking for gray areas (points, coupons, dinner) instead? If so, I’m glad that the post was clear about buying/selling links that pass PageRank for money.
You also said “when Google is the only place you’re “allowed” to buy advertising”. I’m surprised that you would make that claim when there are tons of non-Google places to advertise with no problem at all.
In fact, in our post on the official Google webmaster blog, I addressed exactly this point:
“Q: Is Google trying to crack down on other forms of advertisements used to drive traffic?
A: No, not at all. Our webmaster guidelines clearly state that you can use links as means to get targeted traffic. In fact, in the presentation I did in August 2007, I specifically called out several examples of non-Google advertising that are completely within our guidelines. We just want disclosure to search engines of paid links so that the paid links won’t affect search engines.”
graywolf, please don’t claim that “people can only advertise on Google” when we’ve specifically debunked that idea.
Matt,
Here’s what I would like to know:
If a site that hosts paid links stops doing so, can it get it’s pagerank (and trustrank) back?
Thanks,
Vic
Graywolf,
Google hasn’t nothing against paid advertising and never has, IMO. What is does NOT like is when paid advertising is used in an attempt to manipulate the organic SERPs. That is NOT paid advertising and it has an adverse effect on the millions of daily Google users. The Google guidelines are very clear on this…………all one needs to do is read them with a dash of common sense.
Adwords don’t influence organic SERPs
“oh and if you don’t think wikipedia medical pages have inaccuracies look at the rubella page, especially discussion and history”
graywolf, I don’t believe I said that Wikipedia pages were perfect. What I did say is that they’re often helpful, users like them, and if you personally don’t want Wikipedia pages in your search results, you can add “-wikipedia” to your own query and you won’t see it any more.
Matt, if you have a chance can you confirm that links that have been purchased and identified by Google’s algorithm as being purchased (eg on another site; in a bidding directory; etc) do not hurt the site that purchsed them?
If not I will bid for some links in a bidding directory for some competitors sites.
Matt,
The problem with the internet is that it isn’t the way it was in 1999. People are hoarding page rank/link juice because they know that outbound links can gain them money. So, they charge for it.
Take for example, the Audio/Video Home Theater industry that OneCall.com is a member of. We are one of the top rated Home Theater sites out there. We have great pricing to go with it. However, MOST sites won’t link to us unless there is something in it for them. AVSForum is a great example, HomeTheaterMag.com another great example. I have called these sites over the past couple of years to link to OneCall.com because we are one of the best online retailers in their niche. Will they link to us? Nope! Why? Because we have to pay for it. I have even offered up our affiliate program which pays more than anyone else in our industry. Nope! Why? Because they feel they can make more from Google AdWords instead.
So why don’t I buy one of their links, banners, etc.? Partially because I don’t want to mess up the $600K per month we rake in from Google Natural search revenue by buying a link that may create a downturn. Also, the banner blindness that people have today is getting worse and worse especially among savvy internet users so paying for a CPM model is becoming too expensive.
So, OneCall continues to do ‘okay’ in the SERPs but we are nowhere near where we should be based on our reputation in the niche industry we are in. We are playing by the rules. Following the Google Manifesto, partially out of fear of losing success we are having in the SERPS and partially because I truly believe that Google is Good and I still trust Google that following ‘the rules’ makes the internet a better place.
But sites like OneCall.com are suffering because we follow the rules and that just isn’t right.
Solution??
I believe that this is more of an example of the internet needing to have some ability to officially cite sources more than anything. Humans believe what they read on the internet anymore as truth without question. Take for example all of the urban legend type of emails floating around about how this or that person is dying of xyz disease and everyone please pray for them, blah, blah, blah. If a user spends the time to look up the background 99 out of 100 times it’s a hoax. But people believe the crap and they send it around to everyone and their dog because, damn, it’s on the internet . . . it MUST be true!!
Citing information within key industries (i.e. medical industry, law, etc.) should be nearly a requirement. The world doesn’t want some crackpot wannabe doctor posting wrong information on the web. Adwords forces you to get a pharmacy key to post ads about pharmaceuticals. I feel Google should institute a program where a website can display a badge of authority for key industries. If that badge is displayed (something like a AdWords professional type of badge implementation) then Googlebot gives it much higher credability. If it doesn’t then . . . well it’s just another person’s opinion not a professional’s opinion.
The internet is serving several purposes today. Ecommerce, information, porn, social interaction, etc. etc. etc. For some of these industries we need to do more than just have an algorithm that tracks inbound link authority determine who is and who isn’t the professional. You point out that the medical industry may be the most important place to start.
Brent David Payne
“If a site that hosts paid links stops doing so, can it get it’s pagerank (and trustrank) back?”
Hi Vic, we addressed this in our post on the official Google webmaster blog:
“Q: What recourse does a site owner have if their site was selling links that pass PageRank, and the site’s PageRank in the Google toolbar was lowered?
A: The site owner can address the violations of the webmaster guidelines and submit a reconsideration request in Google’s Webmaster Central console. Before doing a reconsideration request, please make sure that all sold links either do not pass PageRank or are removed.”
The only thing I would mention is that I would not recommend removing paid links, applying for a reconsideration, and then add paid links back onto the site. That would strike search engines as very deceptive/spammy and could result in sites being permanently removed from Google’s index.
Thanks, Matt. The concern is not so much pagerank but that a further penalty may come down the road affecting SERPs.
Vic
“One thing you happened to omit is the paid listing for Radiosurgery the first listing is a premium PPC slot. Why is it OK for that listing to pay to influence the SERP’s but it’s not OK for the person who paid for a text link advertisement you showed?”
graywolf, Google does have advertising on our site. Like the vast majority of advertising on the web, it is clearly marked as sponsored and does not affect search engines. In fact that ad most definitely *does not* influence Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs). Google’s ads go through a url redirector which specifically forbids bots and other search engines from crawling, so that we don’t accidentally influence any search engine. In addition, we try very hard to make sure that our advertising helps our users. For example, the first ad that I see for the search “radiosurgery” is irsa.org, which is a very helpful to users.
Now graywolf, I did a post with several screenshots of examples why paid posts can be bad for search engines and the web. You seem to be throwing up a lot of objections like “Wikipedia sucks” or “Google checkout looks like they linked to someone with keywords in the link!” But I think if you go back to the content of my post, most people would not want examples like the ones I showed to affect the search rankings for a serious medical subject like brain tumors.
Matt, you’re not old unless you can remember front-panel booting a PDP-8 or paper tape.
Single sided single density Kaypro CPM floppies with PIP don’t count.
_OT
>you can add “-wikipedia” to your own query and you won’t see it any more.
Burying my head in the sand and pretending wikipedia doesn’t exist for the rest of the world just because I don’t see it is ignorant at best.
Hey all, my wife is kidnapping me for a date night, but I’ll be back later tonight to check in on the discussion.
I’ve got to run. Can someone hunt up the recent French study that discusses how much regular users like Wikipedia? If you can’t find it, I’ll hunt it down when I get back from my date night.
Cool . . . have fun. I look forward to seeing a reply to my comment. I don’t think you have ever replied to my comments. Maybe they are too long.
Brent David Payne
Seems to me that by the sheer volume of Google searches compared to any other SE, you are in a minority. However, it’s interesting to know you consider yourself in a position to speak on behalf of the “rest of the world”.
>Like the vast majority of advertising on the web, it is clearly marked as sponsored
Well we both know there are numerous studies showing that most users can’t tell ads from content on the web. A fact that is complicated by Google Adsense encouraging publishers to make ads “blend” and look like content instead of advertising as much as possible.
And inaccurate results from wikipedia are better than inaccurate commercially influenced results?
As a user I want results that are accurate and truthful, a standard wikipedia doesn’t hold itself to or strive for
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:V
If you were really interested in removing inaccurate results wikipedia would be the first place I started
Hi Matt,
I see your points very well, BUT where you and GOOGLE seem to fail is
1) Google doesn’t were the “human hat”
Matt, for the love of god , why don’t YOU do that?
AND here is what I mean…..
Ask yourself this ” My sister has cancer, crap…let me find out about treatments”
Your going to tell me that , you would base your family’s treatment on a “google result”….lol come on man.
I see the example you are trying to use so that it can “hit home”
BUT – if it was my FAMILY or even someone I cared about, I would be calling doctors and specialists , NOT reading google.
Maybe a better choice for any example would have been “best xmas toy” or something…
I am actually horrified that you would also put your family’s health in that hands of any search engine for that matter.
The real problem is that the whole world is becoming to based on this digital world…..
“Put your human hat on” and realize there is more to life then “Big oil” or “big search”
America is 3 trillian dollars in credit card debt, These are REAL #’S from REAL sources, so Of course people are trying to make money….
Oh yea and last point…
If selling links is soooo bad….
How come text-link-ads.com still has a PR7 AND indexed , Oh wait I know “Big Oil”………….No way Patrick Gavin could get one of his sites banned,……….I mean after all he started all this link selling …….
Yea – you can try to brainwash the rest of us , BUT me and grey wolf have it figured out for sure
Two key words “google stock”
Oh yea and PS, he is right about wiki
hey matt,
quick question. what is the difference between a paid for post on a blog and content that a business pays for to get written by a professional copywriter?
Also I know you keep focusing on the cancer theme of your post but greywolf is addressing the broader issue and I think some of his points are very valid.
When did Google EVER profess to supply accurate information V.S. most relevant according to its algorithm?
ANY SE who attempts to control the *accuracy* of the information it serves up is on a slippery slope to nowhere. You obvioulsy have a “Big Brother” mind-set already, why would you want to feed that?
Thanks Matt. I’ve written an update with specifics. The only thing: My thread urls never changed. I didn’t use vbseo.
Thanks once again. I remain ever hopeful a solution is found.
Next halloween may I suggest a superman costume for you.. if somehow we find a solution. I’ll proclaim you my hero!
Matt,
I hope you don’t get too involved on trying to control the quality of the web. The more restrictions you put on webmasters, less and less will be in favor of using and supporting Google. I don’t mean to sound harsh, but this what I really feel.
Matt,
Thanks for the post. I’d like to understand this issue in as great of detail as possible and your example helps. Can you elaborate a bit further on the following questions:
1) Given that the core of your justification seems to be that you, as a user, wouldn’t like these posts as high search results, can you please share what the SERPs for these posts were prior to GOOG penalties for search terms such as “radiosurgery”, “brain tumor treatment” and “gamma knife” ?
2) Can you also share what those sites’ PageRank’s were prior to GOOG penalties and after GOOG penalties?
3) If their PageRank’s were changed, are you saying that their PageRank was obtained by purchasing paid links? If not, then how would you explain the policy behind taking away a PR that was properly obtained via organic links etc.? If their properly obtained PR wasn’t changed, then what penalty did they receive?
4) One of the posts you referenced (possibly all), linked to http://www.braintumortreatment.org/ . That site contains an overview on the Gamma Knife brain tumor treatment, an Information for Doctors page, an Information for Patients page, and an Information for Hospitals page — in fact, it cites similar authorities and contains more relevant content than the wikipedia page for Gamma Knife, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_knife . At first blush, that site appears very relevant for searches of “radiosurgery”, “brain tumor treatment” and “gamma knife”. Do you believe that site, referenced by those blogs, is not relevant for those search terms?
Direct answers on these would shed greater light on GOOG’s latest penalties. thx!
Matt, sorry about naming the company. I didn’t know it was against the rules. If it seemed I was trying to “call out” the company; that was not my intention. I should have taken more than a minute to write that post with less ranting. Feel free to delete it if you want.
I guess what I was trying to say is:
What about paid posts (reviews) that DO use nofollow tags, but the reviews themselves are totally fake i.e. not relevant to regular users? Will Google do something about this deceptive practice?
>When did Google EVER profess to supply accurate information V.S. most relevant according to its algorithm?
and inaccurate information is more relevant? if they were looking for relevant irregardless of accuracy (taking the wikipedia NPV stance) then why defuse google bombs like “miserable failure” or “greatest living american”.
Is the detection of paid links/paid directories algorithmic or human?
Marc: “Will Google do something about this deceptive practice?” – what has this got to do with Google? They are not the internet police.
Does this just go for text links? We sell ad space on our website, most ads come in from us from some other ad serving platform and it’s in the form of javascript. However, some of our smaller advertisers supply images and links and so in our system, it just spits out as:
href | image | end href
Not done through javascript, just straight up HTML. In no way would anyone confuse it as something other than an ad, but should that no-follow tag be used on the outgoing link even though it’s an image? Does PR get passed even if it’s not a text link?
Thanks,
Chip-
Ah, Pointcast. I was on the original beta. What a terrific, ahead-of-its-time system. Until a few weeks ago I had one of the original floppy disks (office clean out time.)
Hope you’re well, Matt. If you’re back in Lex any for holidays let’s have a beer.
That’s a HUGE erroneous leap from my statement: “When did Google EVER profess to supply accurate information V.S. most relevant according to its algorithm?”
To ensure constantly accurate information would require about 1 billion Google employees perpetually cross referencing information on all 10 Billion + pages in it’s Index. Not realistic and borders on fanciful.
Of course, if you have method to achieve any such thing, I’m sure Google is all ears. Please share.
Dave I agree, but the objective should be to provide information that’s as accurate as possible. Removing a source that doesn’t strive for accuracy would be a start
Matt – thanks for pointing out this example of spam/web pollution. I could not agree more that cutting down on this kind of activity will increase the quality of search and the Internet.
However, Google is going to far by saying all links that are transacted are negatively affecting the search experience. Although most paid links are spam, like these (http://daily.stanford.edu), there are some good people out there linking responsibly. When a company that has a product/service that adds value (not an affiliate or lead generator, etc), pays a relevant publishers to display their link, and the publisher consents to the quality of their product and wants to link them based on that merit – this can be helpful the search results. I have seen many examples where major brands had to purchase a handful of links on industry specific sites and now that are ranking for terms that are core to their business. These Fortune 500 companies has no other way to achieve this result. They were not buying pagerank or manufacturing authority. They were just getting some anchor text and focus – their domain authority which has been accrued naturally is what drives their rank.
Adveritsers will always buy links and publishers will always sell them. Brokers will always think of new ways to get past the systemand find a crack (paid blogs, in-content links, etc) . Why don’t you guys try and promote responsibility with linking. Try and educate publishers and advertisers that these links are affecting search results, and that matters a lot (as you displayed above)…be smart with who you link to – paid or not.
==================================
EXC-U-USE YOURSELF!!!
YOU ARE NOT BEING FAIR,….. in fact this logic is completely absurd.
It borders on being the most vile reasoning in the history of SEO blogs.
Is this the type of reasoning that goes on behind closed doors at Google???
Is this the type of conversations you all have, then congratulate yourselves on your moral superiority and righteousness???
This post will pick your argument apart and show the world just how unreasonable Google can be.
ARE YOU READY>>>>>>
1- YOU CAN NOT use extreme emotional life and death analogies to make a point about generalities – -NEVER, EVER give in to that easy way out AGAIN. The extremes do not represent the norms.
2- The overwhelming majority of paid links ARE VALID and that represents a more realistic perspective!
3- What other choice are you giving someone after YEARS of not being noticed and playing by the rules?! Should they just remain invisible for the rest of their online lives? Would YOU not finally want to take some action to get traffic? Can you honestly say that if you were in their shoes, YOU would be content to never get anything from your commercial Website?
4- It will take much more than a few blog links to get an important term on the first pages of Google. And for a term link RADIOSURGERY – many many science articles and older specialty sites will be on the top SERPs. So THAT is why Extreme examples do not reflect the norm. Do manipulate peoples emotion through unreasonable fear. They will NEVER trust you again once they become enlightened.
5a- Also, can you DENY that there are no under the table deals going on with large sites that buy massive amounts of ads on popular media sites?
Can you deny that there are not reviews or blog posts given to cement the relationships. Can you deny that Press Releases are not picked up immediately by Hundreds of outlets competing to have 24/7 news – EVEN if they are about minor matters? All of this adds backlinks to a company’s homepage.
5b- No high PR Website is going to GIVE a free link to a ordinary commercial site. Virtually no social site is going to have any ordinary commercial sites.
A high quality informational site or a free software or Web service site are what Webmasters show interest in.
6- What about the admission from an SEO that his firm has clients who by a million Adwords? How the hell is the small guy or gal going to compete?!
7- If Google is so concern about having the best possible results for searchers - would not that extend to taking the sponsor links OFF the top of the SERPs?
Using you own logic – the organic results go there by honest, tenacious competition. The top sponsor links BOUGHT their position with big bucks.
Rememeber, up until a few weeks ago, the entire are was clickable – that is deceiving consumers who may not have known they clicked to go to a site.
8- Essentially, you are no more honest than the rest of society. When it is to your benefit – you rationalize you behaviour just like most others.
There has to be understanding on both sides. Smug moral superiority is not the answer.
Not all paid links are bad. You can not group all paid links under one banner. A Webmaster has every right to charge for a link when there is a competitive market to get a link on that page.
What you fail to understand is that there are just no opportunities for small Webmasters to get attention.
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@graywolf – Hey MG, I don’t think you’re going to get MC to resolve the Google dichotomy. I honestly don’t think he understand that it exists.
Remember when AdWords changed color from blue to yellow? Was that to improve search results relevance or blur the line between paid results and organic results? That had nothing to do with anything Matt’s team did. They seem to operate in a vacuum, unaware how the business side of Google creates a conflict of interest with what they’re attempting to accomplish.
MC, if you really want to tackle search engine spam, convince the AdWords team to display the parked domains from the AdSense for Domains program in reports. For a company whose mission is to organize the world’s information, the selective omission of that crucial information undermines your work. Think about that.
I bet you’re not even aware that your company chooses to hide this information from advertisers, your company’s core customers who provide 99% of your revenue. This is what I’m talking about:
http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=bn&answer=66743
Also, if your read the announcement about the launch of the Placement Performance Report:
http://adwords.blogspot.com/2007/06/introducing-placement-performance.html
you’ll notice this section: “The report also provides a new level of transparency for traffic you accrued from sites in our network that are participating in the AdSense for domains program. Currently, AdSense for domains statistics are collectively reported, but we are working to give you site-by-site level statistics soon.”
That was 6 months ago. How soon is that?
A more recent post on your company’s Inside AdWords blog regarding invalid clicks (and I know you’ve posted about invalid clicks and Shuman’s efforts in that regard in the past):
http://adwords.blogspot.com/2007/07/whats-new-in-world-of-invalid-clicks.html
refers to the site exclusion tool which “can be used to prevent ads from appearing on certain Google content network websites that advertisers don’t feel are appropriate for their ads. Advertisers can get an idea of where their ads are showing by running a Placement Performance report.”
Umm, how can you block individual sites when they’re lumped together into a single “Domain Ads” category? Yes, I know an AdSense for Domains opt out exists. That’s not what advertisers or domainers need. Advertisers need to actually be able to see where their ads run and pick and choose individual domains to block.
Now, can you see why people are having a hard time listening to you talk about paid links and transparency? Your company, Google, is hiding paid links from the advertisers who, to a large degree, fund all of your efforts.
Good luck. Seriously. Others at Google who aren’t as honest and open as you are going to make it difficult for you to be trusted.
Google DO strive to provide accurate information. However, this does not and should not extend to ‘other’ sites. As I said, attempting to do so is a slippery slope to nowhere.
Google is already the target of “Big Brother” type conspiracies. I see no gain for anyone by living up to that?
It’s a good sample but in some case Google still ranks these sites very well. For example, a few mins ago, I want to find a free tool to convert downloaded youtube video (flv format) to swf so that I can post the video to my blog directly. But when I searched “flv to swf” (without quote), I got a lot of MFA sites, like the #1 of 1,800,000: http://www.brothersoft.com/downloads/flv-to-swf.html (only adsense ads, no result at all) and #2: http://www.downloadatoz.com/howto/convert-flv-to-swf.html (a little usefull than #1, but useless for me).
Btw, here is how to convert flv to swf for free: download a trial version of Adobe Flash and you are done!
Does that “right” extend to Google.
How do “small Webmasters” get a level playing field when might ($) is right? Didn’t Google prove to the World that it IS possible to rise above the mighty $ and get recognition, fame and popularity without buying the market?
I think the more Google tries and explains its reasoning for their stance on paid links, the more they become the anti thesis of their stated objective : Do No Evil. Matt reminds me of Tony Snow, spinning up a storm. And today it was a double PR whammy, with 2 posts on the subject between this blog and the GWMC blog
The biggest problem in my opinion, is the way Google gave it to us, real soft and slowly. Slowly, so we wouldn’t notice that they were giving it to us. I’m referring to the whole us of the no follow. At first they insisted it was for one thing, then another, and before we knew it, we better start pasting those babies everywhere or else!!
or else what? or else we snatch your site from our index and make you go bankrupt because you didn’t put no follows where we wanted you to. The punishment many times does not suit the “crime”
All this is doing is continuing to harbor negative sentiment for a company that callously destroyed peoples whole livelihood with out a single warning to them.
Maybe an extreme example, but effective in illustrating my point. That there are real world consequences of this policy.
Google’s paid link policy causes more problems than it solves. And with all the money, and brain power there @ the Googplex, they really should find a more effective way of handling a flaw in their algo. then to remove a tumor with a rusty battle ax , rather than with a precision scalpel.
Don’t get me wrong, I am a big fan of many things Google, but this in particular sucks!
Thanks-
I agree with everything about this article but I wonder if your algorithm is able to determine whether a paid post is well written/well research.
What if someone writing a paid review about brain tumor and was able to write an amazingly accurate and honest article about it? Do you still demote their page rank just because they are writing paid review about brain tumor?
My guess is that, such thing might require a manual review. Take JohnChow.com for example, he’s ignoring everything google says about not doing paid review or selling text link ads and he still have PageRank 4. Google is giving mixed message here for not demoting his page to 0.
Perhaps Google realises that his readers actually find some of his paid reviews useful and that’s how he can get away with it. Is that an accurate assumption?
Then what happen if JohnChow.com suddenly write a paid review about a brain tumor treatment and the information is not entirely accurate. Will he get a 0 PageRank then?
Perhaps even with PR4, JohnChow.com has lost its ability to pass along Google Juice so Google couldn’t care less about what he writes?
What about someone promoting an affiliate program related to brain tumor treatment? And let say the link was able to pass Google Juice along. Are you going to do anything about that?
I would hate to get fake radiology serp.
If people do want to make money from their sites and not get penalized, simply include the “nofollow” attribute in the links. I don’t think it’s that hard.
“Using you own logic – the organic results go there by honest, tenacious competition. The top sponsor links BOUGHT their position with big bucks.”
I agree, I think you should remove the top search results as well,
Matt Cutts wrote: “…I hope you’ll agree that you wouldn’t want a serious medical search for brain tumor treatments to be affected by inaccurate or uninformed posts.”
Right. I don’t want to make major life decisions on the basis of what Wikipedia has to say. Please remove it from your “most favored sites” queue immediately, as it seriously diminishes the quality of your index.
Hey Matt,
Side observation here and maybe something for future use from north of the border, but that Mayo Clinic article didn’t come up on either google.com or google.ca for me. To be totally honest, I probably never would have come across it were it not for this blog post. Not sure if this is one of those Toronto issues or not, but I figured I’d bring it up since it’s pretty clear that it belongs there, and in the case of the .ca, one of the Alberta Radiosurgery Centre links could be removed. I’m not bitching or anything like that (not trying to, anyway) but just wanted to point that out.
Good stuff, though. I love how the car loan post fits in so well with the Gamma Knife and the Colon Cleanse. They’re so related! Cut out your brain tumors, flush out your insides, and then go for a drive in your newly-leased-on-life-and-0.9%-financing Escalade. No one’s questioning this, right?
By the way, Matt, why are you taking Gray’s bait if you weren’t sure about Wall’s? He’s just pulling an Eddie Haskell move on you.
It’s funny how the people who whine the most about FUD campaigns are the ones that start them.
Dave, now I have to educate you.
You see, it’s a scientifically proven fact that Google is only popular because the same webmasters who have no say or voice or influence used that lack of influence to build Google up to what it is. It had nothing to do with being miles ahead of the competition, and it certainly had nothing to do with Google understanding that society suffers from the paradox that the lowest common denominator causes the toughest problems for the most intelligent of our species, a paradox which has magnified itself tenfold thanks to the Internet. Nope. It’s the poor webmasters that have no influence that made Google, and it’s those poor webmasters that will break Google.
I hope you feel really silly for questioning this logic. This bitchslap was brought to you by the letters S, E, and O and by the number PR0.
I would also like to know the answer to Chip’s question re image ads.
Matt, yeah that would be a travesty to see Google looking like the paid-only search engine you wrote about.
If Google decided to officially allow paid links, big budget sites would start buying links and it would be game over from there for all the webmasters who are currently for paid links. Why don’t people get that?
Hi Matt, I appreciate the work you put in to communicating with the webmaster community. For some, you are providing a resource of great value.
In light of the improvements in webmaster communications via the Google webmaster tools center, I have a question which may be able to be addressed in a general way. Without going into unneeded specifics, I have a site which I can safely say has a form of penalty. This penalty may be quite old, but I only recently became aware. I’ve submitted a re-consideration request twice; one was a couple months ago – no change; the other was about a month ago – after the paid link clarification/crackdown. Each time I submitted the re-consideration request, to my best knowledge my site was in compliance with the Google guidelines. Is mine a special case – or should I wait longer for my latest re-consideration request? If a webmaster cannot seem to find a solution in the normal manner, where should he/she turn to? (tried Google webmaster forums too)
I don’t know, Brent. I tend to agree with you.
Both the post and the comments are great and very informative.
Lots of great comments have been made and I’ll try to keep up witih reading all of them.
“that Mayo Clinic article didn’t come up on either google.com or google.ca for me”
M.W.A., it did for me, but that could be ranking differences between our locations, or possibly personalized search. I’ve seen it be on page 1 and page 2. As far as why I’ve been responding to graywolf, I want to make sure that I debunk some myths (e.g. this is a Google-only issue, or Google is doing this to try to make more money instead of to try to improve our result quality), and he’s been putting the questions out there ready to be answered.
“I would also like to know the answer to Chip’s question re image ads.”
Kalena, I saw your comment on the webmaster help group first, so I answered it over there: http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help-Indexing/browse_thread/thread/218bef9ae9f83203
Scorpy01, I hope that helps address your question too.
Richard the Younger, you say that you’ve already tried a reconsideration request and the webmaster forum too? What’s your site name, if you can say it?
Richard Ball, thanks for the interesting comment. I’m not sure if you’ve seen these links:
http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/014378.html
http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/015287.html
and this post with screenshots:
http://www.redflymarketing.com/blog/adwords-content-exclusion-beta-a-first-look/
I honestly do appreciate the feedback and the honest criticism. I wouldn’t claim that Google is perfect, but I do think that we try to respond to feedback. For example, at SES San Jose we got some criticism for our stance on paid links while selling “buy PageRank”-type ads. Earlier this week, we disabled ads for a bunch of “buy PageRank”-type ads, and I expect us to do that for more such queries.
Is Google perfect? Nope. Do I secretly sometimes fantasize that Larry/Sergey would run a “CEO for a day” contest, I would win it, and I could change several little things about Google that annoy me? Yup, I’ve daydreamed about that more than once.
But in the mean time, there’s a bunch of Googlers who try to do the right thing and try to make sure that Google does the right thing. That may be hard to believe, but in my opinion it’s true.
Richard Ball, if you’re going to be at PubCon too, please introduce yourself. I enjoy chatting about this more.
Crikey it’s late. My wife is pulling me off toward bed, so I’ll talk to folks later.
Oh, one last thing. I don’t remember why graywolf turned a paid links post into a “Wikipedia sucks” discussion, but I promised to hunt down this post about how regular users like Wikipedia: http://aixtal.blogspot.com/2007/11/search-google-yahoo-comparison.html
A few tidbits:
- the author claims that Google is better than Yahoo according to that study
- Yahoo returns Wikipedia at #1 more often than Google, according to the author
- On a five-point scale, “The average mark allocated by users when the result is in Wikipedia is nearly one point higher, in the case of Google and Yahoo, than the mark allocated to other results.”
There’s all kinds of objections I could raise about this study (e.g. I think the queries were self-selected), but it does show how much regular users like Wikipedia.
“I hope that helps answer the question of how (say) the Yahoo directory is different from the examples I showed in my post. I hope it also answers the question of why a “bidding directory” that just gives the top slot to the highest money bid might not be as trusted by Google.”
Does that mean that Google itself isn’t trusted? After all, adwords lets the highest slot go to the highest payer although granted not in the search results.
The one problem with the examples that you chose is that the two radiological organisations ones are both effectively sponsored albeit self-sponsored. As you would expect neither give information outside the field of radiology which, if one was searching for information about a potential treatment, is bad in that you’d want a more complete picture of what treatments were available.
What does strike me is that there are two very different types of sponsored post around. I do accept that the purely advertising type as illustrated by your examples don’t really deserve to be in search results: essentially they are links with some nonsense around them. However, there are also lots out there where the sponsorship link is essentially used as a trigger for an article: to my mind those ones give the type of in-context links that are appropriate in an index.
Obviously there are also lots that fall at some point between these two extremes.
The question is: are those that use the sponsored link as a trigger for an article and thereby quote it as an example OK with Google?
I don’t think you’ve presented a solid case for ‘why paid links are bad’.
Surely, the clear quality measure of these sites as *total rubbish* should be enough to downgrade their links?
What quality algorithm could ever give them much PR to pass?
I think what this really shows is that ‘links as a positive vote’ is the problem here?
Maybe the quality of the site/page is where you should point your algorithm development, rather than leaving mom and pop blogger to figure out if they have been paid or not?
Adwords has shown it can be done, in its quality score system – surely a measurement along similar lines would make more sense, whether instead of or in tandem with a link-measured system?
IMHO
Good post. I’m somewhat surprised you write that at least the posters of the paid reviews should do a spellcheck. They way I see the review example that’s very much what they’ve done. It looks like a kind of typo squatting if you like, where you put the most frequently used typos in the text to rank well for searches from people who don’t know the correct spelling.
Matt, great post clarifying the situation even more as to why paid posts are bad. Though I do agree that WIkipedia sucks, Google allowed it to become a brand by letting it get mass exposure, that’s why people click it.
Matt, I appreciate the example. However, as the son of a physician, I can assure you that the motivating force behind all things medical (and probably all things in general) is ultimately money.
Drug reps visit physicians daily, treat them to expensive lunches and give them expensive gifts, not because they’re old college buddies (they’re not) but because they want the doctors to prescribe their drugs.
Are the doctors influenced by this bribery? Absolutely. The doctor gets a quick and easy solution to a patient’s problem which allows him to spend less time with patients and make more money. Of course, the “benefit” is that the drug companies use a little bit of their earnings to invest in more research to solve more problems (with drugs, of course). Are they the “best” solutions? Probably not. But they’re the solutions that make the drug companies, the doctors, the pharmacists and the hospitals the most money.
And why do surgeons decide to become surgeons? Being a surgeon is certainly not the most pleasant profession: 14 to 20 years of college, blood and guts, risk of killing your patient, telling family that their loved one is dead, constant law suits…
I have met many surgeons and can tell you it’s not because of some altruistic desire to save lives that they choose their profession but rather because they like the collection of Porsches and the $2M vacation house in Spain that their profession allows them to buy.
I wonder how many surgeons we’d have if there were no financial incentive…
At the risk of sounding cynical, I’m afraid money makes the world go round, at least for now.
My point is, we don’t live in a perfect world. Yet, whether you guys at Google realize it or not, you’re trying to create a utopia. It’s a noble endeavor. If you don’t yet have a team of philosophers and economists, you’d best start putting one together. I’ll volunteer.
Scott –
I still remember a sysadmin charging into our bullpen (remember that?) and a accosting someone with PointCast running. Seems it was thrashing our X.25 pad….
-OT
Hi Matt,
I have reported paid links on a few websites through your spam reporting tool.
The sites in question have not been penalized by Google at all.
Do you really do something about paid links?
Cheers
Oh, and one final question…
Should we ignore the authority advice of a physician simply because he accepts bribes from pharmaceutical companies?
Matt -
I’ve seen several studies showing that, for non-controversial, fact-based items (wombats, volcano’s, cro-magnons) the Wikipedia is just as accurate as the Encyclopedia Brittanica (sucks to be them). But for topics with any level of controversy (Bush, Confederate Battle Flag, etc) you really have to watch what’s there. I also understand that companies alter their and their competitors wikipedia entries (I am shocked there is gambling going on here!). None of which makes the Wiki less useful. My wife the professor has to lecture her students every semester about NOT using it as their sole source of research.
But my point is that sometimes when my last dozen search requests have ALL returned the wikipedia I feel like some of the web is missing. Surely there is another source with another style with good information?
-OT
That’s quite an emotive example there Matt, almost reminded me of some opening gambit in the case for the prosecution.
“Aren’t these people evil, look what they are doing to your queries, this is why we are stopping their heinous activities..”
I don’t want to appear rude or disrespectful Matt, you’re a nice guy and go out of your way to help others I’m sure, yet Ive got to ask here did you all just sit round a table somewhere and agree with the most vocal anti paid link position person? Did anyone even think to look at a different approach? Where was that careful considered approach of old?
You know as well as I that many many sites of singular authority discuss all manner of topics linking to all manner of things in all manner of ways. What you are effectively saying is that they should either play by the rules of Google, or have no place in what has become the de facto gateway to the net. How long before someone sits up and takes note of that fact and takes steps to reign in what is increasingly becoming a monoplistic utilitarian power?
It’s like Goog have this art gallery with zillions of paintings and you are telling the artists that unless they paint their pictures using special Google ink then you’ll kick them out or throw them in the back of beyond where no one can see them anymore. Is such a view so far from restraint of trade or a block to self expression and individuality?
I’m not surprised that people would raise the paid link conflict of interest angle, it’s reasonable to infer after all. Especially when set against a view that suggests that other methods for dealing with this areavailable.
Is Googles internal link analysis capability so underdeveloped that it can’t identify and reduce these impacts?
An external observer might be forgiven for concluding that new blogosphere links are given far far too much weight and impact on the SERPs. They might also be forgiven for suggesting perhaps that maybe Google weren’t as susceptible to manipulation as it so appears and that the real reason for these kinds of responses were more related to some nightmare Goog scenario of paid link extravaganza, where it simply made more sense to use multiple authors than pay for some inflated cost per click. It does smash the model somewhat, doesn’t it?
Rob, unfortunately their are too many webmasters, coders and some SEO’s dreaming up new ways to try and game the system.
It is an ongoing battle…………….
But surely the end result is just more rubbish and needless spam on the internet, that otherwise would not exist.
I know this is just me being idealistic – but I really wish people would just redirect all these spammy efforts into building great sites, with great content.
Surely this would make a better internet for all…?
@ Ray – sure I agree. needless crap aplenty there is.
I think the days of the unfettered non polluted web have been and gone. Just as product placement has managed to embed itself into our TV and film so it has in the web of 2007 and beyond.
>Rob, unfortunately their are too many webmasters, coders and some SEO’s dreaming up new ways to try and game the system.
Could it not be argued that Google are gaming the worlds information to their own ends? Sure it could,in all walks of life someone somewhere is trying to gain an edge, when viewed like that it’s a little paradoxical wouldn’t you think? Who controls Google though, who is watching the watcher?
Lets imagine a font of wealth, power and influence, should any group or group of individuals expect to drink unchallenged at this font of opportunity – would they or should they even, be so surprised when someone somewhere should seek to have a little bit for them too? People will naturally try and barge in or claim a place or shout out loud and question why it is that a privileged few should drape themselves in gold whilst everyone else walks in rags. It’s mirrored throughout society and throughout history. The worlds information crap and golden nuggets all, is this very font.
Democracy is one of the safeguards that protect us from the law makers, or those who’d take actions that would enslave or reduce our economic opportunities. Some are seeing this policy as just that. It isn’t a black and white issue, it has huge areas of gray that some are selectively dismissing to suit whatever position it is they are seeking to promote. Nothing new there no, its how modern society works after all
Tangentially, take the whole re-inclusion thing – you have to admit to wrong doing before even using it? You are tried and convicted in your absence 1st, then – you have to admit wrong doing before you are even considered for re-inclusion, penalty lifting. How is that right? What is remotely just or fair about that?
@matt I think it was if you want to remove inaccurate paid link advertising how about removing inaccurate sites like wikipedia as well
Also remind me to show you a mobile search in vegas. Regular Google on the web actually is much better than the special google web application
Interesting post, thanks – and I agree that it’s important for google to provide the best possible results, especially in areas such as medical treatment.
One of the big reasons I still like Google is that I feel like I can help make a difference, e.g. the change that the AdWords folks just did to disable ads for lots of “buy PageRank”-type queries. I try really hard to pull Google’s goals to be in alignment with users wherever I can, and I know lots of Googlers who work to keep Google from being just a random big company.
How do you feel about the fact that google advertises ineffective – and in some cases potentially dangerous – treatments and ‘cures’ for cancer, autism, and a whole range of other conditions? Google avoids advertising some products for ethical reasons – e.g. if I search for ‘bullets’ there are (thankfully) no ads for munitions. On the other hand, if I google ‘cancer nutrition’ (a legit subject, for which there could be legit ads) the adverts include an injunction to “No Chemo-Radiation-Surgery-Address Cancer Naturally. Learn More!“.
I don’t like to be melodramatic, but I know people who would be dead if they had followed this advice. Why can’t google take an ethical approach to medical ads – and refuse to advertise treatments that are likely to be dangerous and/or ineffective?
No, it didn’t answer my question. Arrington does paid posts and lists sponsors with links not using nofollow. He doesn’t get get slapped down. Did you read the blog entry I linked?
To me, it looks like the big dogs protecting the big dogs, running in a pack.
It also seems that if Google destroys the pay to blog marketplace, then Google will continue to be the primary means to monetize a blog. I’m no legal eagle but something in that scenario smacks of conflict of interest.
Isn’t that how Microsoft’s troubles began?
Personally, i think that pr/serps are manipulated by paid because you let them, banning them or prohibiting them might not be enough,
There are several other ways to help prohibit paid links, not sure why you guys chose the one thats so troublesome..
Matt, I agree with everything except for Google making rel=nofollow a requirement. I think its a terrible PR move. If rel=nofollow wasn’t part of the paid link discussion, there would be much less resistence and outcry. You are literally asking link sellers to shoot themselves in the foot; and rightly or wrongly they are going to complain. That’s just human nature at work.
Matt, why not simply drop link sellers out of the Google index, that is the end of the story, I see Google leaving out a ton of relevant search results that are produced honestly and it has nothing to do with links.
Google needs to adjust the way Google ranks sites making links less of a factor in the algorithms, they also need to remove sites from the database that are selling links without “no follow tags” and return results based on the value of information presented versus who has the best incoming links from their social network.
SEO’s being a prime example of this with their “who I’m reading” link networks.
Matt,
) Too many times pages meant only to promote ads or of fake info show up and thats bad. So if google is doing something to improve user experience that needs to be commended.
) but when they link to say me they will put some text over the block where they are linking from saying “Advertisement, Blogroll, Friends, Interesting Links”. Penalizing us for not knowing about rel=”nofollow” is really depriving some good genuine content from being indexed simply cos people didn’t know that it was wrong.
I have been running sites for some time as a hobby and over time its popularity has forced me to give it a bit more attention.(it still is not my job) i hope to bring to you a little different and a perspective of webmasters who aren’t doing and running sites as a job but more for fun/hobby.
First of all let me say i am absolutely for banning paid links. Frankly if i am searching anything i want quality information to be shown(saves my time and time is money
Now on this specific topic, I think what you are assuming is that everyone will have the knowledge about how to stop links from passing pr. If i am a new webmaster i wouldn’t know whats rel=”nofollow”. I am looking for a bit more of popularity for my blog. I don’t have the cash for adwords so i look for other blog/site owners and ask them for a link to my content for traffic. (Even the other guy running a blog/site might not be well versed with SEO technology, he has been running the site for sometime, has a audience and i as a non-competitor am asking him traffic for my “interesting” blog via link and he an I both think that the userbase will find my content interesting) And this is not a isolated situation. Lot of my friends in college or in work blog, run sites and they don’t know about SEO. They run the sites either to provide information about specific areas they like, about their hobbies and such. These are not spammy sites, infact they might be pretty good high quality sites(eg a friend of mine runs a great personal blog on aviation and explains the terminology in simple real world examples.)
What i am trying to say here is that you are assuming everyone knows SEO. Linking is bad, so rel nofollow and if you don’t we will penalize you as you might be selling links. That actually is not the case. Its very unfair that genuine, but people who are not conversant with SEO, are being dropped out simply because of some other rogue elements. I know that in a real world some people will suffer for the folly of others but thats why i have couple of suggestions.
1)Why can’t google scan for “Advertisement”, “Sponsors” tag above the block of links and then discount pr for the pages linked that way.(The links still might NOT be rel=”nofollow”. Why am i asking/saying this, cos most of the people i know as fellow colleagues don’t know about rel=”nofollow” tag(heck i didn’t know myself till 6 months back
2)About some of the paid reviews, i have seen two type of sites. One type blog about absolutely different genres in one blog. eg they will blog in one post about how good a site is for football scores and next they will blog about best site for ipods. I think its easy to discount such sites from pr. On a side note, most sites have a lot of footer links which too again should be easy to isolate for discounting pr, rel nofollowed or not. The other type of sites focusing on paid reviews in one particular niche is a different cup of tea though..
Can I assume that if my PR did not change, that my site does not violate buying or selling links? The reason I ask is because my site dmovers.com holds some kind of penalty (I think) and I want to narrow down what the penalty could be.
My grandmother was recently diagnosed with bladder cancer and is now going through the surgery process. Information from the sites presented on google UK’s results pages has been extremely helpful to our family, so thank you information sites and thank you google.
I would also like to add that with this particular issue, it is not just about relevant results, but also about the user experience when searching. There will be times when people are searching for serious terms, in an urgent manner, during a worrying time, where they just want access to information fast. The last thing they want is to go to a slow loading, media rich search engine page like some other search engines provide, and have funky Flash adverts dancing across the page, trying to make a sale or make money.
“I’ve pressed for a lot of things that would decrease revenue to Google, at least short-term, because it would make our users happier. I pushed pretty hard years ago for a blanket stance against Google doing pop-up ads, for example.”
Bravo Matt, please continue to keep the search page simple! Less is more.
I have more trust in my physician than i have in the Google-SERPs! Maybe thats different for some people …
Hey matt, you are acctually talking about using rel=nofollow but wtf are you having in this post?
Link to: International RadioSurgery Association, wikipedia, RadiologyInfo, mayoclinic, etc etc.
How much did they payed you for having this?
You should better stop accusing, because you dont have nothing to prove LEGALLY. I hope somebody will sue you and google for this because you are ruing people business.
I hate google and it’s page rank. AND IF I WANT TO SELL LINKS I SELL THEM with or without nofollow s^^t tag, google is not making A RULE WITH ME or with us , GOOGLE DONT OWN US, google should rember that WE helped them to be what is he now.
As an example DIR.YAHOO.COM sells links, and you have never penalized us … . You will never have power and strenght to fight against Microsoft and Yahoo.
Actually this is a NATURAL link for that, when you will come with LEGAL PROOF that the owner of that site have selled LINKS to manipulate your F$$%ing results then i will give you credit.
P.S I am not the owner of that blog, but i am tired of this, google soon your business will be ended on s.e marketing because we have a Surprise for you.
I know that i dont write very well in english, sorry about that, but i hope that that my message was understood/i was understanded.
Please let this message to be showed on your blog and dont delete it, and if i dont ask more i would expect an answer from you MR. MATT CUTTS.
All I can say is WOW.
A big huge kudos to Matt Cutts for speaking out ‘loudly’ and debunking all the crap out there and in this thread. It appears only a very few posters in here actually get it. Kudos to Dave, Anthony, Brent… maybe more of you?… for getting it. To the rest of you? I feel sorry for you…. I really do.
I’m really not sure how chatting with SEO’s at pubcon or any other conference will make a difference however. Just read the little at sphinn.com as well to see what I mean. MOST in this industry just don’t seem to get it, and it is exceptionally hard for me to understand why this is. I cannot even remember when some of us started warning webmasters/SEO’s about the risks involved with buying and selling links that give that so-called link-juice, but it was sooooo long ago that the date totally escapes me…… years ago is about as close as I can get.
To those who just don’t get it and who also claim to be whitehats: Do you all believe that Google would still consider you a whitehat SEO if you cannot fathom or untangle what Google/Matt is trying to say, which is ALL about common sense?
Yea let’s address the techcrunch “thanks to advertisers” page. The only way to get a text link onto that page is to be a paid advertiser, it’s be implemented in non google approved way, why are they exempt from the scythe of Google’s justice?
Let’s say I am a reader of a real magazine with pages I can feel and turn with my fingers. Let’s also say that a few pages have testimonials/reviews on them for different products that the magazine happens to offer. Let’s further say that ALL of those testimonials PAID MONEY to the magazine to give the write-ups. ….with no disclosure.
Wouldn’t I as a regular reader want to know they were paid for? Do you think it would influence my way of thinking about those testimonials/reviews? Hell yes it would make a difference.
Why do some of you think the web should be different? When did a paid for review become an endorsement/recommendation for a product? And when did it become OK for people to accept money for paid reviews without disclosing as such?
Whenever I read a review of ANYthing now on the internet, I’m very skeptical about that review. The deception is appalling out there.
When did some brain cells die for some webmasters and SEO’s? What year was that anyway as I would like to know?
Well, that might have been a little harsh.. about the brain cells, but I’m tellin ya, it certainly seems like pure common sense was lost somewhere along the line.
BUT: I do agree with the idea that links shouldn’t be figured as highly as they may be, and I also think the green bar should be thrown away.
@doug when you see a comercial for hanes underwear with Michael Jordan and now Cuba Gooding Jr. you are smart enough to know it’s an ad. They aren’t required to come on and say “Hanes paid me to do this commercial”, why should the world change the way it works because it interferes with Google’s business model? Should the world change because it interferes with Walmart’s business model or how about GM? No it’s the other way around businesses have to adapt to their environment. So why are does anyone listen to Google when they say this is how the world should work.
Hi Matt,
“you say that you’ve already tried a reconsideration request and the webmaster forum too?”
Yes, indeed.
I’ve included my url in the URL field for this comment. Please feel free to remove it. (or make an example of it, if that will help others in a similar situation
In reply to Dave
> from reading your post you appear to be suggesting that Google
> allow pages to buy their way up the organic SERPs?
Not really. Unless you count as “buying their way up” something like hiring Scoble to write for you. Then people link to his stuff and the stuff he writes about and as part of that your content rises.
What I think is that it is not the most effective model to treat certain paid for content as completely untrustworthy. It seems to me the proper model to factor in the bias.
When Fox has news stories about their TV shows my personal view is that is a significant indication of bias their “news” (and of course, as I think any logical person would do it brings into question the merit of any other “news” presented). But I don’t think they are 100% untrustworthy. When Some prestigious academic is funded by a drug company I believe they are biased but I do not believe the results are 100% untrustworthy.
If Matt writes about some neat new Google product I know there are biases – even if the only bias is he is much more likely to hear about a cool Google product than one from some other company because he works for them. But I figure if he says he likes some new Google that is worth factoring into my decision whether to look at it. If he thinks some new Google offering is junk I don’t think he will say it is great. I just don’t, I could be wrong but I am confident of that. Would the Fox site links to some new TV show that is horrible? Yes I do believe it would.
If some other blogger I trust highly writes on say Ruby on Rails and then says their blog is sponsored by the annual Ruby on Rails conference which they attended the last 2 years and it is great and they highly recommend it I find that valuable. And yes I do believe the best search result would be enhanced by giving value to this recommendation by this blogger. This certainly could be seen as buying your way up the search results, so in this case I do see allowing a behavior that some would see as “buying your way up” as a positive development resulting it better search results.
I don’t automatically ignore all advice where the author has some personal financial incentive or stake. That is one factor, but it is not a binary operation (0% trustworthy or 100% trustworthy). It seems to me to select the best search results you would need to apply the same logic.
More thoughts: http://curiouscatlinks.blogspot.com/2007/12/are-paid-links-100-untrustworthy.html
How many humans do Google help kill each day (through Adwords, for example)? A thousand or more??
How much is one human life (one ad click) worth to Google?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=abortion+clinic
No wolf; you cannot equate a TV ad with an internet website. Not even close. I equate websites with a newspaper or a magazine…. that’s why I used it as an example. They DO disclose paid ads.
If you want a hogwash of an internet where paid ads are mixed in REAL recommendations, then go for it. Not me. Deception is deception.
If you would not want your newspaper to start deceiving you about ads, why would a website be any different to you? They clearly distinguish and separate their ads from their reviews or opinions. Many websites do not. If websites are not going to disclose, why would a major search engine who wishes to produce the most relevant results to it’s USERS want to give credit to those websites who buy and sell links?
Common now; you do have common sense, right?
BTW: I don’t want to read another damn blog post from you after pubcon or whateverCon conference you are speaking at, writing about how you hate Google and how you think SEO’s are being somehow cheated by Google. It’s getting real damn old right now. Sorry; but facts are facts.
Matter of fact; the people who attend these conferences and some who speak as well are getting very old to me with all the crap you all spew out to the uninformed who do not know any better. Enough is enough already. It’s bad enough to know who is touting their wares at these conferences, let alone some who are speaking at them….. not you wolf, but some. I actually think you do have some common sense but love to cater to the elites who go to them.
interesting
you chose a fish in a barrell example and I think people might take googles position better if you didnt not feel obliged to use a scaremongering example.
but in that spirit should Google not allow any medical ads for perscription drug key words in PPC
for example “perindopril ” ( a commpn high blood preasure treatment) which I take turns up a some what dodgy alternate therapy site.
So you think you are that smart? And by showing me a copy of my deleted post on my web browser you think I didn’t notice you had deleted it?
Think again – you and other “Googlers” will burn in hell for killing babies and taking money for it. I hope before you die God will give you a chance to truly regret your sins.
I’m not writing it even to the public – I’m writing it to personally to you (if it’s not “Matt Cutts” who delete the posts, then I’m writing it to you too). Your $$$ will not be able to save your soul. If by reading this post you will realize what you do help kill humans by promoting abortion clinicts via Adwords, I will be happy.
Think about it again – your another million $$$ will not help you when you are on your last hour of your life. I’ll pray for you so that your soul is not lost forever…
ok Doug have you looked through a copy of modern bride recently, go to the bookstore and lift the voluminous near yellow page sized book off the shelf and flip through the pages. I’d estimate upwards of 85% of the pages are advertisements and not labeled as such. I’d wager that an overwhelming majority of readers don’t care if they are either, for them the advertisements are the content. The dresses, tuxedoes, flowers, dinnerware and so on is exactly what they want to see.
Don’t think ads are disguised as reviews? How many people got an amazon kindle gratis in the hopes that they would write/blog/video it? Amazon gave them out to reporters at press conferences (with no expectation of getting them back). Last time I checked it had a $400 retail price. It’s somehow OK if it’s Amazon but not “health care” one’s used as an example?
I don’t hate Google far from it, I like Google and a lot of the people working there. However I’m critical of them (or anyone else) when they overstep their bounds. Google doesn’t owe you me or anyone else anything. What upsets me is when people deify Google following them like mindless zombies obeying their every wish. If Amazon told you needed to nofollow any link to commercial websites would you, why not, why is it ok for Google and not Amazon? Google is not a regulatory board or legal entity in any way, they are a publically traded for profit company, and should be treated as such.
It’s kinda funny you don’t think I should be speaking at conferences or anywhere else with differing viewpoints. I always thought free speech was one of the things that makes this country great. While I may not agree with your opinions I would never suggest that you shouldn’t be allowed to express them. In fact I’d welcome debating you on a panel at an SEO conference about the SEO related subject of your choice.
There’s one problem with this logic, as Doug pointed out: Michael Jordan isn’t appearing on The Best Damn Sports Show Period wearing a pair of white briefs outside of his pants while being interviewed by Rob Dibble and John Salley.
You’re right. Businesses have to adapt to their environment. Those businesses include the same text link BSers who have created a flawed marketplace based on a free service. Let’s see them adapt now that the free service figured out their crap.
I seriously don’t understand why this is such a big deal…anyone who’s honest and legit couldn’t care less what big G decides to do this way, and it’s only the scumbag idiot minority who would have any excuse to squawk. (Oh wait…just answered my own question. Skip that one.)
Hi Matt,
I am VERY active on a busy business forum in the UK. As a paid-up premium member I am entitled to “signature links” – which I use to link to 2 product offers on our site. (And being specific offers they are keyword rich anchors).
These links deliver a lot of very targeted traffic and sales, so I would like to keep them – but my dilemma is that they are not “nofollow” – and I do not have the option to make them so – as is is not my Forum.
I have about 3000 posts on the forum in question – a lot of links
Is this something you are able to offer any advice on? Should I be concerned about these links?
(I quite understand if you can’t comment)
Hi Matt,
Great Post!
I am no expert on seo and therefore please aplogise for my questions if they sound rather pathetic.
I am trying to gain links to help increase pagerank and serps but nobody seems to want to exchange links or add a link to my websites for free.
I read your comment that http://www.hystersisters.com/ should gain some more page rank, however how are they supposed to do this?
The site is of use to people in this field and therefore if they were to purchase a link off the number one site in google for their main keyword to gain in the serps, why would this be so wrong, especially if it is only the rubbish sites you want to avoid getting into the top ten/twenty?
>There’s one problem with this logic, as Doug pointed out: Michael Jordan isn’t appearing on The Best Damn Sports Show Period wearing a pair of white briefs outside of his pants while being interviewed by Rob Dibble and John Salley
OK fine what about a F1 or NASCAR driver who wears his sponsors baseball cap for a TV interview? What about stars who get FREE designer clothes to wear at the oscars, emmy’s or any other awards shows?
lol graywolf; you will come up with everything and anything just to try your very best to make an argument.
Thanks for the offer about a debate at a conference, but I don’t do places who cater to blackhats and who take money from blackhats, AND who recommend and praise blackhats. I’ve worked in quite a few different industries in my life… before the internet, and the idea that cheaters are people who others might recommend is something simply not tolerated in the real world by those in the same industry. It’s like a well, Duh type of moment.
Someone wrote above about all the SEO’s linking to and fro each other on all the silly SEO blogs out there….. I could not agree with that poster anymore. In fact; I don’t think Google should be counting a single outgoing link from a SEO blog which leads to another “SEO” blog. I don’t care who they are. Do you all actually endorse those SEO’s who you link to? Or is it a case of I’ll kiss you if you kiss me? Me thinks the latter…..Me knows the latter.
I have two questions.
In the beginning, directories were an excellent source of advertising. What happens if you paid years ago or you submitted to a directory that was once free but turned to paid? Will that affect your site?
Second question is: What if a competitor submits your site to bad neighborhoods and then reports your site as the abuser? How do you combat that?
Thanks for any feedback.
Ray, you can no follow signature links. Just use the nofollow tag within the html or BBcode.
>you will come up with everything and anything just to try your very best to make an argument.
Well the worlds not the black(hat) or white(hat) place that everyone tries to make it seem theres a whole range in between. It’s also mind boggling that people allow Google to set the bar for ethics nowdays. Would anyone let Microsoft, Yahoo, or Ask do that? Should they?
You seem to want to blur the issues.
The debate is about gaining FREE referrals from another website/engine.
Example:
What if my forums were so damn busy and everyone on the internet flocked there and wanted to get links from there and post in there and wanted to do everything in there? My forums have a set of guidelines that members need to read and follow, right?.. right. If a member does not want to read them or follow them, I reserve the right to ban that member, right?… right.
So what’s the difference? Doesn’t your blog have guidelines and/or rules that commenter’s need to follow?…. they sure do. So what’s the damn difference if Google does have and has guidelines that webmasters and SEO’s should follow in order to receive FREE referrals from them?
There is zero difference. Any argument anyone may try to make to the contrary is simply totally and completely wrong.
@Matt, thanks for the interesting response. I actually left a comment on all of the blog posts you referenced, when they were originally posted. So, yes, I’ve seen those.
@Doug, I think graywolf is playing devil’s advocate. He might be employing a little hyperbole, but he’s getting people to think critically about this issue. Think about the fact that Google’s using a free resource (the linking structure of the web) for a commercial product. Should they dictate how that free resource is structured? Does the whole web exist for the benefit of Google? Originally, it was the other way around.
Doug, no offense, but your fanaticism is clouding your thinking again.
You’re comparing you dictating what you tell your users to do on your website with Google telling all webmasters what to do on their own sites. It’s no where near the same thing.
Michael; I’m so sorry, but you are gravely mistaken.
Allow me to set you straight:
Google is NOT telling you nor anyone else what to do with their websites. In fact; I’d bet big money Google could care less what the hell you do with your website. You can do as you please just as you have always done with it. You can stick in spammy javascript redirects if you want to do so. You can hide test from browsers if you wish. You can implement hidden links that lead to other sites that you may own if you so choose. You can buy a link or sell a link if you want to as well.
You can do anything you wish and more… much more.
But Google can also do as they please…….. so please do not forget that.
Does this seem like a “well duh” thang to anyone else?
Richard Ball said:
Sure, but there is an extra component to the equation – which results in the following outcome:
Millions of sites get targeted free traffic as a result from Google – which equates to bllions of $$ of sales for those sites – for free.
On that basis I am delighted that Google is “using” this free resource.
It only seems like a duh without understanding the situation, Doug.
No, they cannot. Nor can any other publicly traded company, or those involved with interstate commerce. Nobody really gives a damn if you ban them from your website, Doug, whereas when Google says “conduct business the we say or we will ban you” it is committing restraint of trade.
“I hope these examples help to explain the motivation for our quality guidelines, and how those guidelines ensure a better experience for users.”
Matt, there is two sides of the coin here and you are only pumping the negative. There is subject matter experts who’s material or webpage provides the best possible experience for users, and the most accurate possible information so according to your statement they are breeching the Webmaster Guidelines by buying links to promote their material yet they are doing exactly what the Webmaster Guidelines claim to do.. And that is provide the best results for a given query possible.
For every spammer there’s also a good honest webmaster who strives to make their resources the best possible, and unfortunately this second group are the ones jumping through the Google hoops Nofollowing everything and suffering in the SERP’s while the spammers disregard every part of the Webmaster Guidelines and rocket past you in the rankings.
So doing as you/Google says only serves to make a poorer quality index. Us webmasters who are in our sites for the long haul obeying the rules, rank as fast as the grass grows yet the spammers manipulate the index, hit page 1 and rake in the cash and buy the time they are caught they have another 7 “pump and dump: sites moving up through the SERP’s to take the culled sites place.
Google really needs to work on punishing poor quality MFA websites, instead of blanket punishing of people buying and/or selling a Dofollow text link and painting everyone with the same brush.
If i own a completely non-profit discussion forum for support of brain tumor sufferers and their family/friends and don’t make a dime from it, i purchase a few links out of my own pocket and from the goodness of my heart to promote the site in the SERP’s and legitimately help people in need i’m lumped in to the same penalty box as the splogs selling Vi*gra.
Very unfair.
Hi Matt, Long time reader, never commented.
I’ve wondered for a long time why anyone feels they have the right to judge Google for what they do. Google is a business, that operates to make money for it’s shareholders. Google provides a free service to webmasters everywhere, helping them to publicize their sites. All of our businesses profit from the free service Google offers. I just don’t understand why all these people feel they have any right to try and dictate the hows and whys of how Google operates. I also don’t understand why you should have to defend your company’s policy.
If I decided I wanted to dictate Google policy, I’d go buy shares. If I wanted to improve on Google’s business model, I’d start a search engine.
Google is a free service…. What the heck are you complaining about?
You can sell a link or a paid post and have it not look like spam and not have Google, or any other search engine, ever pick up on it.
You can buy a link or paid post and have it not look like spam and not have Google, or any other search engine, ever pick up on it.
You just cannot be lazy.
This means using discretion, if you’re a link buyer approach only a few individuals personally. If they’re a blogger, offer to pay them for an honest review. Do not force them to write a good review, do not ask them to put in artificial and easily spotted anchor text, and do not pay for reviews on blogs that aren’t related to the site you are trying to promote.
If you’re a link seller, do not run links that are unrelated to your site. Do not sacficice your editorial guidelines by endorsing products you haven’t used (insist the people buying a post send you a review copy or whatever it is they’re selling), and don’t just copy and paste text from elsewhere to make your review. Write something original, thorough, and unique.
You’re going to get noticed when you start getting nearly identical links from tons of unrelated sites. Then, when that is flagged and someone like Matt comes along and takes a closer look he is probably going to pull the trigger on some penalty because it looks like spam, it smells like spam, and the content is not quality in the least.
So do it slow, do it steady, and put more effort into it so your paid post is actually useful content.
For instance, last time I bought a review I only asked the reviewer to be honest, they were. They wrote a balanced ~2000 word review that included half a dozen pictures of the product in use (which I sent them). They even mention in the review that they had financial interest in writing it, the links they made were not rel=nofollowed either. No problems on my end with lost rankings or PageRank or anything else. Doing as good as ever. I don’t do lazy link building.
Hi Matt,
Thanks for citing my study (http://aixtal.blogspot.com/2007/11/search-google-yahoo-comparison.html). I agree that it has some limitations (for instance the fact that only the first result has been evaluated). I would be very interesting in knowing your other objections. They may help in building better evaluations in the future (although, as you know, it is a very difficult exercice, and I doubt that any perfect scheme can be found at a reasonable cost).
By the way, yes, the queries were self-selected — at least if I understand correctly what you mean : the users had the choice of the queries they sent (in each given theme). But I don’t really see why this is a problem. It seems close to the real situation of a user querying an engine spontaneously. I’ve tried other schemes in the past, in which users were asked to evaluated queries that were given to them, but there are strong drawbacks to that scheme too.
In any case, I you had some time to continue this discussion either in a post or by mail, I would be very interested.
Richard the Younger, it looks like for the domain in your URL field, I see links like “Canon Inkjet Cartridges” and “Hotels in Muenchen” flowing PageRank as recently as Nov. 2nd? I think those links didn’t help. I see that those links don’t flow PageRank now; when did you do your most recent reconsideration request?
Doug Heil, I agree with your points, but please try not to alienate anyone or come across too strongly. I want to try to address folks’ questions as best I can.
Hello Matt,
I’ve a query or whatever way to take it, I just dont understand one thing “what’s the point in blocking the sites dealing in trading paid links?”
Becasue, I know(almost everybody) some sites, who were trading(buying/selling) not only paid links, but generated technorati and google links with spamming and they got their non-existent site to PR6-P68 within a month or two.
After the paid link crack down, they removed blogads, T-L-A etc. and got the site back to PR6 or whatever was before they penalized.
They’re still enjoying higher page ranks.
And the people like me, who works on honesty suffers alot.
I hope you would provide some insight on the above said.
DG…
http://www.ditii.com
Matt – quick question…
Since there is no way to track those as accepted/denied, how long should someone go in between re-requests? Also, is there honestly no way at all to do one if you think that a ban wasn’t deserved?
Thanks.
Matt, btw, that bug I mentioned a while ago is back on my site, and same as before, at the same time yours disappears from Blog Search:
http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&q=selling+links+that+pass+PageRank&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wb
It’s weird, I tell ya. I know it’s not a big deal, but sometimes it is the little anomalies that mean bigger bugs.
“Also, is there honestly no way at all to do one [a reconsideration request] if you think that a ban wasn’t deserved?”
Michael, great question. I answered this one on the official blog post, but I’ll answer it here too.
I don’t want to force people to make a claim that they’ve violated our guidelines in order to do a reconsideration request. I believe that we’ve already softened our language on that form once and that we added the option to say “something happened on this domain before I got to it.”
But your feedback is something that I’ve heard before, and I’ll try to have someone at Google look at what we can do to remove that concern. If you have suggestions for language or the best way to do it, I’m open to whatever you want to propose. Looking at the reconsideration request form, I think it’s very doable to remove this concern. Thanks for mentioning it, and I’ll ask someone to tackle this.
BTW, the reconsideration request form says “Please allow several weeks for the re-evaluation process”. So that gives an idea about the timeframe for the requests to be evaluated.
“I think Google has done a relatively good job of aligning our users interests with Google’s interests, so that doing what is good for users or people on the web in general is also good for Google.”
I’m glad you qualified that statement, Matt. Because the first half of that sentence sure makes it sound like Google manipulates the users to think that Google’s interests are their interests.
What Google needs to realize is that what is good for the Goose is good for the Gander. Regardless of whether the checkout team didn’t think that their post would be construed poorly or not, it was. If only one person (GreyWolf) thinks so, that means there are others. And according to Google’s recent moves, doesn’t that mean that everyone sees it that way?
On the flip side of that, I’ve tried moving away from Google’s search but have found that no other search engine gives me the same results. Google’s results are some of the best on the web. So why are they still tweaking the algo? Especially to the point of penalizing some of your most profitable customers?
Michael VanDeMar, just to give you a quick update, I dropped an email to someone at Google to request that we remove the text “I believe this site has violated Google’s quality guidelines in the past.” from the checkbox in the reconsideration request form, and I requested some other modifications to the language of the form as well. It may take a while for the changes to be pushed in English, and then a while longer for the modifications to be done in all the different languages we offer, but I do think the changes will go through.
That’s been on my meaning-to-do list for a while, so thanks for pinging me about that form. While I was at it, I asked the person to modify our SEO tips and advice page to remove the “you should insist on a full and unconditional money-back guarantee” sentence as well. I know that was another point that people sometimes objected to.
Matt,
Those of us who follow what you post on your blog and read the comments, might have noticed that you have been sending recently very mixed signals regarding penalizing / condoning the black hats. Several comments on your recent posts illustrate what I mean.
Take a look at Alan Rerkins recent comments exchange with you which reveals the confusion resulted of the mixed signals you have been sending recently:
==========================================
Alan Perkins Said,
November 29, 2007 @ 11:20 am
Hey Matt
Just checking … is cloaking, or blackhat in general, considered an acceptable business practice these days?
I only ask because this thread and another recent one (giving the advice “keep your blackhat networks separate from your whitehat networks”) give the general impression that blackhat is OK as long as you’re good at it! Surely you don’t mean that? Otherwise I can see a whole new line of business I could open up.
======================================================
======================================================
Matt Cutts Said,
November 29, 2007 @ 8:32 pm
Alan, I definitely don’t approve of black hat techniques at all. I think I said as much on the other thread. Ah, here it is:
“MWA, I’m happy to clarify. I think it’s a Bad Idea to do blackhat stuff. I absolutely do *not* condone blackhat spam. But if you have white hat properties, it’s even less recommended to mix blackhat-ish stuff with whitehat-ish stuff.”
=========================================================
=========================================================
Alan Perkins Said,
November 30, 2007 @ 10:17 am
“Alan, I definitely don’t approve of black hat techniques at all”
I knew as much, but that wasn’t quite the question.
The question was “Is cloaking, or blackhat in general, considered an acceptable business practice?”
You [where you = matt|google|both] are sending out signals is that it IS acceptable, even if you don’t approve of it. The message is …
- 1. If you [where you=webmasters] do it and get away with it, that’s fine. Good luck to you. We’ll try our hardest to stop you though.
- 2. If we catch you doing something and you fix it, that’s fine eventually … where the length of “eventually” varies according to how much the absence of your brand from our search results will damage our searchers’ experience. Even if you don’t fix it, you may be fine.
- 3. If you advertise your blackhat products and services on Adwords, that’s fine. It’s not as if you’re advertising evil things, like beer. And hey, your spend can fund our research into catching you.
- 4. If you keep your black hat networks separate from your white hat networks, that’s fine. Just make sure you’re good at it, so we can’t catch you. If we catch you, go to step 2.
It’s not exactly a damning indictment of deceptive practices, is it?
======================
Thoughts?
Hi Harith, it was not my intent to send mixed signals. I really really dislike off-topic and blackhat spam. Not much steams me more than (say) that .cn spam which tries to install malware on someone’s machine. The webspam team has always taken strong action on blackhat spam.
On #3 (advertising), we made changes just this week past week to disable ads for a ton of “buy PageRank”-type queries, for example.
Hi Matt,
“when did you do your most recent reconsideration request?”
Nov. 5 was the most recent reconsideration request. Immediately before doing that reconsideration request, I stopped the flow of PageRank using nofollow – or otherwise deleted other links.
Matt,
“On #3 (advertising), we made changes just this week past week to disable ads for a ton of “buy PageRank”-type queries, for example.”
GREAT! Thanks.
How about adding an option to report spam within the sitemaps to report “AdWords Spam” too? I mean ads which violate or invite to violate Google Quality Guidelines
thatedeguy, interesting questions. I think that Google won’t be able to completely align Google with our users’ interests, but that we should try. I’ll give you an example. The CustomizeGoogle plug-in does several things to modify Google’s output in a way that users would like. One thing it does is give users more options for (say) image search. But my personal impression is that Google does some of the stuff the way we do in image search because of laws about thumbnails and fair use. What a user wants in Google Image Search might not be possible for us to offer.
Again, this is just my personal opinion, but I view CustomizeGoogle as an interesting case study in “what do users want that Google doesn’t offer?” In some cases, we might not be able to fulfill what a user’s first choice would be (e.g. the image search example above). But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to solve those misalignments between users’ desires and Google’s goals.
Here’s another example: some users want Google to number their search results. What if it turned out that numbering search results actually caused users to be slower in finding what they wanted? Plus offering it as an option isn’t a great answer: very few people would discover the option, and it would add more complexity to Google and our preferences page.
So I think Google has to look for the right balance of what to do vs. what some users want. I definitely don’t think Google is perfect, but I know that I personally do approach the situation from a “Let’s try to bring Google’s goals into alignment with what our users want” viewpoint.
You also asked why Google continues to tweak our algorithms. The short answer is that we’re a little obsessive-compulsive about improving our search quality.
When we make a change, it’s probably impossible for that change to be a 100% improvement for every single search; however, if we decide that a change will improve overall quality, we are willing to make that change.
Harith, great suggestion. AdSense ads have a way to report spammy sites (I’ve been meanting to do a post walking through that), but I like the idea of a way to report bad ads (for spam or low-quality reasons) too. We have a way to do that at Google, but it would be neat to let more people outside Google provide that feedback.
By the way, in case anyone *doesn’t* know how to report spammy sites using AdSense, here’s a link where Barry wrote up the process, complete with screenshots:
http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/014665.html
Google has gotten harsher on spammy sites using AdSense in the last 12 months or so. In many cases, we’re not only willing to remove sites from our index, but also to remove spammy sites/publishers from AdSense altogether.
I posted a few hours ago and haven’t heard anything back. I realize this post seems more directed to website selling links but my questions have to do with buying links.
Over the years, I have bought directory listings and submitted to probably a thousand or more free directories mainly in the hopes of getting that one sale that might come from it. How will that effect my site? Will it hurt it for the paid ones that were done before the last update and will it hurt my site becasue of the free ones that turned into paid after submitting to them?
My last question is what happens if a competitor pays for listings in bad neighborhoods to my site (on purpose) and then reports you to the paid linking place? How does Google check those out? Does Google send some kind of information to the site in question of what is going on? That report thing scares me. For $50 and some homework, seems like you could really hurt a competitior.
Thanks.
Hi Melissa! I pre-moderate first-time commenters. Lots of people have been commenting, so I haven’t gotten a chance to approve all of my comments yet. (My wife keeps bugging me to do chores this weekend.) But I’ve approved your comments now.
My short answer is that a query like [abortion] is serious, and we take it seriously. When I do that search, I see a variety of different viewpoints, new results, and query refinements.
Check these Adwords results now: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=zix&q=human+organs+for+sale&btnG=Search
Do you think these make sense (for you it makes since you make money on each Adwords click; what about your audience) – isn’t it disgusted like I am?
Melissa, people are not targeting that phrase, despite what it looks like. Those are wildcard matches, this has been discussed before.
Melissa, I would certain agree that those are unfortunate ads. Even though I don’t think that Target meant to show an ad for that phrase, I reported the ads to our internal ads quality group. Thanks for pointing that out.
Matt, Sorry to be a pest again, but wanted to point out that my site has never used vbseo to alter the urls. I posted about it on my blog but can’t tell you that the urls used to look like this blablabla.php and now look like fofofofofoo.php. We haven’t changed thread structures or website structure since 2000.
Its million of users and shareholders are voting for or against it each second of each day!
John, if you knew someone you played cards with each week *sometimes* cheated, would you still play with them? Or, would you play it safe and never play with them? Also, who is true cause of the distrust?
Like any publicly traded company the MUST do what is in the best interest of their shareholders. IMO, that DOES include keeping their SERPs free from the mighty $ influencing positions. Looking at Google’s share price, their track record and the fact they are the ONLY ones who are in the ‘know’, it seems they are doing pretty good job. How many SE’s have you run?
Matt- there’s no obligation on you to reply to comments, of course, but I would appreciate a reply to my above comment
Given your concerns about selling links that pass pagerank giving sub-ideal google results for searches on cancer-related topics, aren’t you worried that google ads advertise things like “No Chemo-Radiation-Surgery-Address Cancer Naturally”?
While paid links passing pagerank might lead to sub-ideal search results (a big deal, given how important the topic is), some of the ads one sees when one googles terms like ‘cancer nutrition‘ are advertising shockingly poor – sometimes potentially dangerous – information.
So that makes it OK?
Interesting, but I have heard this all before, yet there are 2 different people who rank very very high for specific competitive searches and have for a while now. In the higher ranking example I give, the site has almost nothing but paid links, in the other example the site has almost nothing but Realtor to Realtor reciprocal links, except for the paid links that person has.
Madison, the real question is: how do *know* what Google is crediting and what it is discounting?
Remember, Google puts it users first and foremost and while it does remove very spammy sites, it likely discounts most spam via its alogo.
I’m having the same problem with a real estate client. We’re setting up one of the best sites in the city but all his competitors rank with paid links and a ton of reciprocal links. The only thing we do is submit to directories but I don’t see this as spam. It’s a legitimate way of getting in front of niche audiences.
It would be great if Google really found a way to get a handle on the paid link stuff and also the reciprocal linking which allows people to rank with crap sites.
What happened to all of greywolf’s comments? That was a good discussion even though he does seem to have a bit of a chip on his shoulder.
Dave (original), nope: they’re still bad ads, and I reported them.
Kathy, thanks. That gives me more to mull over.
Madison, that would be a good time to use the form at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks?hl=en
If you include your name (Madison), I have the ability to search for that in the reports. I’d be happy to look into it. Bear in mind though that even when Google removes the influence of (say) some paid links, the remaining links to a site can sometimes still be enough for a site to rank.
Nick, I thought I’d answered graywolf’s questions, but I’ll try to do a scan later tonight in case I missed some.
I think too many webmasters in the past have been misled by directories selling links on the basis it will improve their natural rankings. I applaud Google for trying to end a scam which has been a purulent sore on a free internet for too many years.
Matt, thanks for the clarifications. Like it or not, at the end it still is a matter of money… If you do a good website which is good & has great content & you cross your fingers so you get “organic links”, there are always going to be sites, which will get ahead of you, because they are buying the links and at the end they have more links than you…They choose the anchor texts so it is easier to achieve the results they want.
At the end, reality is that it is not possible to compete unless you buy as many links as they do or you compete for smaller terms… “Organic links” just do not happen easily & even if you manage to get some, those who buy them will always get more. For those companies who buy links, you may discount some, but still the majority are not discounted and they are displayed in the first positions of Google…
So with the new rules, what are the odds of treating all those horrible affiliate links that cause generic, volume junk, web sites to out rank quality web sites with quality content?? Those seem to quality as paid links by any reasonable definition of paid links yet we see these sites constantly running to the top of the SERPs simply because they started a broad band affiliate program..
I agree with you Matt that the big doG should battle paid posts that are spam, plain and simple.
However, I think few link to these types of sites that make spammy posts, so your Pagerank algorithm should still provide good results.
On your specific example, I think the bigger problem is that people trust random information found online too much in the first place when making real life decisions.
Sorry, but in my previous post when I mentioned: “organic links” I meant “natural links”
If I were to pull out my crystal ball can I expect Google to come out against social media and viral content in the future, when they determine too many people are using it and it influences Google’s algo too much
I have to agree with graywolf and I don’t think the question has ever been.
I think the biggest beef people have with google cracking down on paid links is this:
Any big company with a big budget can BUY there way to the top with adwords?
I think that last comment did not go through which I am glad because I left the link on accident/
But here are also a few examples of adwords problems.
The search for brain tumors has an adwords ad which lead to affiliate program for pills which are not even approved by the FDA. The page also has about 200 keywords in it.
And a search for hepatic tumors has adwords to Ebay with no items found. i know you guys have dealt with this before.
So these are just a couple examples of how adwords don;t always give the best results and you can probably find one bad apple a search.
Here is a good one. Try a searh for Brain Tumors on google blog search
2nd in the serps.
bestamericanhospital (dot) blogspot (dot)com
YUCK
I don’t think people like gray wolf are always trying to bash google it is just that
#1some things google does seem to be very hypocritical.
#2 I think that most people who are reading your blog all want what’s best for the serps and the reason they leave comments is because they care.
#3 I think all of the blackhat spam stuff is what you guys should go after first because it is all over the place.
But otherwise, thanks for posting, these are good discussions and need to take place for the future of google search.
Jeff, I agree. I think a big issue here is that a lot of webmasters were to believe that they were doing the right things by building links a certain way. Geting in directories (which most you had to pay for) buying links, which at first seemed ok a few years ago, trading links ( which were later devalued) and things like that.
I don’t think the average seo or webmaster is out to scam the system per say, they are just doing what seemed right and what “everyone else was doing”to get their website higher in the serps.
matt, Is there a way that search might rely only on what is on the page itself instead of how many links it has to it. I know it goes into now but a completely on page evaluation and determination to how high in the serps it will be.
It’s hard to wrap my head around the advanced theories but would something like that work. I see you are working on a voting type search. I think that has more problems of abuse that I can see.
thanks again.
Hi Matt,
You did. sorry. They weren’t showing up for me when I refreshed but another refresh seems to have brought them back. That was strange.
Geez, anyone who relies on the web (especially a search engine query as opposed to direct access to known sources) to do research needs a brain first, never mind the surgery.
So I think this can be interpreted to mean “buying and selling links is perfectly fine, as long as you spell everything right and know what you’re talking about”.
Because there are sites out there on the web buying and selling links who have not been penalized at all, techcrunch being the best example. Do they have a 0, like all the paid posting people do? No. Are they buying and selling links? Yes – but they do not put any content with the links which can be read by people who are Googling to find a miracle cure for their cancer.
Perhaps you could take a moment to clarify exactly how sites were singled out to be penalized, so that those who got penalized without ever once having done a paid post without a no follow can work out what they did to offend Google.
Not only that, perhaps you could take a moment to explain why Techcrunch’s sponsor links are fine, but Text Link Ads are not. Both pass page rank.
Hey Melissa, it looks like another Googler was reading email on Sunday; the “human organs” ads have already been disabled. Thanks again for mentioning these.
Graywolf,
I think that social media marketing and linkbait are a crappy way to rank anyway and I hope it starts to get penalized soon. The people that have websites and are geeky enough to give you links are mostly interested in tech related issues or the same themes and interests they share in common. If you have a non technology site, it’s very hard to get links other than the old fashioned way of searching out individual sites and dialoguing with the webmaster. In this case, paying for some links can become necessary if the webmaster is greedy. If you do use linkbait for the tech crowd, it’s generally off topic to the unrelated site so I don’t see how it adds to the quality of the site.
I think that Google should have never released the whole PR can of worms and then this problem may not have been so large. Now, designers and site developers have to resort to all kinds of tricks. I don’t think it’s the way the search world should be. Ideally, the best quality sites would be first and the low qality ones buried in the index. Google is the best out of the search engines but I wouldn’t say they’re close to being perfect. The fact that they’re constantly changing and improving is both annoying and admirable.
The truth is that the only way to really monitor the net is to introduce some kind of human involvement or artificial intelligence. The former is prone to corruption and greed and I think we’re a long way away from AI based search engines. Besides, there is no accounting for taste so what is good to one person is shite to the other.
I do agree with some of your points above. I don’t agree that google should have put light coloured paid listings above the organic results. I’ve met many that do not know the difference and think they are organic results. This is truly the ultimate form of manipulating the index. The bigger your wallet the easier it is to be #1 above organice results. But I don’t see Google as the great evil it’s being made out to be. If their end goal is to improve the results, who is to say that they’re not allowed to call out paid links? Sure they make money off of ads but if you don’t like it, go use Yahoo or Ask or someone else. It’s our jobs as SEOs to find new ways to rank and hide our links and it’s Google’s job to try to stop the spammy techniques. It’s just the way it is and I don’t think that we should complain about it.
We should really be complaining about the spammers and not the search engines. If they didn’t buy tons of links and pollute the index in order to get rich, I don’t think Google would care about a few paid dog walking links for Bob’s City Walking Service or something. Instead of outing the spammers, it feels like the industry loves to elevate the “black hats” to the status of heroes and praises them for screwing it up for the rest of us.
Hi Snoskred, I answered that question on the webmaster discussion group here:
http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help-Indexing/msg/7db86afb08801278
Richard the Younger, I’d do a fresh reconsideration request now that the links haven’t been flowing PageRank for a few weeks. I’ll keep an eye open for it on my end.
It is very unlikely that Google credits affiliate links in any way.
This discussion reminds me of politics. Everyone has their opinion, nobody’s opinion is 100% truth, there’s jealousy and money at the root of most everyone’s opinion, and we’ll never have 100% agreement.
@those complaining about blackhats and those who befriend blackhats – I have several friends that I would consider to be blackhats. I would consider myself very much a whitehat SEO. Do I shun those friends who buy links, cloak, blogspam, etc.? No. I learn from them. Some of the blackhats are the most creative thinkers in this industry. Some of them are great at more than just SEO and can teach people a ton of info. IMO, they are generally the more outgoing people in the industry. I’ve found that holier than thou whitehats are generally not very open to sharing info or being friendly.
@those saying that Google should be or not be treated like newspaper or magazine advertising…or even TV, those are all bogus arguments. It’s a completely different medium and can’t be compared. If you argue that it should be treated like the newspaper and want to follow your argument, stop filling your page titles & headings with keywords. For those saying that ads in magazines aren’t explicitly marked as ads, do you not think those were reviewed at several levels before getting into the magazine? They get far more review than any directory listing, which is apparently acceptable to Google (in cases where there is decent review known to be in existence). What magazine, newspaper, or TV show accepts people into their advertising in an automated manner with no form of review at all? None. Google does, so it’s completely different.
I think Matt’s original post definately tries to paint all paid links as bad by using something that is very focused and fits his argument. Just like with directories that review paid submissions and try to publish only quality sites, there has to be an acceptance of paid links to valuable, on-topic sites that DO benefit the user.
At some point, I see this argument creating a major divide that will leave whitehat webmasters in the dust. On one side, the whitehats – no paid links, everything on-topic. They get discouraged, become more and more vocal about their complaints and it just gets worse and worse to listen to. On the other side, you have gray/blackhats. They’re loving the fact that as time goes by, they get smarter about buying links that are below the radar. They push more and more whitehat sites out of the SERPs and have become smart enough about where and how to buy links that they just never get detected. Eventually, there has to be some acceptance that paid links will exist.
Whitehats should spend some of the time they spend complaining about blackhats on making their sites better, learning how to get the word out, making people want to link to them by providing something unique, and building good, solid links. I hear of too many that spend time on forums and blogs debating this topic. Google has made up their mind on things. Debating it back and forth isn’t helping yourself or anyone else. I have personally accepted Google’s position. Do I agree with it? No. What can I do about it if I complain and complain? Nothing.
graywolf –
Right about the time Google starts to penalize sites who write quality content solely for the purposes of getting others to link to them. Of course, determining who is writing enjoyable articles for their readers and who is writing it to gain rankings might be a tad bit harder to detect algorithmically than, say, paid links (or maybe not)… but I’m sure with just a few minor tweaks to the spam form and some good feedback from other webmasters they’ll get it nailed down eventually.
Matt … with all due respect, shouldn’t your algorithms take care of this? One of the reasons Google leapt ahead of all other search engines was their algos.
Since you’re now (and have in the past) asked people to help make the index better, do you think it’s time for Google to give a little information back? For instance, if site takes a penalty hit come out and list it in the webmaster tools. I would consider that to be a good solution.
You get the benefit of free eyeballs helping keep the index clean, while webmasters don’t have to spend hours trying to figure out why Google knocked them out at the knees.
Thanks!
I have another option for how to rank pages. Some Blogs like this one are very useful and focused but a high percentage of the blogs are purely personal opinion and should not have any link juice on anything that is off topic. It seems like Google really like blogs. In some cases, is seems like blogs have more authority than an article which is written based on factual research.
Every one uses Google because of their result are almost physic results so it must work but I wish blogging was not a required part of operating a web site.
Patrick Grote, our algorithms do handle a large amount of these links already. Getting outside feedback helps us measure our precision and recall and train the next generation of algorithms though.
“Since you’re now (and have in the past) asked people to help make the index better, do you think it’s time for Google to give a little information back?”
Ghosty left a similar comment on the official webmaster blog post here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/12/information-about-buying-and-selling.html#c684737057159612636
Here’s how I replied:
“Hey Ghosty! I appreciate your feedback, and we’ll do some thinking about whether it’s possible to add a notification message in the Google webmaster console.
Typically our first priority is to protect our index quality, but after that I agree that it’s important to communicate.
We saw this happen with malware as well. First we were taking action to remove the malware from our search results. Then we started to do more communication with site owners when we detected a malware problem. Now we’re much better about alerting site owners about malware on their site (although I wouldn’t claim we’re perfect).
In the same way, I agree that it would be nice to alert site owners if we think this is an issue for them. I wouldn’t expect us to send out notices right now, but it’s a good suggestion and I’ll see if we can work on that.”
Matt, I would personally like to see Google focus any energy on alerting spammy site owners, directed at those who DO play by the rules instead.
SE spammers are a VERY noisy minority and I hate to see the squeakest wheels get all the oil!
With all due respect, that did not answer any of the questions in my comment, Matt.
Snoskred, my comment on the group said that we were already pretty good at handling banner ads, whether of the 125×125 variety or the more traditional 468×80 variety.
Jean Véronis, thanks very much for stopping by! I’ve been reading your studies from back in the day when you were trying to estimate index sizes.
I know that several people at Google enjoyed reading that post. I’m a bit swamped answering questions right now, but I’ll try to ask a few other Googlers for their thoughts and maybe pass them on.
And anytime you’re in the bay area, I’d enjoy if you wanted to stop by the Googleplex and talk about the best ways to evaluate search engine quality.
For those reading along at home, the study we’re talking about is here: http://aixtal.blogspot.com/2007/11/search-google-yahoo-comparison.html
Hi Rob, excellent question. I know that many people feel strongly about this issue. And in general, Google does arouse strong feelings (pro and con) in a lot of people. I also know that there are at least 1-2 people who have decided that staking out an “anti-Google” position will get them more attention. But lots of people have strong opinions about this particular topic.
That would be a good subject for a blog post some day (”Why does Google evoke such strong opinions?”)
Hi, burchman519. I left a reply on the official Google webmaster blog post, but I’ll include it here.
“In the case of dmovers.com, you’re inheriting a bit of an issue from the previous owner of the domain. The domain at one point had keyword stuffing that looked like this:
“Are you seeking any of the following words:
mover, mouse mover, house mover, car mover, international mover, piano mover, nationwide mover, auto mover, personal mouse mover, people mover, mobile home mover, apartment mover, allied mover, lawn mover, furniture mover, first mover advantage, household mover, long distance mover, earth mover, mayflower mover”
and stuff like that. If you do a reconsideration request for dmovers.com and mention that you have nothing to do with the previous owner/text on the domain, I believe that the request should go through just fine.”
I think Matt has opened up a really sensitive issue, which might even boomerang onto Google. I remember a survey that revealed majority of searchers are not aware of the existence of Sponsored results among SERPs. That means a user when clicking on a sponsored result is not aware that he/she is clicking on an advertisement most of the times. Even while searching for Brain Tumor in Google, I see adwords that are no less trivial than the ones Matt has cited.
Now, one can let a search engine know that a link is paid for. But, can search engines really dispose of their responsibility by just tagging PPC ads as Sponsored Results, particularly in the backdrop of the survey? What is more important is that the paid review is only an influencer of the result, true, but the PPC ad IS the result.
I’m not talking about the banner ads, Matt. I am talking about the posts where they thank their sponsors. They do not put no follow on those links. Those links pass page rank. The sponsors have paid TechCrunch.
Or would it be ok if say Mcdonalds bought a banner ad on my site, and once a month I thanked them for it? What if I wrote about eating there once a month and linked to their site? Is that acceptable?
You see then where this is going – *these* paid links are ok but *those* are not. I don’t think you can really implement a kind of system like that, can you? Not legally, I’d suggest!
You also didn’t answer this question –
Perhaps you could take a moment to clarify exactly how sites were singled out to be penalized, so that those who got penalized without ever once having done a paid post without a no follow can work out what they did to offend Google.
Cheers,
Snoskred
“Perhaps you could take a moment to clarify exactly how sites were singled out to be penalized, so that those who got penalized without ever once having done a paid post without a no follow can work out what they did to offend Google.”
Snoskred, I talked about that here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/12/information-about-buying-and-selling.html#c1291965101477065651
but I’ll include the answer again.
“we did do a full PageRank update several weeks ago. seomoz.org went down one notch not because of link selling but just because there’s less PageRank flowing around in some areas (e.g. search and SEO). Vanessa Fox’s site dropped by one as well, and for her as well, it’s just a case where less PageRank is flowing in some niches of the net. PageRank doesn’t always monotonically increase.”
I believe Google’s algorithms do a good job on those “thank sponsors”-type posts, so we haven’t spent as much time talking about those. In general, if someone is paid for a link, that link should be done in a way that doesn’t affect search engines.
Hi enoughwealth.com! Based on the information in my posts, you could probably take some educated guesses. On enoughwealth.com as recently as Nov. 21st I saw links like “Get instant check cash advance services”, “Mortgages”, and “Apply for Alaska payday loans” and all of those links were flowing PageRank. I also noticed at least 10 posts that looked paid, with links like “cash back credit cards” and “free cell phones.” Those links appear to still be flowing PageRank, so that might be where I’d start checking first.
“we did do a full PageRank update several weeks ago. seomoz.org went down one notch not because of link selling but just because there’s less PageRank flowing around in some areas (e.g. search and SEO). Vanessa Fox’s site dropped by one as well, and for her as well, it’s just a case where less PageRank is flowing in some niches of the net. PageRank doesn’t always monotonically increase.”
I was given a 4 in that full page rank update you talk about. That was reduced to a 0 around mid-november. It happened at the same time the PPP blogs were penalized. How can that be anything other than some kind of penalty?
Ok,..nice post. But that wasn`t new, wasn`t it? Paid posts are stupid, noone but a search engine reads these blogs. Paid posts on related niche sites,…should be different.
Matt, please consider my comment;
I don’t know if I necessarily agree with this whole thing as how on earth is Google going to know every paid spam link from a bonafide link. What if I am recommending something or someone or doing a review of something that I think is important to my blog readers and I am not getting paid for it?
Also, another thing, after the recent Google update I have noticed numerous spam sites and obvious black hatters move from nowhere to the absolute #1 spot in google search.
Apparently some of these clowns think that having duplicate sites and crosslinking them all together and then creating 5 splogs to post the same duplicate info from the websites to to link back to the websites is seo. Some believe that doorway pages that only copy the info on your website or are just a list of keywords is the road to go. On top of this, one even claims to be one of the best and most responsible companies out there, blah, blah, blah and upon looking them up at the Better Business Bureau they are ranked as an F – the lowest grade they give out – many scammy flim flam infommercial operators have better ratings than that.
The BBB clearly states do not do business with this company, yet it is #1 on Google and gaining in many keywords. Somehow these seo morons are #1 and have been for about 2 weeks or more now. And they are moving up in other keywords also. They also have Google Adsense ads on their site and maybe this factors in somehow (is it possible that Google wants all companies to feel the need to buy Adwords as the organic search will be less dependable? I have to wonder as Google does have shareholders and this would be an easy way to drive profits)?
It blows my mind when there are numerous better sites ranked lower that have done nothing wrong this cheapens Google search results.
You work hard, follow the rules and then some black hat spammer just moves right on by and takes all your traffic – and in the above case, ripping people off left and right (per the BBB).
I certainly don’t want to search and find poor quality or low quality answers at #1. This is almost like back to the days of Altavista and Netscape. Maybe in some niches things are doing fine, but in the automotive realm at some of the search appears to be broken. I think this time the search quality went way down in this niche.
On another similar note, who decided that Ebay blog posts are significant enough to be found in top 10 results? These are some of the worst quality posts I have ever seen. One even had a ebay seller selling prescription required drugs doling out medical advice (they even had a fake doctrs license posted in their litings which were linked to the post).
The vast majority of Ebay posts are either hate and libel posts where one competitor is slamming another illegally, a sales copy that is poorly written or in a few instances a warning to not buy from some scam artist. Ebay is obviously using their minions to spam the serps and drive sales.
But, just because a company like Ebay is big does not mean their millions of users know how to write or have more than 2 brain cells in their head. Yes, I’m sure there are some great and intelligent Ebayers out there, but read those posts yourself. Many are worse than the paid blog posts you used as examples above and are a complete waste of time.
I guess I have to ask – Is this all do to still ongoing fluxing in Google and things will revert back to normal or what is going on here? I like Google, but some of the stuff going on has me wondering and a little miffed.
Please enlighten me.
Bluegill
Dave (Original)
>Experts Exchange (for example) and the snippit Google shows has pretty well what I’m looking for. YET, when I click through I find out I need to register to see all of what googlebot is showing me.
Not true, scroll down and you do see the answers…
Matt, I think the removal of the I committed a heinous crime aspect of the reinclusion request would be a big improvement.
Jab, for many people this isn’t a new subject, but I wanted to walk through a concrete example to illustrate the motivation behind Google’s policy.
Dave (original), there’s a couple points:
- I definitely want to help whitehats, but I also want to provide information that could pull people more toward whitehat. Providing notice in the webmaster console for link selling could potentially help with that.
- Regarding cloaking, there’s cloaking in order to deceive or show off-topic spam, and then there’s “I have premium content” cloaking. I care a lot about the former. I know I should care a lot about the latter too, but (I personally) sometimes don’t get as into that subject. There’s a whole mini-discussion / blog post about that topic someday, but not today. I’m getting tired.
rob, I agree that it would be an improvement too. It’s been rattling around in my brain for a long time, but I just now managed to request the change.
“I was given a 4 in that full page rank update you talk about. That was reduced to a 0 around mid-november. It happened at the same time the PPP blogs were penalized. How can that be anything other than some kind of penalty?”
Snoskred, when I look at http://www.snoskred.org/advertise I see things like “Snoskred used to always disclose when a review was paid for within the post itself however those disclosures have now been removed from previous reviews in order to protect the advertisers from Google’s apparent rampage of wrath against people who purchase links.”
Now Snoskred, I respect your decision to do posts on your website however you want. And you may disagree with Google’s stance on selling links/posts that pass PageRank. But I think Google’s stance on paid links/posts that pass PageRank is pretty clear. Yes, your website has lost trust in Google. There is a way to undo that loss of trust if you choose to.
Hey everyone, it’s pretty dang late, so I’m going to bed.
I hope that I can get comments in the moderation queue approved tomorrow morning.
I like how you made sure the posters usernames are part of nearly every screenshot. Some people gave Rand a hard time about that kind of calling out not too long ago
By the way, when can we expect a ’subscribe to comments by email’ button?!
Hi Matt,
In an earlier reply you wrote:
graywolf, you’re welcome to view a Google Checkout blog post in a cynical way. I’m just telling you that I went and chatted with that team, and they didn’t see it that way themselves when they wrote that post.
Does this mean that Google will personally be contacting everyone accused? Will you be checking before you penalise a persons website, potentially having a huge detriment to their livelihood?
Let me be very clear on my stance here; I totally agree that anyone selling links from high PR pages should be stopped. I don’t feel they are offering anything to the user journey – essentially they sap good content from the traffic generating positions.
I do not however understand how the buyers can be treated in the same way. The biggest problem arises when an unethical company begins to purposefully purchase links to a competitors website, which in turn means they appear on your radar. How are you going to protect companies from this type of abuse?
You know what it used to say on that page, Matt?
“All links to advertisers will be made no follow to comply with Google’s terms of service”.
It said that on that page from the moment I moved to Wordpress and was able to have such a page (in early October) right until the slap down I got in Mid-November.
Can you not see what you have done? I used to be a huge supporter of Google and your products and services. Don’t believe me? Do a search on my blog for Google and you’ll see there is a huge amount of positive posts about Google Reader, Google Calendar, gmail, etc.
I trusted your company. I trusted that when I searched for something I was actually using a search engine, not some manipulated results which are tweaked to remove things your people don’t like. I trusted Google with about 50 gmail accounts. Being a scambaiter I tend to spend a lot of time emailing and Gmail allowed me to do it without revealing my IP address. I recommended Gmail to scam victims. Constantly.
Now, if Google told me the grass was green, I’d want to go outside and double check. Just to make sure someone in their infinite wisdom didn’t decide to spray paint it, or manipulate it in some way.
Google did that. They took someone who was an advocate for your company, someone who wanted to promote your products FOR FREE, without ever asking for money, someone who was trying her best to comply with your terms of service by making any paid links on the new wordpress blog no follow, someone who did once use text link ads but heard what you were saying – and got sick of their bad customer service, and resigned and removed it from my blog..
What did I get? Shafted. And I have no idea why. I do not know what I did to deserve it. So what did I do? I made a decision to stop using Google products and services. I have not been to a Google site in over 2 weeks. I used to be at Google sites all day long. And I started speaking out against Google when before I used to encourage other bloggers to use their services!
And I keep asking you, and you keep making excuses. What has what is on my advertising page now (clearly marked with a date that it was changed) got to do with the question I asked? Which was, in case you forgot, what did I do to deserve going from a 4 to a 0?
I can understand if maybe some results from my old blogger site were in the index and that is why I have been penalized, or if I used a certain term which was being looked for. But why on earth should I go begging to get it back when I was doing everything right at the time it was taken from me? I had already changed what I was doing to suit your terms of service. I was reading your blog and getting the message about paid links loud and clear – and working to comply with them. Missing out on money in the process, I might add.
GOOGLE is the one who has to earn MY trust back. And they have lost the trust of many more people than just me.
@Matt:
Could… if the message center would work. Since more than 4 weeks there are five messages waiting for me, but i just cannot access them. “Your messages are not available at this time. Please try again later.” is all what i get…
Matt, paid links existed before Google. For example, I was checking one of our client pages on The Wayback Machine recently, and found a paid link from their site to ours on a page that dated from 1996. The link was “paid” in the respect that our Web design and hosting fees were lower than they otherwise would have been, because the client allowed us to promote the fact that we were responsible for their Web design and hosting on their site (think “powered by Google”). This is just one example of a payment that is not made in strictly monetary terms, but is a payment nonetheless.
Although this page no longer exists, there must be millions of similar paid links on pages on the Web that do exist and that were created either before the invention of nofollow, or since its invention but in the ignorance of it per se, or especially in ignorance of Google’s desired meaning (”link is paid for” rather than “link is not trusted”).
Questions, then:
1) Are you suggesting that all old Web pages need to be updated and any paid links they contain labelled as nofollow?
2) Are you suggesting that all newly created pages that contain a link that, in some way, could be classified as “paid”, must use a nofollow on that link?
If the answer to either question is “Yes”, you’ll need to explain how the advice “Would I do this if search engines did not exist?” would apply in this case.
There are some things we do purely because search engines exist: for example, the creation of robots.txt files, the use of a SiteMap, or the insertion of meta tags. But the omission of these things is not a problem. You seem to be saying that the omission of a nofollow tag on a paid link is spam, which places the onus on the webmaster to know that the nofollow tag exists, and know that Google wants it used to label links as paid. This is therefore a unique requirement on the webmaster to comply with a Google directive, and it comes across very much as an attempt to impose Google standards on Web design. Maybe that is not what you mean to do, but I don’t see any other way of interpreting it. Therefore I think it violates the principle of “Would I do this if search engines did not exist?” which, if you recall, was a principle originally put forward by me. It’s for this reason that I am opposed to the enforced use of nofollow in this way, as it goes against my own principle!
That’s not to say I don’t understand why you would like paid links to be nofollow’d. Nor is it to say that I disagree with your intent to keep spam out of your index, especially the kind of spam you posted about in this blog post. Nor do I disagree with the fact that it’s your right to do what you like with your search results. It’s just to say that I disagree with the way you are going about it in this instance. My concern isn’t that you will rid your index of spam. My concern is that, in so doing, you will alienate lots of people who are actually on your side and, long term, the quality of your search results will suffer as you “Throw the baby out with the bathwater”.
Great example Matt!
It clearly shows why Google has to be careful with how to value links. I still feel like whether or not they were paid for, shouldn’t matter. If these examples you show are not paid for, it should not make them more valuable.
The reality is that there is a lot of uncorrect information on the internet and it remains the search engine’s responsibility to value them correctly. And of course also the public should be very careful with information they find, especially if it is not from a qualified source and even more especially in a situation you describe in your example.
I’m sure that inside Google the link evaluation goes much further than simply looking at if they’re paid for or not. An algorithm’s quality I guess is based on its ability to judge content like a human does. But then I wonder: How do you get 1 algorithm to judge content like a qualified person in all subjects. In a human way you would have to have an expert for each subject. How do you create an algorithm that can judge like a qualified person without having knowledge of the subject? I mean, algorithms don’t have knowledge about anything, they just apply math and logic, very advanced of course, but still knowledge isn’t applied. (as far as I know and as far as I can imagine as even artificial intelligence is just intelligence and lacks knowledge and subject specific experience.)
I know Google does stuff with the human genome, but if I’d work in Google I’d use my 20% for the human brain,
Decision processes and judgements and really trying to understand those to be able to create good working algorithms would be a great project! The screen you show in your example is clear,.. you just have to look at it for 2 seconds and you already know it’s not trustable. Why is that clear to a human in such a short time?
My opinion,… purely based on experience,.. the brain makes a very quick comparison with things seen before and it’s clear. So it’s almost purely based on experience, which points in the direction that some form of artificial intelligence that is based strongly on past experiences is a direction to investigate further. But the brain has such a huge storage capacity and what’s more important, is capable of finding similar situations in its memory in less than a second. When copying this into a technical solution, the real dificulty here is not the exact matching, but the similarity matching.
Interesting stuff!
See, the funny thing here is that we were #1 across the board for many keywords and are BY FAR, the best search result and resource for many of our keywords and still are. We were always #1 for our top 3 keywords and then we quit our adwords campaign as the fraudulant clicks from our competitors and their friends were just getting ridiculous (Google knows this, but doesn’t care as they get paid regardless who clicks).
We received phone calls from Google to restart our campaign. 3 weeks later and our ratings suffered a few spots on each top keyword and then spam and crap websites with zero or similar backlinks and no useful content popped ahead of us for the first time in years. This is just another obvious Google manipulation to get companies back on Adwords.
This obvious manipulation is in Google’s interests and not in the interest of bettering search. It is motivated by pure greed and profit and actually is highly illegal extortion. It is easily proven and grounds for a massive class action lawsuit and even federal and international anti trust investigations and rulings which would most likely split up Google forever as happened with the phone companies (Ma Bell) years ago.
Google has now become too big and needs to be split up as it is using its power to unfairly and illegally extract (extortion) extra profits from people in a way akin to an online mafia and control the entire online marketplace and environment. I have lost interest in Google due to their illegal behavior and will no longer use them. I will use other search engines and tell everyone else I run into the same.
Google has broken the law and gotten caught. They don’t care because they have a ton of lawyers and will just fight and if it goes to court they think it will settle at the last minute and then sweep it under the rug. After looking at the general sentiment on the internet and seeing that I’m not the only one this extortion and similar happens to, I am going to bet it will be less than 2 or 3 years before Google gets the smackdown from the FTC or similar in federal court and is split up into several companies.
Bluegill
Hi Matt,
Really, really simple question… Why doesn’t Google ad the “no-follow” code to their AdSense and other adverts that they use as a show of good faith? I.E. What’s good for the Goose, is good for the gander?
Does Google not gain some market share, popularity, and other benefits from having “google” splashed all over in ads on various blogs, home pages, and even from domain squatters who use AdSense? http://www.google.com/domainpark/
If you added the no-follow tag would this not calm much of the hysteria and finger pointing?
Thank you for this posting Matt!!
First, because as an MD I understand the problems related with Medical disinformation on the web and second because this case touched me personally: My mother passed away 2 years ago from a cancer disease and I totally understand the anguish of family member trying to get relevant information about a serious medical condition.
“what did I do to deserve going from a 4 to a 0?”
Snoskred, here’s a concrete example from your domain:
http://www.snoskred.org/2007/08/zookoda-new-way-to-reach-readers.html
That post has an image that says “Sponsored by Zookoda.” In that post, you have links and anchortext like “Zookoda” and “email marketing” that flow PageRank. In the post on our official Google webmaster blog, I’ve said that selling links that pass PageRank is a violation of our quality guidelines and can cause Google to lose trust in the site selling links.
I absolutely support your right to do paid links and paid posts on snoskred.org. But if those paid posts flow PageRank, Google can lose trust in your site, which would account for why your PageRank would be lower in the Google Toolbar. For another email company trying to rank for “email marketing,” they wouldn’t be very happy if someone was trying to buy rankings for that phrase.
Scott, simple, AdWords are javascript and therefore theoretically ignored by the spider.. Now, whether Google should actually be promoting MFA sites by creating the AdWords for Domain program is an entirely different issue.. Seems to be the worst thing to come along in a long time.. Basic pages that provide absolutely no benefit to the surfer.. There is plenty of benefit to the owner and Google though.. I would think that these types of pages would be considered total spam and not allowed.. IMO they are far more evil than paid links..
Why can’t there be a grid check of the blog’s keywords against link anchor text and if there is no correlation the pagerank of the providing link page [anchor text] is ignored– as a page with no authority on the subject. That way existing pages keep their pagerank and are only considered when they are an authority based on their own defined keywords. Pagerank is not accurate when zero’d because only because a blog has advertisering posts. If that were the case magazines and newspapers could be zero’d for the same reason.
Regina Thomas
qisoftware.com
Matt,
I’m sorry to be late on this comment, but regarding what you said to enoughwealth.com :
“Hi enoughwealth.com! Based on the information in my posts, you could probably take some educated guesses. On enoughwealth.com as recently as Nov. 21st I saw links like “Get instant check cash advance services”, “Mortgages”, and “Apply for Alaska payday loans” and all of those links were flowing PageRank. I also noticed at least 10 posts that looked paid, with links like “cash back credit cards” and “free cell phones.” Those links appear to still be flowing PageRank, so that might be where I’d start checking first.”
Can you address this in a way more beneficial to the community? Are there any plans to add the specifics of a site penalty to the webmaster tools notification that has been mentioned elsewhere in this thread? Your answer is certainly satisfactory (and funny) to enoughwealth.com, but I imagine you are wanting to move away from personally answering every random thread-jacking attempt
…
Thanks.
Scott and Feydakin, in addition to AdWords using JavaScript (and AdSense using iframes, which bots usually do not crawl), we also have all sorts of robots.txt directives to prevent bots from crawling. You probably also want to read this comment I did: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/selling-links-that-pass-pagerank/#comment-117717
Matt, I was never, and have never, worried about AdSense passing ranking benefits.. That would be the absolute fastest way to get Google in trouble with the Feds..
I just hate the Google is supporting, and even promoting, the creation of worthless spam pages that provide no benefit to anyone, MFA / AdWords for Domains websites.. It seems to be a giant conflict of interest where you want to fight spam and irrelevant search results, yet support the endless creation of these pages by actually paying people to create them.. How is paying people to have these types of websites any better, or less evil, than a paid link..
This may seem like an apples and oranges argument, but it goes to a deeper issue of one side of Google doing something good, relevant search results, while another side of Google is willing to do anything for a buck, no matter what it does the to web as a whole..
Calamier, excellent point. You might want to read this great comment by Ghosty on the official Google blog post: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/12/information-about-buying-and-selling.html#c684737057159612636
And I’ll include my reply:
“Hey Ghosty! I appreciate your feedback, and we’ll do some thinking about whether it’s possible to add a notification message in the Google webmaster console.
Typically our first priority is to protect our index quality, but after that I agree that it’s important to communicate.
We saw this happen with malware as well. First we were taking action to remove the malware from our search results. Then we started to do more communication with site owners when we detected a malware problem. Now we’re much better about alerting site owners about malware on their site (although I wouldn’t claim we’re perfect).
In the same way, I agree that it would be nice to alert site owners if we think this is an issue for them. I wouldn’t expect us to send out notices right now, but it’s a good suggestion and I’ll see if we can work on that.”
While we don’t want to provide notice to hard-core blackhat spammers when we catch them, I do think that a notice in our Message Center in the webmaster console could reduce some people’s confusion and (I hope) pull some of the people on the fence in the direction of agreeing with our policy.
Feydakin, I hate MFA sites as well and encourage people to report them using this method: http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/014665.html
On domain advertising, I have nuanced feelings. Considering how spammy some of the early domain advertising was, I think it’s important that Google, Yahoo, and others presented legitimate alternatives to some of the really scuzzy stuff out there. Now that kind of scuzzy stuff is much more rare, which is a good thing. But I absolutely take your point as well. My personal feeling is that an easy opt-out of domain advertising will give advertisers more flexibility. Right now you can block individual domains, or you can email to Google to request to opt-out of domain advertising, but I’m a fan of the idea of self-service tools to block domain advertising. Just to reiterate, everything in this comment is my personal opinion.
Matt,
“While we don’t want to provide notice to hard-core blackhat spammers when we catch them, I do think that a notice in our Message Center in the webmaster console could reduce some people’s confusion and (I hope) pull some of the people on the fence in the direction of agreeing with our policy.”
It is an interesting war that we (you) fight…It’s almost like a game of poker… Webmasters want to know HOW MUCH they are being penalized for, and they want to remove only what they are being penalized for…. while the SE’s want the webmasters to reveal everything they are doing so they want to provide as little information as possible… I think with the notifications… it gets the ball rolling on communication between google and the webmasters, even if google comes off of it with a disadvantage in the “face game” ….
This brings me up to my next question which I have been unable to find answers for, and probably for obvious reasons… getting the answer I want out of this is going to be unlikely so I thank you ahead of time for any information you provide…
What does googles spam department look like in terms of numbers and resources? Let’s say I am a webmaster with some mild flavored Google Guideline violations, a couple hundred spammy links from bad neighboorhoods, etc… What determines whether I deal with an algorithm (ex : “googlebot” sees my violations and gives me a 2 point discount in toolbar pagerank OR….whether I deal with a google employee who reviews my site and de-indexes or some other penalty…. I guess my question is, how bad does a site have to be before it is escalated from automated processes to a hand-made review?
Bluegill, I don’t know what your site was, but I can promise that not renewing your ads had nothing to do with your web rankings.
The timing may seem too coincidental to you, but here’s another way to think about it: Google is constantly updating our algorithms, and we rank billions of web pages and tens of millions of domains every day, so there will always be changes going on. At the same time, at least hundreds of thousands of businesses advertise on Google. With that many advertisers and web pages, it’s inevitable that some sites’ rankings will change at around the same time that the business buys more or less ads on Google.
But just to reiterate, we work very hard to keep our web rankings completely different from advertising.
I guess my issue is that The ad supplies, Google, Yahoo, etc., shouldn’t be supporting this at all.. No one can point to a single parked domain that provides any benefit at all to the surfer.. I have a ton of jewelry related domains sitting and waiting for our store to evolve to the point that they are needed and not one of them is a parked domain with advertising on it.. They simply don’t resolve at all..
I’m probably giving up some free money, but I think that, at present, the parked domain, MFA site is all one in the same and a scourge that needs to be discouraged, not encouraged by writing the owners checks every month..
Which leads me back to the issue of paid links.. How can it be possible to penalize a link that may or may not be beneficial yet support pages that provide no benefit whatsoever?? It seems to me to be a serious conflict of interest and goals on Google’s part..
ok, I understand what you’re saying to a point Matt, but this is kind of ridiculous don’t you think?
‘Don’t believe everything you read’ – isn’t that something that more internet users should take into consideration? Do people searching for information on the internet REALLY think that because web site http://www.TOTALLYTRUE.com has information on the Gamma Knife, for example, that it’s completely true? I sincerely hope not.
Information on the internet is to be taken by the user with other information to form a complete picture of whatever it is that the user happens to be learning about. There is no way that someone should take a result on the Google SERPS as the be all and end all of information — absolutely true because Google says so? Because Google has put into effect filtering to make certain it’s true? Is that really want you want Google to do?
I understand wanting to display the most relevant results – definately. But to try to say that Google is attempting to help people out by providing accurate information in terms of what is highest ranked in the SERPS is going too far, in my opinion. What if quote/unquote RESPECTABLE, ACCURATE sites are playing the paid link game? And their information is totally correct, but they want to get higher up in the rankings to get their perfect information out to users everywhere?
I am not entirely certain how I feel about the paid link debate right now however, I think the argument you made in this post is a bit over the top.
Merry Christmas!
Joke Joke and one else joke.
Politics of big concern. Thats All.
Its a pity Google is going down
So , Matt, explain me please, what is wrong with selling advertising space on my website? If, for example, i’ve got many websites in Polish language, could you tell me how i can earn some money to pay for servers where i keep all those? No. Stop saying adsense. In Poland we have ctr, epcm or whatever on FUNNY level. I need to sell links to get some money for my website. And this is not bad, google engine can’t handle poor external links. That should be Your problem, not ours.
My biggest question is why are the spam and black hat crap sites back at number 1 and two in many searches under the automotive niche? Did you read my first comment? Here is the mian gist of it again:
Also, another thing, after the recent Google update I have noticed numerous spam sites and obvious black hatters move from nowhere to the absolute #1 spot in google search.
Apparently some of these clowns think that having duplicate sites and crosslinking them all together and then creating 5 splogs to post the same duplicate info from the websites to to link back to the websites is seo. Some believe that doorway pages that only copy the info on your website or are just a list of keywords is the road to go. On top of this, one even claims to be one of the best and most responsible companies out there, blah, blah, blah and upon looking them up at the Better Business Bureau they are ranked as an F – the lowest grade they give out – many scammy flim flam infommercial operators have better ratings than that.
The BBB clearly states do not do business with this company, yet it is #1 on Google and gaining in many keywords. Somehow these seo morons are #1 and have been for about 2 weeks or more now. And they are moving up in other keywords also. They also have Google Adsense ads on their site and maybe this factors in somehow (is it possible that Google wants all companies to feel the need to buy Adwords as the organic search will be less dependable? I have to wonder as Google does have shareholders and this would be an easy way to drive profits)?
It blows my mind when there are numerous better sites ranked lower that have done nothing wrong this cheapens Google search results.
You work hard, follow the rules and then some black hat spammer just moves right on by and takes all your traffic – and in the above case, ripping people off left and right (per the BBB).
I certainly don’t want to search and find poor quality or low quality answers at #1. This is almost like back to the days of Altavista and Netscape. Maybe in some niches things are doing fine, but in the automotive realm at some of the search appears to be broken. I think this time the search quality went way down in this niche.
Bluegill
Matt, thanks for all the responses. I was hoping you could answer the questions posed above at http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/selling-links-that-pass-pagerank/#comment-117679
Also, a couple additions to those questions:
- on question #1 I’d also like to understand those posts’ SERPs before and after any GOOG penalties.
- on question #4 I’d also like to understand that site’s SERPs before and after any GOOG penalties.
Much appreciated!
Matt,
I want to thank you for spending all of this time trying to explain your point of view about links that pass PageRank. I think the main problem I still can’t get my head around is the “gray” areas. I want to use the snippet that you posted that illustrates why a directory like Yahoo’s that charges a substantial sum for a site review is different from *some* sponsored posts.
If I am a PayPerPost blogger and I reject sponsored reviews based upon editorial decisions, I pass this test, right?
If I am truthful about my sponsored review and only review sites/products/services of interest to my readership and are not spammy, then I pass this test, right?
If my fee is to compensate me for my time making a compelling and thorough review then I would pass this test as well, right?
Do you see where Google’s stand can leave me confused and where I might feel “forced” to define a link relationship that has a negative connotation for links that I am willing to stand behind reputationwise?
I am really interested in hearing your response on this as I’ve read throguh 245 comments here and still don’t get it.
Wow, this is putting way too much emphasis on Google (or any other search engine)’s accuracy. As somebody who has lost four relatives to cancer in the last four years and been the primary caregiver in two of the four, I’m well aware that my (or your) physician or Hospice will 90% of the time give the patient recommended reading on the internet with links to valid articles on the subject matter. Anybody using Google to second guess their diagnosis is in serious trouble, and it’s not because of bloggers writing sponsored articles.
What’s even more compelling and scary about this heavily weighted analogy by Mr. Cutts is the fact that every single thing one searches Google for either returns a Wikipedia entry or a YouTube video result (or both) and Wikipedia can hardly be considered as an authority….
…and….Quite honestly, the most irrelevant links I ever see in Google SERPS are those ones at the side or top that say “Sponsored Links”… Otherwise, I think most Google users know how to use + and – to bind or exclude irrelevant results.
Matt, although your intentions might be good, Please, don’t try to make Google out to be more than it really is. Google is an “advertising” company and please, let’s not make them out to be the saviour of the world. I will always say Google is the absolute best search engine, because IMHO, it really is, because Google doen’t try to “think for you” and the more you use it, the smarter you get at searching. For example, my father who is in his 70’s and never touched a computer until a few years ago already has learned how to exclude listing when he’s searching for his favorite topic (Atlanta Braves baseball or Penn State football info).
On the subject of MFA, please tell us Matt, what is “Adsense for Domains” and how is that not MFA ? Eventually when you’re speaking out of both sides of your mouth and out of your butt, people will stop believing you. If you think you can honestly say “I hate MFA” and “Adsense for Domains is legit” in the same sentence without looking like the biggest hypocrite ever, then try it. Let’s hear an explaination of how “Adesense for Domains” is legit and not the biggest MFA example on the internet? Hell, I know someone who was reporting SEDO “Adsense for Domains” sites to Google until she figured out it was Google who was running the show
Paid links = bad
Yawn.
However, I’m really interested in what is meant by this comment by Matt Cutts:
“there’s less PageRank flowing around in some areas (e.g. search and SEO).”
Are Google applying some kind of filter to the SEO industry specifically?
When I moved to Wordpress in early October, I went through and removed all the paid posts I’d done because they had been done on the blogspot domain which did have a page rank. Snoskred.org did not have a page rank and so I made the decision to remove those posts. Looks like I missed removing this one even though I was sure I’d got them all. ;( It’s now a 404.
Thank you for telling me, and I will now go through and double check to make sure there are no others I missed.
Snoskred, let me know after you’ve checked the posts to your satisfaction. Once there’s no paid links passing PageRank on snoskred.org, I’m happy to file a reconsideration request and keep an eye on it for you, because at that point I’d expect the PageRank indicator to return for the site.
HEY MATT, SORRY ABOUT THE CAPS, NEW KEYBOARD EN ROUTE.
ANYWAYS, AFTER READING EVERYTHING YOU’VE SAID, I HAVE TO WONDER, “WHY DON’T YOU JUST MAKE GOOGLE SO IT CAN DELIVER TOTALLY TARGETED INFO DIRECTLY TO US WHILE WE LAY BACK AND SIP ICED TEA?”
YOUR REASON FOR HAMMERING SITES THAT ONLY TOOK ADVANTAGE OF A LOOPHOLE YOU’D ALLOWED ALL ALONG IS THAT “BOO-HOO”, PEOPLE MIGHT HAVE TO ACTUALLY SEARCH BEYOND PAGE 3 OF SEARCH RESULTS.
AND MAYBE THAT’S A GOOD THING, HUH? EVER THINK OF THAT? OR ARE YOU JUST CAVING IN TO THE BELIEF IN SEARCHER’S GENERAL LAZINESS?
AS MARKETERS, WE LIKE TO GET IN THE TOP 3 PAGES OF RESULTS BECAUSE WE KNOW THAT PEOPLE LOOKING FOR “OUR” PRODUCTS ARE GENERALLY MOTIVATED BY IMPULSE AND WE HAVE TO GET THEM ASAP, BUT IN THE EXAMPLE ABOVE, YOU’RE DESCRIBING PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT GOING BY IMPULSE BUT ARE DESPERATE FOR ACCURATE INFORMATION.
SO A BETTER SOLUTION, IF YOU REALLY CARE, IS TO REQUIRE SITES THAT DO PAID REVIEWS OR SELL PAID LINKS (OR PURCHASE PAID LINKS) TO OPENLY STATE SO IN AN OBVIOUS PLACE JUST LIKE A BIG AD IN A NEWSPAPER THAT LOOKS LIKE AN ARTICLE IS REQUIRED TO CLEARLY STATE THAT “THIS IS A PAID FOR ADVERTISEMENT”
THAT WAY, INNOCENT PEOPLE DON’T GET CAUGHT UP IN THE MESS AND YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE AN ABUSABLE CENTER FOR SOCIAL ENGINEERING WANNABE’S.
SAM
Frankly i’m scared Matt. Punishing the small guys selling links is like an act of bullyism: it seems a frantic and rushed effort to counterbalance pagerank poisoning.
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I think that every user should be treated equally before google: for exaple gamespy is paid to link producer’s websites. They are paid in “hardware” usually and the links are without no-follow (i’ve checked). This is just an example.
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The pagerank;© is dead. It was like the obelisc in 2001 a space odissey during the fab 90s: it allowed us to search far and wide relevant informations. The pagerank was a people-powered algorithm: the higher position was due to pepole liking a page, a site, a blog post.
The pagerank;© worked thanks to us. Now it’s no more. People guessed how to tame the algorithm and the result is that a lot of informations are utterly useless. You’ve pointed out a very sensible example: informations regarding critical aspetcs of our health should not be banalized.
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I’ve been used to expect more innovation from the google guys. I think it’s time to “peoplerank” (there’s no copyright i’m improvising) an improvement to the google toolbar: a tool to rate pages a-la-stumbleupon.
It would be an user-to-google tool: every rating is send to the google big database and analyzed. When the total ratings raise or drop a score below some limits a google reviewer is alerted. He is the last judge of the site quality… but he is just human.
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So he could rely on the people that rated the site: he could ask them more details in order to improve her judgement. (we suppose the raters are all google users but their raiting is anonymous except for google, in order to avoid retortions).
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It could even become a business: A price to be reviewed could be easily paid for an initial service. Then after 6 and 12 months, there would be some random reviews in order to monitor the quality of service.
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I know, these are merely ramblings of a fool, but i think that one of the best companies in the world, that changed the world in a way, could do better than capitalizing on the assets of pagerank.
Matt, what you’re doing is fantastic for communication, VERY much appreciated, but just in case you need to hear another voice (besides your wife’s?) saying it: “Take care of yourself.”
It’s easy to obsess when you have so much to contribute, and maybe I’m all wet for seeing it this way, but if you’re overdoing it, remember to take a step back when you need it.
(No need to approve post or reply. And yes, I read almost every word you say some weeks .. and maybe that’s why I would hate to hear that you burned out!)
One last post about paid links..
I was reading this article about Target and Facebook..
http://www.startribune.com/535/story/1584700.html
It’s relatively easy to spot the average paid link on a website, but what about the national corp with millions of dollars available to it to through around on the down low?? I realize that a lot of these things are not ‘links’ but rather paid posts.. Does this come under the heading of the new no paid posts issue or is it something else entirely since they aren’t specifically requesting links but just Facebook postings??
@Dave (The Other One), I’m going to take a stab at defending the AdSense for Domains program, to a degree. There are really 2 kinds of MFA sites, if you will:
1) MFAD (Made for AdSense for Domains)
2) MFAC (Made for AdSense for Content)
The distinction is important. MFAD sites have 0 content (except for images and navigation). MFAC sites have content. The idea with MFAD is that people navigate directly to domains (i.e. direct navigation). Typing keywords as a domain name is, the argument goes, equivalent to typing keywords into a search box. So, if (and this is a big IF), the domain name is a generic combination of keywords, ads displayed on that domain could be equivalent (or better) than search ads.
IOW, MFAD sites are like Google searches but w/o the organic results. MFAD sites, then, should convert for PPC advertisers *better* than search engine ads because there are no organic results to compete with. The problem with MFAD is that Google uses both the search network and content network of AdWords for MFAD and hides the domains from advertisers. There exists an intentional lack of transparency. MFAD sites are neither content nor search. Plus, many of the sites in the MFAD network are not generic keyword domains. They’re garbage. Some are likely infringing on some trademarks (and I think that’s the real reason Google aggregates domains in AdWords reports). Google’s belatedly realized, IMHO, this is a bad solution and is trying to figure out what to do about that.
The obvious solution is to create a domain network, distinct from the search and content networks. IOW, if the content network distributes ads to MFAC sites, there needs to be a domain network for MFAD ad distribution. Simple. Clean. Transparent.
Unfortunately, the way Google has implemented MFAD wrt AdWords results in click fraud. It’d bad. Example:
http://www.apogee-web-consulting.com/clickfraud/searchportal.information.com.html
@Matt, FYI, someone from a Google internal IP address (72.14.xx6.1) was checking the above example today. That example illustrates why it is difficult to pay attention to Google regarding paid links wrt SEO. As Dave (The Other One) put it, you can’t be “speaking out of both sides of your mouth” on this issue. BTW, thanks for the comment on my blog and for the invitation to chat at PubCon.
And, again, I realize it’s beyond the scope of your group to deal with these problems. However, it’s your company and someone needs to step up. Are there people on the AdWords/AdSense teams who are willing to recognize and resolve the MFAD implementation problems? They’re certainly making it difficult for you to do your job.
Hi Matt,
I thank you for your blog. I have gained some understanding of why I may have lost PR in last update. I have a good many outbound links that may have been seen as possible paid links, but they are not. Just accumulated resources that I have gathered for my own use and when doing research and I make the info available to others. I will add rel=”nofollow” to all of them tomorrow.
Then I wonder if I should do a reconsideration request. I never sold links, but I passed PR just as a matter of the situation I guess. Usually the links go to larger sites that prob had higher PR than me, but not always.
What do you think about this situation ?
And another comment, I subscribe to Google Blog Alerts, daily I get emails w/ a list of mostly totally garbage blogs with the terms ‘my resort area’ in them…I would like a way to report the garbage ones instantly, like the method Adsense ads have.
I frequently report MFA sites thru the links back to Google from the ad’s Google logo. I have even gotten a email thank-you on occasion from Google staff.
Google has been good to me and I think it is the least I can do. But it needs to be fast and simple from the Gmail that has the list of bogus blogs in it.
Thanks and best wishes.
And in the end, if Google were JUST a search engine, then all would be fine. But Google is also in the advertising business which presents a conflict of interest when handing out these spankings to those who dare to monetize with a service other than Google.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, this is the kind of thing that got Microsoft in trouble. You’re welcome to beat your competition fair and square. What Google is doing, though, is shady at best and possibly violates anti-trust laws. The EU is already investigating your Doubleclick acquisition. Should the US Justice Department take a look as well? You know if the Democrats get in it will probably happen. They don’t like big business.
Before I knew what PageRank was, or SEO, or SEM, I got sick. Doing a basic search for terms my doctor used led me to a lot of useless information and spammy sites. That really made me angry. Then because of my illness I started looking into ways to make money from home. I ran into a site touting PPP. I thought that would be a good way to make some extra cash. So, I started doing that.
Then I found out what PageRank was and that it was important to be able to make more money within the PPP system. Then Google laid the smack down. My site was hit. After reading everything I could, I came to the realization that I had become someone who potentially helped a useless site get higher in the SERPs (a term I just learned, by the way).
I can’t even be angry that my site got zapped. I hate to click on a link in the search results and find crap. I was contributing to crap. I’m taking my punishment and living with it.
The problem I have now, with regard to all this, is that the advertisers aren’t losing their PageRank. They’re the ones paying for links and getting the benefit of them and yet it was the folks like me that didn’t even know we were doing anything wrong that got the brunt of this penalty. Why is that? How is it that XYZ Company can buy 50 links (or more) to get themselves in the top spot and not get their PageRank reduced?
I personally won’t sell my PageRank anymore. I’ll find other ways to make money (and have, actually, thank God). But I just think it’s unfair to penalize one component of the transaction and not the rest.
Also, with regard to all the warnings about Google trying to squash the competition (monopoly, AT&T, etc):
That’s utter crap. Should McDonalds (popular analogy here, apparently) advertise The Whopper in their stores? Should Wal-Mart put up K-Mart adverts? Are any of the above in violation of any laws because they don’t practice that way? Here’s a better analogy- should the New York Times accept advertising from any kind of company just because that company wants to buy it? If they don’t, are they breaking laws?
Google’s search is the most popular (at least in the U.S.) because they’ve proven themselves better. And so they do advertising. Whoop. They offer a free service that millions of people use every day. How else are they going to pay for it? Who here is going to start donating cash to keep the free search, email, chat, VoIP?
Last time I heard inclusion in its organic Index is free and some simple guidelines are provided for inclusion.
Webmasters can choose to do anything they like with THIER sites and so can Google.
Comes under the heading of common sense.
Feydakin, it sounds like that happened on a private Facebook page, not on a web page that Google crawled. If this subject is interesting to you, you might be interested to read this article “EU cracks down on fake blogger astroturfing”: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/03/eu_flogging_ban/
Scorpy01, all the search engines have taken a similar position when the Forbes reporter asked for their opinion on these sort of links. And I hope the examples that I showed helped people to understand why the search engines feel that way.
Lundy Wilder, if you think there could have been a misunderstanding, it certainly doesn’t hurt to do a reconsideration request and give more background/information.
Richard Ball, there are people who pay attention to that issue; my hope is that things will move in the direction that both of us want.
Matt,
First of all let me clarify I am not a Wikipedia-hater, nor a Google-hater.
You said about wikipedia:
“What I did say is that users like them”
but on Google enterprise page it says:
“We feel relevancy is one of the most important factors that influence our users’ experience.”
Then, I think it is not correct saying Wikipedia is OK ranking at the top just because users like it as Google looks for the more relevant results (wikipedia doesnt serve this as anyone can edit).
Please clarify this
Esteban, personally I feel that Wikipedia is often relevant and can be a great resource or starting point for regular users. Users like it too, but that’s not the only reason to rank a site highly. graywolf complained about e.g. the Rubella page on Wikipedia and claimed it was inaccurate, but I’ve found plenty of instances where the Wikipedia page is more accurate than even an “official” page. For example, the Wikipedia list of Discworld books by Terry Pratchett is more accurate (in my experience) than the official publisher’s pages.
Personally, I know Wikipidea is far from accurate. I believe its been likened to a drug at the Pub who THINKS he/she knows everything.
Having said, there is no use shooting the messenger (Google) for frequently serving it up as a possible match. Google should not be held accountable for the accuracy of results it suggests. THAT WOULD BE BIG BROTHER.
Just to Recap
How To Recover From Google Paid Links Penalty
I hope this helps.
How ironic, one of the number places for bad information that gets you banned also tells you how to recover from their bad advice.
The single best way is prevention and NOT reading places like Spin who has a vested interest in SE spam.
Hi Matt,
Every time the penalized directory issue gets raised you seem to avoid the issue by bringing up something that you said a few months back, you have never said anything about any penalized directory. What me and a bunch of other penalized directory owners would like to know is what can we do to get our rankings back? I had paid links for my directory and I have now got rid of all of those and submitted a reconsideration request, I haven’t heard anything back – at least two high profile search blogs that were hit with PageRank penalties got their PageRank back within days of dropping their paid links. I am prepared to do whatever it takes to get my rankings back, just tell me what i need to do and I will do it.
Best Regards
David Eaves
I’ve been hit with the PageRank penalty, but I am not letting it get to me. I didn’t do anything wrong and if google wants to take a swipe at my creditability of my blog, because I recommend pay blogging programs (WITH nofollow links) then I am not going to let them change me.
Interesting link Harith , thanks !
Hey Matt, thanks for treating my first post like it did not exist.
This is one area we’re never going to agree, it seems. Can’t you see that Google telling web designers how to write content, rather than Google reacting to how web designers write content, is a sea change in attitude?
Previously, where Google gave advice, it was only advice on good, accessible, usable web design – the sort of advice that made sense in the absence of search engines. Now, in asking web designers to do things specifically because Google exists, and punishing them if they don’t, Google has explicitly started the process of crafting the Web in its own image. It’s … evil.
The key word there is “asking”. I don’t see anything wrong in asking websites to do this or that in order to gain free referrals from them.
All search engines have asked similar things in the past and continue to do so. There are specific meta tags now about how you can exclude the cache, and I think Yahoo even has something about how you can exclude certain parts of your content on a page, right?…. I’ve not looked in to it, so maybe I’m wrong there.
I just don’t see the big deal with this at all. The SEO industry should be friends, and work with, a site that gives them free referrals and not constantly try to be an adversary of that site. Nothing good can come of a relationship like that. The worse that can happen for a site who wants to be deceptive to it’s own visitors by not disclosing a paid link is that it stops getting referrals from google and all other major search engines. The best thing that can happen is a site gains the free referrals from all those major search engines because it’s not being deceptive to it’s real users.
I don’t see the prob.
The Google SERPs belong to Google and no site is guaranteed entry, especially those sites that blatantly violate the Google TOS. As a website owner, you can decide to do whatever you like with your site. Google is in the same boat. They are also a website owner and ultimately can do whatever they like with their site.
…
Do you wonder why your first post got ignored? You go around ripping Google to shreds on what is and always was a false premise, and in all likelihood you’re saying it because some 7-year-old posing as an adult decided to whine and complain when their PR(x) text links for sale BS quite rightly got cut off at the knees.
Google isn’t the Nazi party of the mid-1930s, and they’re not establishing a Third Reich. Find something else to complain about already, people.
You are REALLY trying to stir up the bees before pubcon…you just doubled the usual swarm. I’ll throw some elbows just to say hello if I can!!!
What do you think of the ads on Penny Arcade? They’re paid links that without rel=”nofollow”, but the site owners exercise editorial judgement and don’t accept ads for games they don’t like. These are paid links that pass PR, but the site owners hold them to the same editorial requirements that go into the links they write into their news posts.
Does Google consider this an acceptable practice? If so, how can the site owner notify you that they’ve enforced their standards of quality, and how can the site owner be sure that standard matches Google’s? If not, why does this example site have a display PageRank of 7?
(I realize you might not want to talk about a specific site without a request from that site’s owner, so please feel free to skip it — I’m not interested in this site beyond its use as an example of a highly-ranked site that makes editorial judgements of its paid links.)
Hi Doug
I addressed the difference between nofollowing paid links and all other things done purely because search engines exist in my first post:
Doug, I’d also point out that Google’s use of nofollow is not even what it was designed to be used for! It was designed to indicate a lack or uncertainty of trust in a link … not that a link had been paid for.
Multi-Worded Adam, you clearly don’t know me at all. But Matt does, and this is his blog, so I was writing to him … not you. Suffice to say you have completely misunderstood my intentions.
Matt,
You did an awesome job explaining this. Thanks for putting so much thought into it – maybe the point will get through! I think we all get tired of landing on junk blogs. The point is, the reason Google works is because it is user centric. Why do people work so hard to cheat it? It’s very frustrating that people don’t want to do their homework and do things well. Quick fixes don’t solve anything and these people are just making things more irritating for the rest of us. Thanks to Google for keeping a close eye on it.
Rebekah
Hi,
I read your post with interest this morning because several years ago I did exactly what you described. My mother had a brain tumour and the only way it could be dealt with was through stereotactic radiosurgery. She lives in Australia and was told her only option was to go to Johns Hopkins which was going to be very difficult financially, if not impossible. The search results quickly provided me with contact information for the International Stereotactic Radiosurgery Association. I contacted them and they provided me with information about a doctor in Sydney who was performing the surgery. To shorten a long story, she had the surgery and has been in good health for the last several years. So your example is a good one in that I did exactly what you described with very positive results.
I would have been very disappointed to have had to wade through a list of ridiculous posts to find the information I needed and may have given up before I found the people I needed to speak to.
Regards
Jeff
Alan is legit Adam… one of the few.
I still think he’s not looking at the totality of things however.
Google created a neat way for sites and google users to see what Google “may” think of a particular page. That neat way is called the toolbar green pixels. We all know now in hindsight that it was probably not the best of ideas, but we also know from past history that “anything” at all that major search engines try to give to webmasters/SEO’s is somehow abused along the way and made irrelevant eventually. We’ve seen it many, many times. …some much more than most depending how old they are to this industry.
YES: Google may have created the fiasco that now exists; meaning that the toolbar hyperbole is their own doing. NOW: Google needs to somehow fix things. The problem is that webmasters/SEO’s have used and abused it to the maximum possible in that many, many out there started buying and selling “pagerank” based on that silly toolbar. I’m not really sure if Google could have forseen the total and massive amount of abuse the bar would actually see, but nevertheless the abuse happened.
How to fix it?
Two options I can see:
1. Get rid of the Visible green pixel display.
2. Somehow Google can distinguish on their very own what links are paid and what links are not paid.
3. While trying their best to come up with a solution on their very own about how to distinguish paid and not paid, ASK webmasters/SEO’s to help them in the interim.
Those are the options as I see them.
Oh sure; Google created the toolbar, but Google did not ask for the total abuse of that toolbar by spammers. They got it though.
Isn’t this toolbar fiasco partly the responsibility of the SEO community as well? I think I’ve laid out the scene the best I can. I think it is mainly because this industry has also created the FUD of clearly and very out in the open, praising spammers and those who condone buying links under the radar, and other type spammers who are allowed to tout their wares at conferences, etc. WE have put those types into the very same industry as everyone else, right? Since this SEO industry has done that, and done so with no regrets whatsoever, I feel it’s OUR responsibility to help the major search engines weed out the spammers as well. We can do that by working with the major search engines and all the ideas they may have with spam prevention.
The nofollow tag is simply a good way to make that happen. Reporting spammers and those who clearly buy and sell links based on Google is another way as well.
I look at the big picture of things in this industry and not the very small details of he said she said back in the day that the nofollow was created for comment spam. BTW: I never thought that at all as we had a long discussion in the forums when it was created. We all agreed that Google should take the nofollow tag MUCH further than just for comment spam so eventually they have done so.
Google knows the SEO industry isn’t policing itself very well, and they also know they have to do something about the link stuff. What do they do? Do they simply allow things to happen with spammers and others abusing paid links? If they do that their SERP relevance goes down the tubes, and they may as well combine both adwords and organic as one thing as that is exactly what it would look like anyway. Not only that but they would see a flock of users start searching somewhere else because the serps would be greatly influenced by who has the most money to spend on “organic paid links”. Not only that, but why would anyone want to use Adwords for advertising anymore as they could simply buy up a bunch of deceptive text link ads and get free referrals from the organic results.
I really don’t see that the SEO community has left Google much of a choice, frankly.
Connie has summed up things nicely. I agree with all of his points in his post.
http://www.spam-whackers.com/blog/2007/12/02/is-google-evil/
Disclosure; He’s a mod in my forums.
Then you didn’t make them clear, and all you managed to do (assuming you’re on the level, and I’ll take Doug’s word that you are) is put yourself on the exact same level of those who whine with their own self-interests at heart.
This is actually symptomatic of a much deeper issue. Search engines create something, SEOs abuse the hell out of it. Search engines fix it, SEOs try to abuse again. Search engines fix it in a way that makes sense, SEOs get out the Wahhhhhhhhmbulance and Google is evil and let’s all get the pitchforks and lynch rope out.
The only reason why paid posts “hurt search engine results” is because Google hasn’t figured out a way to algorythmically filter them. This is Google’s problem, not webmasters’ or users. You base your algorythm on a fallacious inbound link structure and then cry foul when people use it to their advantage. Why should we always adhere by your rules because of your own weaknesses?
additionally you say: “The posts themselves don’t mention it, but entries like these often turn out to be what are known as “paid posts.” That is, someone paid money in order to receive a review, and the paid review includes a link with the word “radiosurgery,” for example. There’s no disclosure inside these entries whether these posts are paid, nor do the posts use the nofollow attribute or some other mechanism so that search engines aren’t affected.”
But Doctors don’t tell you that they are also being paid by pharmaceutical companies to choose one drug as opposed to another. Yeah, hey get cutbacks. So do the researchers that create these drugs. They hide side effects and potential hazards of taking particular drugs in their studies. So when a doctor suggests some drug to you it is not necessarily the right one to take, its only because they’re getting paid to prescribe it. So in a way these types of doctors are the real “black hats” in real life.
But hey, we can always look up in Wikipedia if we’ve been prescribed the worng thing. After all everyone contributing in wikipedia are proven experts in their field
oh and users “like” wikipedia results… they’re GRRRRRRRREAT! (cough, cough)
Doug, this is not just about SEOs or the links they create. This is about every link on the Web, including links on pages created many years ago. You make an assumption that every paid link is designed to game the search results. That’s not a valid assumption. Are paid links valid in the absence of search engines? Yes, they are, they existed before search engines – or at least before Google.
It’s really a bit rich for Google to build an algo on links, then complain about the way links are bought and sold, when links were bought and sold before Google even existed.
I hate spam as much as the next person … maybe more than most.
I really hate the spam that Matt pointed out above. But spammers like that are never going to use a nofollow tag, obviously. So who is nofollow really going to hurt? These people:
A) The people who use it when they don’t need to, because they don’t understand where and how it should be used
B) The people who use it as Google specifies, because that may affect their site’s performance in Yahoo, MSN or Ask
C) The people who use it as it was designed to be used, because that may affect their site’s performance in Google
D) The people who don’t use it where they should, maybe because they have never even heard of it, or maybe because they don’t understand where and how it should be used.
I understand your argument completely Alan, but again; what to do then?
You see; if an owner has a brick and mortar biz and decides he/she wants an internet presence as well, he builds a website. He then discovers he has to find a way to get people to visit his site. One way is to advertise. On TV. On radio. Buy links. Buy banner ads. Buy PPC listings. Get organic free referrals.
Because he/she eventually knows to do all of this, don’t you think he/she should learn as much as possible about the major search engines and about business on the internet in general? Sure they should. They didn’t suddenly decide to stick up that brick and mortar with no thought whatsoever ahead of time. They had to learn the ins and outs of creating a business for themselves. I don’t see why it’s different on the internet. I feel part of the responsibility of site owners should be to know what the hell the major sites are doing and when they are doing it, since those very same owners want those sites to give them free referrals.
I also think it’s the responsibility of the SEO industry to teach those same owners about the same things, as well as the responsibility of those sites who give out the free referrals to “teach”.
So who is not holding up their end of the bargain?
The SEO industry as a whole is NOT holding up their end as we continually give spammers a podium in EVERY way we can to tout their wares, and we continually allow those same people to do as they damn well please by claiming it’s the major search engines FULL responsibility to weed out the spam.
The site owner’s really are not holding up their end either. Claiming ignorance is not a good defense.
I know that Google and other major search engines invite certain SEO types to their headquarters to hash out things having to do with the SEO community, etc, but I’m not sure they are getting the good feedback they should be getting doing this. I know that some have other interests involved, etc, with advertising monies and partnership monies, and other types of stuff, so how much good feedback is a site like Google getting from this? I don’t really know.
I do know it’s clear that more feedback is greatly needed. Things need to change with Google AND with the SEO industry. After all; I know there are more players than just SEO’s, but our industry is the MAIN driving force behind ALL the search engine spam and all the praising and promotion we give to spammers and blackhats in general.
I just see the big picture. There is much more stuff than just the simple nofollow tag at stake with all of this.
2 things (1 that seems to have been missed)
1. The first example is on a Google blogspot blog. Google makes it very easy to write bad content and to monetize bad content (MFAC). Paid blogging is just another form of MFAC, paid up front instead of on the Adsense back end. I completely agree with other commenters that the issue is not one of the quality of the links but an issue of the quality of the content. In the examples provided the quality of the ‘links’ is actually very high. Those links point to exactly what they are supposed to point to (even the purposefully mis-speeled keywords
). That is a much better quality link than a link resting on the keyword ‘here’ as a contrast. The content is piss poor on that blogspot blog for certain and that is where the focus should be, which moves me into point 2.
2. Google has chosen a tactic of punishing those sites that would work in the Google ecosystem as opposed to rewarding them for better behavior. Google could choose a path whereby good behavior is rewarded as opposed to punishing bad behavior. In the free market this is usually done with free competition and it does not involve blocking trade from Google competitors (like if whatever company that owns the yellowpages, refused to place an ad for whatever company owns yellowbook – weak analogy but I just read over 250 comments). Google is not stepping forward to create a solution, they are working to block a solution created by their competitors trying to bridge the gap in Google’s own system. Instead of blasting sites that do not follow the nofollow requirements, Google could offer a customize search radial option that includes or excludes sites that do or do not use nofollow appropriately. Then if I performed a search on payperpost.com as an example and my google search was configured to exclude all the sites that have been reported or otherwise identified by google, I would see PayPerPost come up in position 1 (as they do not do paid posts on their own site) and I would not see TechCrunch come up in the number 2 slot (as TechCrunch does provide paid posts without the required nofollow tag).
As an internet searcher using Google, I could then verify for myself which version of the search results worked for me and which ones did not, and low and behold, Google would have an excellent working case to show whether or not their customers used this option, liked this option, did not like this option etc.
In blasting pagerank from sites that did not comply, Google showed that their motivation was to penalize sites for not complying. Google did not show that their intent was to improve search results. The former is an action and the second was all words (and after the fact at that). Google’s actions spoke much louder than words.
Lesson to World (so far)
We are more concerned about our power over content generators and managers (publishers and webmasters) than we are about search engine results.
To put it a different way, Google has acted on a hypothesis with actions that harmed many businesses (including a lot of local news websites for example) and they did not offer up any facts to support the case that the hypothesis had any validity.
The hypothesis also happens to be hidden in a utopian dream which has caught up a number of people would choose to make judgment calls for the rest of the world searching via Google. This aspect of things is basically nothing short of propaganda.
Who am I to say? This is my opinion only …
Google should do exactly as they are doing, but without requesting/demanding that people label paid links with nofollow. If Google wants to devalue a link because they believe it to be paid, that’s fine … but whats’ not fine IMO is treating or declaring all paid links as spam just because they are paid.
After all, most paid links aren’t labelled – certainly historic links aren’t labelled. Google should work out the value of a link that isn’t labelled (and even links that ARE labelled) on their own, just as they have to work out everything else on their own. And nofollow should mean what it was designed to mean: “I’m not sure that I trust this link – follow at your own risk”.
Oh boy Alan, I disagree with you totally on that.
You wrote:
“but whats’ not fine IMO is treating or declaring all paid links as spam just because they are paid.”
Google is not saying all paid links are spam at all IMO. They are saying that those links that are paid for should not be votes or recommendations to that linked to site as they are paid for. They should (in the very least) be disclosed in some way, right?
This all goes back to what is voted for and what is not voted for. Is the seoroundtable blog voting for those paid advertisers on the site? I don’t think so. How about the sphinn website? Is danny sullivan voting for those? Nope. I know that sphinn is using redirection for it’s paid links. I know that seorountable was not as of one week ago and was using very direct links. Is Barry voting for those advertisers? I hope not. LOL
You see; I feel that’s the biggest prob this industry has. We have no problems with taking money from firms we know damn well spam the search engines and try to trick them in every way. At the same time, we claim we are teaching others. How can that be?
I also realize that Google displays adwords and adsense ads to search engine spammers and allow them to tout their wares that way…. and on the other hand they do their very best to stop search engine spam. I see the sad irony of that as well. I also know Google is just now doing things on the adwords side they never did before; they are banning “text link ads” from showing up in adwords.
Look at the digitalpoint forums? That place is abusing Google in most every way they possibly can. Signature links are bought and sold. Adsense revenue is being shared Per page. Many other things are being taught at that place. Is that Google’s fault? Yeah, partially it is as they also sell ads to search engine spammers. The one department claims to not spam. The other department takes monies from those same firms they know darn well spams at every opportunity and loophole they can find.
So you see; it’s not one thing that will solve all of this. This is why I say that more feedback from more party’s needs to be given to Google and other major search engines, and not by those party’s who do one thing if it suits their pocketbook, and do the other thing if they are talking to a pure whitehat.
Alan; your last post sounds more like stuff I read from others in this industry. The reality is that this is much, much bigger than what to do with paid links.
I really feel the bigger responsibility is firmly on the SEO community and on the major search engines to figure this stuff out……equally. If we simply continue on with the adversarial tone that the SEO community is displaying out there right now………… and probably at PubCon as we speak, nothing will ever get resolved. We have to work together with this.
the thumb rule is-paid links are ALWAYS spam.
and here, I disagree with Alan Perkins.
@ Doug Heil
“If we simply continue on with the adversarial tone that the SEO community is displaying out there right now………… and probably at PubCon as we speak, nothing will ever get resolved. We have to work together with this.”
This tit for tat exchange goes both ways. The SEO community doesn’t have the power to bomb Google, and the SEO community did not use the power to bomb Google either.
Google took a punitive action. SEO’s are complaining.
But I do agree with you in that a better solution is needed.
A cease fire would be a nice place to start to re-establish trust.
Doug, in treating nofollow as it does, all Google has done is hand a tool for manipulating Pagerank to the SEO community. It has even promoted nofollow as such. This is a big mistake IMO …
Another big mistake is assuming that using nofollow to label paid links will somehow stop links being bought and sold for spamming. Nobody has said how Google’s approach to nofollow will stop the kind of spam Matt posted about above and, of course, it won’t. So why plough on with it?
The last time the SEO industry was given such a direct opportunity to influence the search results without doing anything for the benefit of users was the meta keywords tag circa 1997. Look how well that turned out.
I am not at all against Google finding and dealing with spam in its index. I am, however, totally against the use of nofollow as Google advocates, for all the reasons I have stated in this thread, namely:
1) Abuse of nofollow – it was not designed for paid links, and abusing HTML for your own purposes is not a good example for a search engine to set!
2) Sea change – suddenly we have to do things Google’s way, because Google exists, if we want to be sure of a good listing in Google. We’ve gone from “omission is OK” (don’t need to know Google works or even that Google exists) to “omission is not OK” (need to know how Google works). This can’t be a good precedent as, ultimately, the implication is that only sites produced with a knowledge of Google can do well in Google. I’ve always believed that search engines should strive for the opposite of that.
3) Side effects – nofollow creates a tool for channelling Pagerank; genuine spammers will not use nofollow how Google wants; and the innocent can suffer by using nofollow or by not using it.
I think the whole thing is a big mistake that, long term, will damage both Google’s reputation and the quality of Google’s index, and that’s why I’m so passionate about knocking it. :The reason I’m knocking it now is nothing to do with sites recently being penalised and everything to do with the fact that Matt posted about it now.
Alan makes some very good points about nofollow.
The opportunity for abuse of nofollow is pretty obvious.
If we look at a hyperlink and a keywords as two pieces of information,
and we look at the nofollow tag as another piece of information that potentially has the ability to negate the first 2 items, then Google is essentially asking webmasters to exercise tactics in disinformation to essentially deceive their own algorithm from making (their perceived) mistake of providing too much merit.
Alan hints at the power that would be transferred to webmasters, and I’d like to suggest an example of one form that that power might manifest.
A grey/black SEO strategist only needs to hire a bunch of PAC rim bloggers to write the same type of bogus article as provided in the example above. Those bloggers could then write some articles linking with nofollow and calling them out as sponsored and linking without nofollow on others and not calling them sponsored.
The blackhat issue there is that what is to stop them from placing the nofollow on a link that is not really sponsored and not placing the nofollow link on something that is?
That’s just one very basic example of how this GIGO solution could be used, there are many more complicated ways that can be applied to tactics that are out there already in other forms.
Google needs to focus on the quality of the writing and the context. That is the most important thing and the most difficult thing to buy.
one last thing, this use of nofollow not only damages Google’s search engine, but any search engine that looks for nofollow.
100,000 bloggers may not have the ability to legally challenge Google, but there are some other search engines out there that have deep pockets.
Yes; as with all things having to do with google and seo’s, all things can be manipulated. I guess this is why I have not focused on the nofollow aspect of the bigger picture at all in all my posts above. I simply see bigger implications of what is going on in the seo industry that have to do with google and other major engines. Google is simply trying to figure out what to do. I really believe the seo industry should also try to figure this out with them. I’m not writing that the use of nofollow is either good or bad or that google should even continue to use it, but I am writing about the greater problem this industry has as a whole. Nofollow is just a small subset of the overall greater issues we NEED to be dealing with.
Putting it this way; we either deal with things as a friend of the sources of free traffic,.. working together, or we deal with things as we currently are; as an enemy…….. saying stuff like “Google is evil” is certainly being an enemy. The blackhats can be the enemy to Google all they wish as I don’t give a rats ass, but others who truly care about the industry need to stand up and work with the major engines instead of promoting/praising people who only wish to work against them.
Hi Matt,
Thanks for taking the time to chat. I think it is awesome that Google has someone willing to step up and debate and participate in this discussion, and not be just a faceless company going for the dollar.
Personally, I think webmasters should be able to pass page rank, whether they have been paid for the link or not. I think the issue should always be relevance.
If the link is relevant to the users of the site linking out they should be able to pass page rank. I would just say, the more cynically you deal with the general web community, the more cynically they will behave.
As an insurance underwriter by trade I would say most people, most of the time, are doing the “right” thing. Which in this discussion would be “not” passing page rank for spam. Because that is what it should about, right? Cutting out spam..
Have we defined spam? No seriously. Have we?
http://www.sponsoredreviews.com/advertisers.asp
That’s just one problem we have to deal with. How do we deal with this? There is nothing wrong with bloggers writing reviews and buyers buying advertising on those blogs. Nothing wrong with that at all.
What is very wrong is that they all advertise their services based on the search engines for the most part. That’s wrong. They don’t even state that the blogger needs to actually use the product they are writing about…. just write a damn review. That is bad.
Along with all of that, we have people who I actually respect who take money from sites like that. Namely Andy Beal in this case. He is displaying the ad prominently on his front page:
http://www.marketingpilgrim.com
I’m very sure many other “prominent” SEO folks also take money from this same firm. Not good. Very sad.
How does our industry deal with the bigger issues if people who actually have a big voice are the majority of the problem?
How does our industry deal with the bigger issues with Google if Google has a big voice and are taking money for adwords from the very same sites?
BTW: I could have stuck in any number of SEO’s out there as many of them sell advertising to firms who love to manipulate search engine rankings… another one is Danny Sullivan. Another one is Incisive Media who owns search engine watch. They all sell to blackhats. Google sells to blackhats.
How can anything be taught about really anything at all when the industry is truly focused on how much money they can make? And yes; I know the argument is, it’s all about free speech. When did free speech come into play? I thought each website could sell advertising to whoever it wants, or reject advertising money from whoever it wants? That’s what I call free speech. It just seems like the blackhats are allowed to advertise on any damn site they choose to. That’s just wrong. How can this industry deal with something as small as a nofollow tag when we all cannot deal with the bigger picture?
This stuff is not the FULL responsibility of Google. No one can tell me otherwise.
About the only time paid advertising will cause the site to get into hot water with Google is when they ARE selling links based on PageRank. In all other cases the paid links (if identified) are likely discounted.
Alan, things frequently start for one reason and continue for another. It’s normally called “progress”
I think we can ALL claim that Matt hasn’t answered a question from a poster at one-time or another. I highly doubt it is personal and more likely the fact Matt is only human.
However, I do feel Matt spends WAY too much time helping SE spammers when all they continue to do is seek out ‘other’ ways to spam SE based on his good intentioned advice.
I would like to see ZERO tolerance and NO communication with SE spammers. They KNOW what they are doing wrong and come here to find out what Google knows, so they can leave their other tricks in place.
When we discuss how PageRank comes from the original concept of academic citation, one thing that has to be kept in mind is that most academic papers, particularly in the sciences, are bought and sold.
Drug research? Funded by companies and the government.
Physics research? Often funded by defense contractors and the government.
Student tuition isn’t magically paying for people to write academic papers, perform scientific studies, and otherwise enrich the world. Any major research institution’s top researchers are constantly writing grant requests and chasing the almighty dollar to fund their activities.
This financial chase often creates conflicts of interest.
To claim that links can be pure is just not realistic. Very few things are pure. Funding drives most endeavors, including research and religion and internet marketing.
Now what if the said blog setup an Adwords account with Google and advertise on the keyword ‘radiosurgery’? Will Google Adwords team check on the blog content in details before they show the ads? Barely. It feels like parent asking kids not to smoke while lighting up another cigarette don’t you think?
Just because Google is the bigger player now doesn’t make Google a god and decide what’s right and wrong.
I never expect a reply, nor think I have a right to a reply. I was just pointing out I had not had one.
I know Matt pretty well outside of this blog, and we agree with each other on nearly everything, so I’m sure he will have understood my intentions rather better than most here.
Reasons I don’t reply to some posts include:
1) I fully agree, and the poster does not need my endorsement
2) The poster is not worth the effort
3) I’ve already said everything I want to say
4) I don’t have the time/energy
I was wondering which one of those Matt applied to my post.
If it seemed like I was annoyed, I wasn’t. I do care though, very much, about the quality of the search results and how they are obtained. I think I was the first person to talk about spam leading/equating to deceptive advertising in search results, and I haven’t changed my position on it. I don’t like it. That doesn’t change the fact that I completely disagree with Google’s attitude to paid links, for all the reasons I have stated in this thread.
I keep coming back to this thread to read the latest comments. There’s a lot of interesting stuff here.
I do a lot of “long tail”-type searches when looking for information, and sometimes I forget how much work is going in at Google’s end to keep them clean. At times I’ll remember, “Oh yes – these listings used to be full of [a particular variety] of spammy, junky stuff and… I didn’t notice when it happened, but it’s gone.” As Multi-Worded Adam says, SEO’s will continue to find something else to exploit to get that stuff back in, and sometimes they succeed in a big, ugly way, but Google’s doing an admirable job with spam control.
I accept Matt’s explanation that sites that look like they rank well because of paid links may in fact be achieving that ranking by other means, their paid links having been duly discounted. (At risk of “outing” somebody, Google “Orion Foundry (US), Inc.” – some of those sites rank phenomenally well and, while I believe it isn’t due to paid links, I am skeptical that any of those sites have appreciable natural links.) I think the frustration from white hatters is that sometimes it’s “obvious” that whatever means a site is using to rank, they’re not legitimate. The gray and black hat crowd? When they see what appears to be an “obvious” manipulation of Google’s SERPs, they’re mostly angry that they haven’t figured out the secret.
(I put “obvious” in quotation marks because, well, sometimes appearances are deceiving.)
If I were in the business of buying links, I would probably be grumbling that Google’s policies had caused me to waste money. If I were in the business of selling links, or of SEM consisting of finding places to buy links for my clients, I might be grumbling about how Google’s policies are killing my profits and thus requiring me to change my business model. I don’t do either, but I still find this discussion fascinating.
I’m sure right now it’s #4 for him.
That pubcon thang is going on right now.
Dave; Google will not stop communicating with blackhats unless our industry stops first. I don’t see that happening as toooo many have vested interests in empowering the blackhats until eternity. Too many are deep into the pockets of blackhats,…. including Google. Sad but very true.
You can read all the blogs and conference agenda sessions to see what I mean. Blackhats by droves attend those things and are asked to advertise, etc. Blackhat techniques must be very acceptable to our industry, otherwise we wouldn’t be allowing any of this to occur, but it does occur so their business practices must be acceptable to our industry, and to Google, and specifically, to the owners of these conferences and those who organize them, and to all those so-called whitehats who accept blackhat techniques as an acceptable business practice as well. After all; why else do these whitehats praise, recommend, promote, and accept monies from these blackhats? Hyp