Text links and PageRank
In an earlier post I said that “The best links are not paid, or exchanged after out-of-the-blue emails–the best links are earned and given by choice.” Given the recent discussions of paid links, I wanted to talk about this issue in more depth.
SEO geeks may remember the SearchKing lawsuit regarding link selling that was filed in 2002 and dismissed in 2003. Or they may have read through our quality guidelines, especially the part that says “Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank.” Those people can probably guess that Google does consider buying text links for PageRank purposes to be outside our quality guidelines.
But for everyone else, let me talk about why we consider it outside our guidelines to get PageRank via buying links. Google (and pretty much every other major search engine) uses hyperlinks to help determine reputation. Links are usually editorial votes given by choice, and link-based analysis has greatly improved the quality of web search. Selling links muddies the quality of link-based reputation and makes it harder for many search engines (not just Google) to return relevant results. When the Berkeley college newspaper has six online gambling links (three casinos, two for poker, and one bingo) on its front page, it’s harder for search engines to know which links can be trusted.
At this point, someone usually asks me: “But can’t you just not count the bad links? On the dailycal.org, I see the words ‘Sponsored Resources’. Can’t search engines detect paid links?” Yes, Google has a variety of algorithmic methods of detecting such links, and they work pretty well. But these links make it harder for Google (and other search engines) to determine how much to trust each link. A lot of effort is expended that could be otherwise be spent on improving core quality (relevance, coverage, freshness, etc.). And you can imagine how the people trying to get link popularity have responded. Someone forwarded me an email from a “text link broker” that included this suggestion:
Most people use words like, SPONSORS, PARTNERS, FEATURED, ADVERTISERS, ADS and other synonymous terms related to advertisers. Our suggestion is to use ‘different’ titles for these ads. Something like RELATED SITES, COOL SITES, RESOURCES, ALTERNATIVE LINKS and so on.
The email later suggests “to use unique locations for ad links like within content.” At the point where people are recommending ways to make paid links less detectable (e.g. by removing any labels or indication that the links are sold), I wouldn’t be surprised if search engines begin to take stronger action against link buying in the near future.
A natural question is: what is Google’s current approach to link buying? Of course our link-weighting algorithms are the first line of defense, but it’s difficult to catch every problem case in adversarial information retrieval, so we also look for problems and leaks in different semi-automatic ways. Reputable sites that sell links won’t have their search engine rankings or PageRank penalized–a search for [daily cal] would still return dailycal.org. However, link-selling sites can lose their ability to give reputation (e.g. PageRank and anchortext).
What if a site wants to buy links purely for visitor click traffic, to build buzz, or to support another site? In that situation, I would use the rel=”nofollow” attribute. The nofollow tag allows a site to add a link that abstains from being an editorial vote. Using nofollow is a safe way to buy links, because it’s a machine-readable way to specify that a link doesn’t have to be counted as a vote by a search engine.
Jason Duke Said,
September 2, 2005 @ 1:22 am
Matt, do you think it is within or beyond your/Google’s business &/or moral duty to police how advertising is bought and sold ?
I ask because I understand the problem text link advertising can cause a search engine but do believe that it is that same business model that has allowed G to become such a commercial success story. I know there are subtle differences but ultimately G’s business model is to provide a service and sell text link advertising to deliver eyeballs to advertisers.#
To me it seems slightly cynical that G climbs a long hard ladder to the pinnacle of internet success but then trys to pull the ladder up behind them “advising” others that TLA in its current form is not the right way to monetise a site.
Anyway, thanks for a great post. Your blog really is a breath of fresh air and I for one want to thank you for spending your time writing it and also for writing it as a real person, with a real name and no “Faux Nom”
Chris_D Said,
September 2, 2005 @ 1:33 am
The Google conundrum is that although Google doesn’t count it’s own paid advertising text links for anchor/ inbound link benefit in its algorithmic results - Google does count everyone elses text advertising links…. and they affect the algorithmic results.
In my opinion - that’s the flaw in the model…..
Sebastien Billard Said,
September 2, 2005 @ 1:54 am
Hi Matt, but what if a website buy tons of links from a multitude of little and medium non-related websites ? This links will probably be counted and the buyers won’t suffer from a semi-automatic penalty as its popularity emanates from many sources instead instead of a few big ones…
TallTroll Said,
September 2, 2005 @ 2:53 am
Matt, the professionals don’t care a lot about PageRank, and you know it. We want the anchor text, (preferably from an on-topic source), because the SEs, not just Google, have made it obvious that they value it. You have therefore set your own trap.
>> Selling links muddies the quality of link-based reputation and makes it harder for many search engines (not just Google) to return relevant results.
Selling links (selling anything with percieved value, in fact) is human nature. If your algorithm can’t cope with human nature, you have problems (can you say “AltaVista”?). Essentially, you are trying to stamp out link selling through automated, sytemic methods. How pointless. In the fairly unlikely event that you succeed, what do you think is going to happen next? All the blackhats hang up the auto-gen script and go become IT teachers? Or they come up with a method thet it’ll take you another 5 years to cotton on to and crack?
You shouldn’t be aiming for total success, since it 1) implies the possibility of total failure, and 2) Success is self-defeating. I’ve already seen a method that has the potential to wipe out “standard” link spam as my favourite Google gaming technique.
You (and indeed all SEs) should be aiming for a nice, dynamic equilibrium. Link spam will happen for as long as links are a part of the ranking algorithm. Get used to the idea, and think about how to manage it. I also find it a shade distasteful that Google, who had more than a little to do with the birth of the text link industry when you introduced the Toolbar PR meter, is now trying to kill it off. It feels like I’m watching someone throttle their own kids
>> When the Berkeley college newspaper has six online gambling links (three casinos, two for poker, and one bingo) on its front page, it’s harder for search engines to know which links can be trusted.
Fair point. But what do you do when an authorititive travel site places paid links for another travel site on its pages? Are those links less trustworthy simply because they were paid for? Does that imply that Google sees all advertising as inherently untrustworthy? If so are you going to drop AdWords ? And don’t tell me it’s “clearly marked”; most surfers don’t realise that it is even possible to buy ads on a SERP, let alone have the ability to identify it, and you know that too
Possibly those links should be “worth” less; but if the content the links points at is useful to the travel seeking surfer at the site, why shouldn’t they get the full benefit? What is it about that arrangement that so sullies your index? Why is that morally any different to me linking to my mates sites? Even though I know they are rubbish?
I really think you’re on the wrong track here, chasing the impossible dream
Gilad Said,
September 2, 2005 @ 4:17 am
Some Authority sites make a living out of selling advertisements (e.g. Internet Yellow Pages, Price Comparison, News, Content portals, Niche Directories like hotel guides etc.).
Flash ads, Jpeg ads, Net Sky-Scrapers – Their main purpose is to create brand exposure and pass traffic, I can’t see why Text ads should be different in the SE eyes.
An advertiser buys web presence in order to gain users coming into his site, if this helps in getting better ranks – in many cases its just a byproduct, not the main issue. Most site operators don’t know the rel=”nofollow” and it’s not really a Consensus yet.
Maybe you just need to focus on the relevancy of the Linking page/media so you could determine that dailycal got very little to do with poker, or is it?
Many of the ad-systems don’t “pass PR” because of tracking reasons but this is another story.
Ramon Antonio Parada Said,
September 2, 2005 @ 4:43 am
I’m lately detecting that rel=”nofollow” links becomes in a penalization of liked sites. That would be fine if people uses it with blackhat spammers.
But now it’s also being used by many websites to increase their PageRank adding this attribute to any external link, so all puntuation they recieve from incoming links is distributed inside the domain. That’s for example the case of all non-english Wikipedias.
Graywolf Said,
September 2, 2005 @ 5:30 am
If you are a company and you pay for a celebrity endorsement you are borrowing/renting some of the respect that celebrity has earned. When Michael Jordan advertised for Hanes underwear did he carry a big sign saying “Hey I really don’t trust a word Hanes says about it’s underwear”? Should Hanes have been forced to tolerate such behavior? So why on earth should online advertisers be forced to undergo that level of denigration.
Alan Perkins Said,
September 2, 2005 @ 6:03 am
Hi Matt
Wasn’t the problem with SearchKing selling PageRank - not selling links per se? As others have noted elsewhere, selling links pre-dates Google. PageRank was not SearchKing’s to sell - but links were.
rel=nofollow was invented to prevent trackback spam, not provide a means to identify paid links. They are not quite the same thing! Using rel=nofollow may help but it could also hinder:
1) It relies on the ad channel’s honesty
2) It relies on the ad channel’s knowledge
The greater issue is the ad channel’s knowledge. An ad channel should not have to know that search engines exist in order to sell links. For advertisers to use rel=nofollow for this purpose implies that they are doing something purely because search engines exist. Those occasions should be few and far between.
One solution might lie in a means for labelling links as advertisements (using a method similar to, but not identical to, rel=nofollow). This could end up being a natural outcome of things like the FTC investigations into deceptive online advertising. However, in practice I don’t think such as solution is viable. Defining e-commerce as “an electronic exchange of value”, i.e. not necessarily monetary, virtually any link might be said to be commercial in nature to some extent. With that in mind, I think Google (and other SEs) need to adapt their algorithms to cope with the fact that many links are commercial in nature and not labelled as such, and that will continue to be the case whether or not money actually changes hands.
Jon Henshaw Said,
September 2, 2005 @ 6:41 am
I understand the example between poker sites and a reputable website, but the main difference there is that they’re unrelated to each other. What about related websites? Would it be okay for a website to sell a link on their website to another website, if they deemed the other website to be both related and a good online resource? In other words, if it’s in the same genre, and good editorial scrutiny is taken, wouldn’t it then be more acceptable in regards to Google’s policy/approach to “sell” a link? Or is that still evil and diluting?
Matt Said,
September 2, 2005 @ 7:55 am
Jason, I’m just trying to get communicate how Google views this issue, and more importantly, why we feel that way. Sebastien, one thing that Google and probably most search engines have developed is the ability to look at site-level linkage. So buying a ton of links from a lot of smaller sites can stand out even more than buying a link from a well-known site.
seomike Said,
September 2, 2005 @ 8:16 am
So what you are saying is Google links to theses sites here http://www.google.com/press/awards.html
These sites (most of them sell text links) like search engine watch. That fuels the PR boosts to sites like seoinc, zunch, bruce clay etc.
So in a sense Google is helping to spam Google, by pushing out PR 8-9 links to big sites that in turn benefit from your PR and then sell it to other sites.
Nice….
Paul Said,
September 2, 2005 @ 8:29 am
Matt, great post.
Do you think you can give a little insight on how Google plays a role when a banned site links to another site (one way) without recips.
For example, lets say a good clean quality site has 10 great URL’s pointing to it. The original site doesn’t link back to any of those 10 sites back. Now lets say 1 out of those 10 sites linking to the site gets banned. Should a webmaster be concerned that a banned site is now pointing to a site even though the site it links to has great quality content, and 9 other great links pointing to it. Is there a penalty that is likely to be placed on the site that doesn’t recip back?
Thanks for your comments!
lots0 Said,
September 2, 2005 @ 8:35 am
Matt, I will believe that google can detect paid links when I see the paid link brokers go down… Without all the collateral damage to innocent sites that google is so famous for.
I remember the searchscum incident, first time I had site banned from google for something someone else did. You’ll note I said “The first time”…
Matt Said,
September 2, 2005 @ 9:00 am
Alan, we agree about just about everything in SEO, esp. that most of the right choices in SEO come from asking “What’s the best thing for the user?” But back in late 2004 when I was talking about nofollow just within Google, I wanted it to be a general way to abstain from voting with links. It’s true that nofollow got a lot of initial traction because of blog comment spam, but I think of it as a nice and really general mechanism to abstain from voting with a link. So I do think it’s fine to use nofollow on paid links. Another good use would be on b2evolution referrer pages, for example.
Jon, you ask a good question: does it matter if the paid links are between related sites? I think for Google, the litmus test is going to have to be whether the links were paid for somehow. There was an interesting SIGCHI paper a while ago that talked about reputation and trust, I think specifically pertaining to websites. One of the top ways for someone to trust a website was for a friend to recommend it. Would that recommendation create as much trust if you later found out the friend was paid to recommend a website, even if the friend also liked the website or thought it was related? I’m guessing most people still wouldn’t trust the site as much.
lots0, someday I’d really like to hear what you have to say about SK. Of course I remember your nick from back then. It had an extra word on the end back then, I think?
JD Said,
September 2, 2005 @ 9:13 am
Has rel=nofollow really been successful?
I’ve used it on occasion in certain software, but was always frustrated because good links would get the nofollow also, but the bad links made me remove it from all of them. What a shame.
Just seems to me the black hats have ruined the system and the worthy sites are getting screwed and G has to expend a lot of energy to fight these jerks that have ruined the internet.
Alan Perkins Said,
September 2, 2005 @ 9:25 am
>> I think of [nofollow] as a nice and really general mechanism to abstain from voting with a link
But if an advertising channel WANTS to vote for its advertisers with a link - e.g. it has researched its advertisers and is happy to be “associated with their neighbourhoods” - then should that channel (IYO) still use a nofollow because that would help Google? You see what I’m driving at. I think getting people to “help” you make your algorithm to work better is a slippery slope. Almost everything should be done for a better purpose then “Because Google exists”.
Jon Henshaw Said,
September 2, 2005 @ 9:29 am
Matt, thanks for responding. I recently did what I was asking on one of my very trusted websites. However, after reading your post and response, I think I’ll remove it completely. I really appreciate the information and advice. I definitely want to stay in good standing with Google, and I really appreciate the traffic generated by your awesome SE.
Andi Said,
September 2, 2005 @ 9:31 am
I think it’s time that Google realizes that the value of inbound links has reached maturity (mostly because of the commerce in them) and must be replaced (not modified).
Or perhaps there are a few grad students somewhere working on this replacement and are engineering the next “Google.”
I think a new broom sweeps cleaner.
A Little Guy Said,
September 2, 2005 @ 9:51 am
Once again Google shows that it truly believes in what it says, and is willing to act on that belief regardless of popular opinion. By removing paid link-spam from their ranking, Google is once again allowing the little guy to compete with big corporations on a level playing field. The big corps of the world may have the $$$ to buy their way to the top with paid link-spam (oh, all of you stop hollering…that’s EXACTLY what it is and you know it), but everyone gets to compete in the SERPS based on their c-o-n-t-e-n-t.
I applaud Google for this action and I assure you that those who are whining now would be singing a very different tune if the W-marts, etc. of the world were allowed to buy their way to the top.
T$ Said,
September 2, 2005 @ 10:15 am
I find it difficult to understand how Google can give thought of penalizing the actual link SELLERS. Buying text links is a legitimate form of advertising and getting visitors to your site. It’s been going on as long as Internet Advertising was born. Whether or not Google has determined that link buying/selling’s biproduct is taking advantage and control of their algorithm is not anyone’s problem but Google’s. What about the 75% of websites who aren’t even aware that their text links are helping SERPs, and simply selling links to put bread on the table?
If link buying is considered SPAM, then it’s time for the Engines to determine another source of relevancy.
Matt Said,
September 2, 2005 @ 10:16 am
Andi, that is a very insightful comment. Links are also tough for small mom-and-pop companies. http://www.theteakpatio.com/ is a small, local business (it’s next to a local Fry’s), but almost no one links to it.
Jason Duke Said,
September 2, 2005 @ 10:34 am
But I have a sneaking feeling that theteakpatio could well now rank for search related terms. As they don’t actually operate in that business area and will probably get non converting traffic from search referalls do you think it would be wrong for them to sell advertising to search related businesses to offset their costs?
David Said,
September 2, 2005 @ 10:46 am
I have some concerns about the basic power relationship between search engines and content publishers.
We’re in a situation where we don’t really know what SEs do with sites, yet they’re able to sit as judge, jury and executioner, for global information. At the same time, SEs are nothing without our content.
Just how much do they respect this authority?… Does it appear to count for much if a SE makes a rash decision? I’d say no.
Some of the best sites won’t have many inbound links. I wonder if these are given a fair chance.
PhilC Said,
September 2, 2005 @ 11:59 am
Will you try to get this straight, Matt. Search engines are not the Web, and they never will be the Web. They are a tool for finding places on the Web - like signposts in a city - and that is all they are, and it is all they will ever be, unless they expand into different fields. But, as search engines, they don’t have any say in the workings of the Web, and it is not for them to even attempt teach webmasters how to link and how not to link.
Before Google came along and based their rankings on links, the Web worked perfectly well with paid textlink ads, off-topic ads, etc., and it still works perfectly well that way. It may not work perfectly well for Google, but that’s your porblem, and you should look for solutions internally. Google chose to use links for rankings - nobody forced them. So either sort it out internally, or change the way you produce your rankings.
I know there are a few people who are happy to help Google do what they can’t do themselves, but the Web’s population as a whole isn’t the slightest bit interested in making things better for Google - you aren’t paying anyone to help, so why should anyone care?
People as a whole aren’t interested in what is an “editorial vote” and what is not, so the rel=nofollow attribute is not the way to do things. The attribute may be useful for some people in some circumstances, but it should never be used for the purpose of helping the search engines. So for goodness sakes, stop trying to tell webmasters that they should do things to suit Google. It’s none of Google’s business how websites link to websites. It’s only Google’s business how Google deals with various links.
Matt Said,
September 2, 2005 @ 12:00 pm
T$, if you go back to the example in my post, dailycal.org won’t be penalized in its rankings–it will still show up for a search like [daily cal]. But when dailycal.org is selling links to casinos or other link buyers, we prefer not to trust those links.
David, we do our best to avoid rash decisions. All I think about all day long at work is how to improve Google’s quality. Many people here think a lot about how to try to rank smaller sites (the ones most likely to have fewer links) fairly.
Jim Sorensen Said,
September 2, 2005 @ 12:10 pm
I know of several startups who specialize on creating a MARKETPLACE for buying/selling links, with a promise of boosting the pagerank. Google is simply becoming too arrogant. I think those startups are actually rendering a socially useful service- they are undermining the looming Google’s internet monopoly.
detlev Said,
September 2, 2005 @ 1:23 pm
Hello everyone,
What incentive is there for a webmaster to implement nofollow exactly? To abstain from voting? To thwart blog spammers? Are blog spammers really going to adapt their agents to avoid nofollow blogs? Not exactly. Abstain from voting is a weak reason to add nofollow. We’re lazy types who would rather not peck the keys with it.
Remember Meta keywords worked great with Infoseek? Stuffing keywords nearly killed the notion of keywords forever. They are only now making a limited comeback. Links are not much of a different story.
Sure, links are a great reference by a third party. A “vote” of confidence if you will. Spammers do with links now what they did to keywords though. As the currency for today’s rankings, links drive a black market that link brokers address. This is purely a side-effect of the search engine business. A Google query for [link expert] has a sponsored listing for:
Free Link Exchange
Trade links with 125,000+ members.
Increases your sales & traffic. Aff
http://www.trafficswarm.com
Today’s Web linking is spoiled by commercial noise. Links were never an infallible idea. Google got lucky in the short time when it worked great for calculating relevancy. Hats off. Google doesn’t rely on links as heavily as it once did. Still, the [failure] GoogleBomb works pretty well on Google. It also works on Yahoo! and MSN, who’ve made links important in reaction to Google’s dominance.
Links make up a part of the algorithm. Links have become “normalized” in algorithms, like everything else. Like keywords, links can no longer be easily trusted by search engines. Now quality sites and their commercialized links come into question. Must make TBL shake his head in dismay.
Take care,
-detlev
Tom Said,
September 2, 2005 @ 1:28 pm
Google at the end of the day is just another website, monetising their virtual real estate as almost all other websites do. To make decisions about how other websites rank is the prerogative of Google within their own database and subsequently SERPS - no one can tell Google different but by the same token, Google should not tell others either…
The incumbent problem we all now face is - what is ‘quality’? Google determines quality by their own measurements but, making these measurement points known ‘publicly’ (either by threads like this) or ‘privately’ (from reverse engineering and deduction) has led us to where we are now.
This ‘quality’ is a subjective measurement arbitrarily shaped by Google. It is ironic that Google’s mission is to provide relevant results to the user (i.e. what the user wants) and yet the presumption is constantly being made by Google as to what the user wants.
Has anybody asked the user?
Current SE algorithms are too biased on the structure of the net - the Intranet of the Internet if you will. This is akin to paying too much attention to syntax and not enough on semantics.
The next generation of SE’s (which I’m sure Google will be part of - well it had better be as I specialise in Adwords!) has to integrate feedback from the searchers themselves as to what constitutes a good or bad site.
Naturally this will have it’s own technical challenges to filter out any automated ‘voting’ system. (I for one am not having a transponder inserted or biometric identification required to give feedback!)
It is obvious that the most important sales referral tool offline - word of mouth - has to have a corollary online. This is the natural order that SE’s need mimick.
The implementation of this feedback loop is the challenge, it’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when.
A stimulus to this (could be an interesting one this) could be the “I’m feeling lucky” button - why not use this to randomly pull a site from the SERP results and ask the searcher what it is like?
“I’m Feeling Lucky” isn’t the same as “I want the #1 listing on Google thanks”.
A “new broom” as mentioned above, but keeping the sweeper employed and directing the brush - as it should be.
Tom Said,
September 2, 2005 @ 1:50 pm
Indeed, isn’t the net a wonderful thing - the following link to the WOMMA blog is great food for thought on the above:
http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/
All the best,
Tom
Beth Abernathy Said,
September 2, 2005 @ 2:18 pm
Hi There - I would like to apologize in advance for my post here. It is Friday and my puppy tore up my new couch and I have to work all weekend. With that said, I am a bit cranky, so here goes.. When you state “our quality guidelines, especially the part that says “Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank”
I have seen no real evidence, in my market place, where Google has been able to evaluate any sort of link or derank a site that is participating in these sorts of schemes. Can you please tell me why a website that has paid a company alot of money to set up, like you say, a “link scheme designed to increase…” lists # 1 and # 2 on Google because they have 2500 + sites linking to them and they are linking back. For example can you please explain how a real estate website relates to a Porn website or a website in the Automotive Industry?
If you do a search on Google for “lake tahoe real estate” and do any sort of link analysis on the sites that list out on the first page. You will see that these sites, plain and simple, either have lots of links (don’t matter what kind as I have studied each sites links to death) or lot of links / pages going into their website.
If you do a search for “incline village real estate” those top 3 or 4 sites are all participating in reciprocal link schemes, like I mentioned above and they have paid for the service.
In addition, when you go a step further and then say, well lets look at the on page factors of the top ranking sites and you see things like, none of the search terms are in the metatags, eccessive java script on the page, no anchor link text, no content that contains the terms, well then you are just … BROKEN.
Please accept my apology I added at the beginning of my slight temper tantrum. It is just so damn beautiful up here and I am stuck here buying, selling, trading and doing everything else I can to GET MORE LINKS!! I would just like to go outside and relax, but my clients are paying me alot of money to keep them listing well on your search engine and unfortunately, until this mess is fixed up, their relevant, nice looking, orderly websites will need more links. Thanks.
Chad Said,
September 2, 2005 @ 2:21 pm
Matt, interesting post. In my opinion Google has the right to do what they want as does the webmaster. If the webmaster wants to pay someone to link to them that is their choice. If a webmaster wants to link directly to another site for money, this is also their choice. If Google does not want to count these links or decides to ban these sites this is Google’s choice. I believe Google not counting paid links is fair but difficult to do in the real world without a large number of editors. I think the act of banning or severely penalizing sites is wrong almost all of the time as I know of some bigger name legitimate businesses that are penalized in Google to only rank for their name. What they have done is unclear but simply not counting whatever manipulation Google thinks occurred would definitely be better then hurting these people’s business and livelihood.
On another note, could you please discuss reciprocal linking and what Google is doing to discount this. Right now sites that do reciprocal linking are dominating the serps that I watch.
DaveN Said,
September 2, 2005 @ 3:36 pm
we prefer not to trust those links.
Matt just say it the way i see.. you sell you soul you burn in hell.
when you dance with the devil you ALWAYS get burnt, just don’t bitch when you do.
DaveN
randfish Said,
September 2, 2005 @ 4:05 pm
Matt, my guess is that over time, the principles of captialism and a free society will actually help whether you measure paid links or not. THe prices of links are (or should be) based on how much they help contribute to rankings, so if you can afford text links, it means you’re doing something right and if you can continue in the long run to pay for them, you’re making a good ROI. Those companies and sites with the best ROI will more than likely have the best usability, promotions, value, etc. and will therefore win in the long run no matter whether paid links are measured.
If the web was meant to be non-commercial, I would agree with you entirely - no one should buy links, and no one should sell them. But that just isn’t the case, and one of the companies profiting most from the web is your own. It would seem un-gentlemanly to suggest that while Google is free to profit from paid links (AdSense), other websites do not have that luxury. We both know that very few people will pay for links with nofollow and therefore link sellers won’t adopt it.
It’s always better to play into the market’s greed and human nature rather than attempt to fight it. Creative solutions abound and I have faith that your boys at the ‘plex will come up with something. But recommending that people not but link advertising can’t produce a good result; it can only foster indignation and resentment (along with accusations of hypocrisy, and malevolence). Let’s start the search for another solution.
hushpuppy Said,
September 2, 2005 @ 5:32 pm
ridiculous post - sorry! it is impossible for any search engine to detect if a link is sold or not. you just have to follow some easy facts. it is really funny that some peeps at google claim things which are impossible. imho google is stiil stupid as bread.
btw. selling links has to be considered as an absolutely normal step in every modern online-marketing-campaign which aims to get search engine traffic…
Anon Said,
September 2, 2005 @ 8:47 pm
Matt, this is the type of arrogant thinking that loses so much credibiliity Google has with the rest of the web. It doesn’t even cross your mind that it may be Google that’s wrong here, not the rest of the world. As others have mentioned, people have been buying and selling advertising on websites since before Google was a twinkle in Larry and Sergey’s eyes. How do you propose to determine what ads are paid and what aren’t? Sure, sometimes it’s obvious, but the can of worms is going to be when Google acts on this in a big way it’s going to be the blackhats who will rise to the top. They’ll be the ones who will be able to trick you, as they always have. Your hit is going to be on the websites who buy and sell ads with no thought to whether Google likes it or not.
If Google’s going to crack down on link selling, I propose you start at the top. Yahoo! and Business.com for example, have made it their business of selling links. Sure, some of those links in those two directories and others like them were given out of merit but a great deal of them are bought. And, I’ve seen some very spammy links in both directories, sites that really aren’t worthy of mention other than the fact that the owners came up with the listing fee. So, there you are, put your money where your mouth is, don’t start by crushing the little guys, go for the biggies right out of the gate.
Joe Said,
September 2, 2005 @ 10:21 pm
A few interesting points have come up here, one of which is the idea of “off-topic” links. Until Adsense, this idea of “off-topic” links (or advertising) would have made a professional advertiser pee his or her old-fashioned brick&mortar pants laughing. Professional advertiser know (and have known for a long long time) about “market segments” - their psychology, their demographics, etc. It’s a HUGE, HUGE part of advertising (save for Adsense), and always will be.
Let’s say I had a site directed at helping college students. I know my visitors are normally between the ages of 18 and 26. Smart me, I also know that people between the ages of 18 and 26 like Gap clothes. In a googlebot’s mind, education and Gap clothes have nothing to do with one another. To any breathing American, the connection is obvious. So, if I were to link to a site that was demographically about as on-target as you could get (Gap), but wasn’t the exact same type of content as my own, it would seem that Gap wouldn’t get any credit as being a good match for my site’s visitors (which, of course, is completely wrong). Sure, you could go through and put in some exceptions for the bots (let Gap count for college kids, let beer count for sports fans, etc.), but there’s no way to get every relevant demographic connection.
As I commented in another post, bots are actually really, really dumb. But you can’t blame the bots, they’re just dumb little bots. You have to lay the blame on the real-life humans who think that bots can do more than they can do, or who try to arrange the world according to the bots’ limitations. It’s a bit like building a car that can only go straight and then insisting that the whole world suddenly tear down their homes and pack up thier lives in order to move the side of one great, super highway that simply circles the world in a straight line.
Now, I know Google is trying to make the internet a better place. I really do believe that. And I think Google HAS made the interent a better place. I think the SERPs are INCREDIBLY better than they were just a few years ago. I also love Google for Adsense - it’s a great idea (in theory … can be better, and will be, I’m sure). But as other have mentioned here in one way or another, Google often subjects webmasters to its limitations rather than allowing for its limitation. This, unfortunately, can often affect real lives in real ways.
lots0 Said,
September 2, 2005 @ 10:29 pm
If you guys at google want to discount all paid links, I say more power to ya.
But I don’t think you can do it or should I say, I don’t think you can do it very well. Not putting down google(at the moment), I just don’t think anyone can detect intent very well. And that is what your going to have to do, detect or decide what the intent of the link is.
Sure your going to be able to nail automated systems and certain URL structures, but if you go after keywords your back trying to detect or decide intent.
>>>Matt said: “Of course I remember your nick from back then. It had an extra word on the end back then, I think?”
Wow, I am impressed, very good memory Matt. Your right about the extra word, I’ve always had a thing about ‘money’, but I am very lazy, so I shortened the nick… That reminds me.. If you hook me up with a research grant for a few million (pocket change for you and the ‘boys’), I promise to never spam google again, cross my heart…
If you want to hear my version of the sk issue all you gotta do is ask, you have my email.
always wearing a white hat Said,
September 3, 2005 @ 4:03 am
Matt, look out for “google bowling” services buying links for their clients competitors.
http://seoblackhat.com/2005/09/01/google-bowling-seo-black-hats-for-hire/
Alan Perkins Said,
September 3, 2005 @ 7:04 am
Sorry to keep going on about this, but…
I see rel=nofollow as something a webmaster should use when they are not sure about the quality of a link being posted to their site - maybe because they haven’t even seen the link. If I was running a blog, I would probably require posts to be approved - and I would probably not use rel=nofollow within approved posts, because, as I see it, that’s destroying the integrity of the Web.
Whether or not the link is paid for is a separate issue to whether or not the Webmaster is happy with the quality of the link.
So, if I’m an ad channel and I am sure about the quality of my advertisers’ sites - why should I use rel=nofollow? To help Google? The problem with that is that many spammers defend their actions by saying that they’re only trying to help Google determine relevance.
As I mentioned earlier, virtually every link is commercial in some way or other - certainly links within commercial areas of the web, be they from sister companies, partners, affiliates, PR channels, directories, whatever…one way or another, most links are commercial. So let’s suppose EVERY link was labelled with “rel=nofollow” - would that help?
PhilC Said,
September 3, 2005 @ 7:25 am
What I like about this ‘thread’ is that nobody has agreed with Matt’s idea that websites should link according to how Google wants them to link - editorial votes or not editorial votes. Not even the whitest of whitehats have agreed. If there is a place where people would agree with an idea put forward by Google, then surely this is it, so it looks like you’re flogging a dead horse, Matt.
People aren’t going to help Google in this way, and it is right that they don’t. The Web doesn’t work on votes cast by links. Google works on those votes, but Google isn’t the Web - it’s only a peripheral add-on.
Your message is that, if someone sells a link on their site, either they voluntarily devalue it with the rel=nofollow attribute, or Google will devalue it if they can ascertain that the link was bought. A devalued link is worth less than one that isn’t devalued, and people aren’t going to voluntarily lose money by devaluing the links, no matter how much you claim that they “muddy” something.
In the O’Reilly blog, you claimed that “[i]selling links muddies the quality of the web[/i]“, which, of course, was rubbish. It’s good to see that you’ve reduced your claim a bit here, and you now say that selling links muddies the quality of the serps. I don’t think anyone would disagree too much with that since the big engines’ algorithms are largely links-based, but, judging by the comments in this blog, it looks like you’re going to have to deal with it on your own. People aren’t going to devalue voluntarily, and lose money, just to suit Google. It is for Google to adapt to the Web, and not the other way round.
Don Said,
September 3, 2005 @ 7:53 am
“I wouldn’t be surprised if search engines begin to take stronger action against link buying in the near future.”
To me, this is the scariest part of that post, simply because it leaves too much room for abuse. We have already been hearing rumors of penalties for site-wide links or other means of link buying, but if this is really the case and we see a serious crackdown on sites that buy links, what exactly is to keep me from tanking my latest competitors in the serps? Especially if you’re already on the top and are only threatened by newer sites with a less impressive list of backlinks, it would be easy to purchase a few thousand unrelated links to my competitors and totally destroy them.
The old attitude of “there’s nothing a competitor can do to penalize your SE rankings” is dead if “stronger action against link buying” becomes a reality.
static Said,
September 3, 2005 @ 7:59 am
You know Matt, this position Google is taking and you are echoing here simply sickens me! I am getting so tired of this Google “conformity” and do as I say, not as I do attitude. If you took away Googles advertising revenue the company would be close to worthless in monetary terms. Would you personally like to see that happen? I would venture to say the answer is “no”.
I see a lot more “advertising” leading to questionable sites/pages of those using AdWords than I do from “real” sites buying “real” advertising on other sites. I guess the real difference is you will not penalize/police yourself for links going to other sites/pages.
Advertising is natural and is the backbone of any business when it comes to increasing income for both the buyer and the seller of the advertising. What television station, newspaper, magazine, radio or any other form of media delivery would be able to exist without advertisement income?
Why should those that deliver media via sponsorship and advertisement have to conform to Googles wishes of hiding advertisements in JavaScript or other methods such as rel nofollow or fear suffering the wrath of Google? It’s a pathetic cry for help from Google as far as I see it. You cannot get a handle on the very methods you control and have created with your algorithm – so you make others responsible for it?
What about reciprocal links? Those are paid for by “everyone” that has a website of any value? How you ask? By the literally millions of emails sent out asking for reciprocal links – we all pay for the bandwidth and time consumed by dealing with this spam. I will lay money that a paid link/advertisement on a private site of authority has a higher ratio of reliability in actually offering the products, service, or information than those sold through AdWords or through reciprocal link schemes.
There is no way that I see in which Google will ever be able to count only “natural” links.
A natural link….hmm.. I know of professors at colleges, teachers at educational facilities, librarians, IT personnel, and people that do work for State Government sites which have linked to their/friend’s sites for the “sole” purpose of PR and ranking purposes. So the “natural” links you see may not be as “natural” as you think. I believe you may have had/heard of some of this within the University of Google’s founders.
I do not have the answer for the problems Google has created and is now drowning in, but to suggest discounting or even penalizing the advertisers/advertising businesses is completely ridiculous in trying to handle the problem.
Maybe the AdSense division will allow AdSense for Search users to alter the results pages? Maybe be able to put a header in that states “Oursite.com cannot vouch for the legitimacy of this results are they are provided by Google and cannot be vouched for”.
Maybe CurrentTV (the Google partnered TV Channel) should be dismissed as unreliable as it is bought/paid for in one way or another or should be forced to have a flashing banner stating the following is not relieble information or cannot be vouched for
Google needs to stop and get a grip before they start taking actions which will end up having them being seen as a censuring greed machine. There are already more and more people viewing it that way now.
Brian Said,
September 3, 2005 @ 8:07 am
I simply see this as a clearer definition of the risk involved. If you decide to sell links, you may at some point lose your ability to send your PR in new directions in the way that you choose, from your established sites. If you buy links, it’s buyer beware, you may not get the PR benefit desired. Whether the ID’ing of link buying/selling is algorithmic, semi-algorithmic, etc., doesn’t matter much, it seems that based on Matt’s comments, the risk is there.
Joe Said,
September 3, 2005 @ 10:42 am
“Google-bowling” is something I’ve wondered about for a while.
Matt, I wish you could provide a definitive answer to this: Is it possible to be punished for something that *could* have no control over? Could a competitor do something to negatively affect your search engine rankings with Google?
If any part of G’s formula allows this, I would hope some very serious reconsideration would take place.
Joe Hunkins Said,
September 3, 2005 @ 10:51 am
Great posts Matt - your blog has risen to my top blog of interest. I’d asked you about this in New Orleans a few months ago (!) about these link issues and this post will help people understand what you told me there.
JD Said,
September 3, 2005 @ 1:20 pm
Matt, do you use rel=nofollow for the links in the comments?
As I tried to say before, some of the links in these comments are good. Some are bad. But to expect you to go through the comments and mark them accordingly is unrealistic (although if the blog software had a tiny button next to each link to allow you to toggle, that would be nice). Therefore some good links are missing a vote they should get. And the bad guys are working overtime to abuse rel=nofollow on their own sites. On the face of it I think that was a bad solution.
In your very own blog, links are not being used the “ideal” way and Google’s solution did little to help. Extapolate to the rest of the web and that solution gets a “D-” in my book.
Slavito Said,
September 3, 2005 @ 1:45 pm
Matt - what about adding rel=nofollow to “legitimate” (e.g. non-paid, editorial) links? My first reaction after reading this was: hell - I don’t care if the sites I like to will gain from my links - unlike some people, I actually link for the benefit of my VISITORS, not for the benefit of destination sites’ rankings. So, I am thinking about adding ‘nofollow’ to all external links just to be safe. Am I wrong to react that way? Will it help Google trust my site more if I do a wholesale disawoval of all external links?
Just Some Guy Said,
September 3, 2005 @ 2:16 pm
It’s amazing how a small corner of the webmaster seo sector can paint themselves into a corner over what can only be described as an obvious position presented by Matt. You would think it would at least be hard to complain about Google telling them how to run their business at the precise moment they are telling Google how to run THEIR business.
Matt can suggest nofollowing links and some people can use it if they want. That hardly matters though since almost no one will waste the time to nofollow links. The main thing is it is Google’s job to discern the true reputation of a web pages and web sites. Google should ignore link buying just like you would ignore people paid to say what a cool guy some politician is. That’s Google’s rather obvious job, and to one degree or another they have always done that. People who can’t generate good reputation on their own should work on that rather than complaining that Google is making its own decisions based on its own criteria.
Low Said,
September 3, 2005 @ 9:00 pm
I think that there is a misunderstanding, here.
Google is not pretending to know what links are good or bad for the Web or for the publishers.
Matts said just that Google’s algorithms are based only on “wow! this site is good/great, I’ll link to it” type of links, because this meritocratic approach leads to better SE results.
John Sandbox Man Said,
September 4, 2005 @ 8:43 am
So does this mean Google is going to end the Sandbox? Google is already hurting new website’s by not ranking them. Ad-words worked six months ago, but are now becomming very expensive and delivering less results. I guess it’s ok to pay for links as long as Google gets the money. When is Google comming out with operating systems so I can just give all my money to Google.
Do no harm, yeah right!
If I buy an old established site will Google then rank me? Is this going to be the new way to spam.
Why can’t we get back to relevancy, and relevant link buying? If you have a web site about bingo you should be able to buy a link on a bingo related site and have it count.
What about directory listings? If you pay a human editor to review your site for listing is Google going to put the kibosh on that too? Does Google count free directories more? just because they are free?
Good content is good content and should be ranked if it is relevant, why not just randomize the relevant results and level the playing field that way? I bet only then you can truly stop the spamming.
john parker Said,
September 4, 2005 @ 3:18 pm
Matt
I see the inherent wisdom in what you say. However, this approach long term does not favor success as it goes againts the market. Another way to look at this is to say that people who buy links do have something important to say. Accordingly that link does have value and Google should legitimately assign high value to it.
However, just like Cigarette advertising is banned on TV, in case google believes that ads such as Gambling or pornography should not be displayed, it could simply eliminate them from being displayed.
regards
Jeff Martin Said,
September 4, 2005 @ 9:09 pm
Matt Said:
“Many people here think a lot about how to try to rank smaller sites (the ones most likely to have fewer links) fairly. ”
Heres a tip: Teach people HOW to search. An educated searcher has a better chance of finding what they want, despite problems you may have, and gives ‘smaller sites’ a better opportunity of being found. The last research I saw indicated most searches were still only one or two words. Hardly qualifying.
Follow-up question: Why isn’t the help center accessible from Google.com home? Do you expect everyone to be familiar with how best to use the search tool? You buried it two links down with no obvious way to get there. How many PhD usability folks do you have on staff again?
How:
With all of the billions G has, why not setup kiosks in malls or other high traffic public places and reach people instead of sponsoring just SE shows? For Pete’s sake if you just setup the G sign people will curiously start to flock to it. Isn’t G supposed to be a hip household verb?
At these kiosk you could give out or charge $10 to make custom t-shirts (among other clever viral outreach methods) with clever or hip multi-word searches with ::GASP:: quotes in them! Maybe even a new ad campaign aimed at education by these types of cool and hip search examples. I know just the non-traditional agency if that’s what your looking for.
This type of out-reach wouldn’t need to be permanent. I would estimate maybe two years before this went viral. You’ll reach those who will teach others such as schoolteachers, librarians, parents, business process consultants, company tech evangelists, etc.
lots0 Said,
September 5, 2005 @ 10:23 am
Matt, just had an idea so you guys at google can get rid of link analysis. (If you use the idea, just hook me with that research grant…hehe )
instead of links, why not count each scraped page or stolen bit of copy as a vote of quality for the page it was stolen from?
The spammers/thieves are mostly stealing quality unique content (these guys seem to be a great judge of quality content) , so it would seem to me that a great way to determine a quality page is to give the source page a positive vote everytime some ass steals its content.
Submit Shop Said,
September 5, 2005 @ 10:34 am
What will be the Position if you have site which belong to a group of sites and parent site link is given at footer of each site as ” A venture of …… company”.
You suggest that they should use nofollow tag
Fernando Plaza Said,
September 5, 2005 @ 3:41 pm
Matt, very interesting post… but then… Why my default Blogger template has several default links (including the famous “I power Blogger” logo) and none of them are rel=”nofollow” ?
Joe Hunkins Said,
September 5, 2005 @ 5:01 pm
Hey Matt -
I’m hoping to buy some links from a great new blog called MattCutts.com - put in a good word for me OK?
Joe
Tom Valaitis Said,
September 6, 2005 @ 7:19 am
I am not sure I understand the argument that a paid link is not a credible one. If I were going to undertake a paid link campaign, surely I am doing the search engines homework for them? I would most likely try to identify sites and keywords most relevant to my consumer base, and direct my funds this way. If I get it wrong, well, I waste my money, and necessity dictates I get smarter next time or I disappear (financialy). Either way I am no longer spending money on links that are not relevant to me or my site.
I agree that a lot of people will waste money on ill-thought out links and relate them to even more ill-conceived web sites, but the web and the business world have their own form of natural selection - profit. After all, when does a free link get objectively reviewed for quality and credibility? Probably a lot less frequently.
There is an interesting relationship with adwords here. If I am spending money to rank on Google, and its affiliates, is Google itself showing poor content deliberately? You have a system of separating the wheat from the chaff, your rank is a combination of relevance and buying power, much like a sponsored link anywhere else on the web. Kind of ironic that you should try and discourage others from doing it.
Michael Martinez Said,
September 6, 2005 @ 8:42 am
Google has always been out of touch with the Webmastering community. Links were bought and sold long before Messrs. Brin and Page wrote their paper, “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine”.
And in the extensive amateur Webmastering community, it has always been very common for Web site operators to collect as many subject-related links as possible without regard (or even the ability to judge) the quality of sites.
The Web community has never “voted” with links. Google just tries to make it look like they do. That is why the Google algorithms have become so complex. Giving reality to the illusion becomes more and more difficult because it remains easy to game the system.
Google’s performance improvements in determing relevance through on-page content have helped tremendously, but resorting to REL=NOFOLLOW type solutions — which only encourage further abuse and deception — is counter-productive.
Let Webmasters do what they want to do, and stop trying to impose your rules on them.
Enough studies have shown that “the rich keep getting richer” naturally anyway, so link popular sites accrue links at a faster rate than link-unpopular sites. While I enjoy being among the link-wealthy, I hope for the sake of new Web sites that Google takes this principle into consideration and levels the playing field.
REL=NOFOLLOW won’t help in that area any more than it helps in determining relevance.
Locom Said,
September 6, 2005 @ 12:33 pm
Matt,
First of all, thanks for your article. But …
In my opinion, the whole “nofollow” idea is the worst think Google could come up. Google is not here to setup “standards” for webmasters and site owners, Google is here to provide results for users searching for information. And searching for information is why the whole “marketing” started. By “killing” the links from other websites, you are fighting the whole purpose of the internet and also digging the hole for your company.
Honestly, why to spend so many resources (within Google) fighting the lost cause? People will always find a way around and tricky webmasters, who can “hide” stuff from your algorhytm will benefit from not being discovered?
Google can track unigue URL’s, IPs etc … so why don’t you just count only one link per URL/IP, and all this site-wide advertising to trick Google will disapear. And after that, who would pay $1000 per month for 1 link to trick Google? Nobody for the puprose to get that one link, but to get the traffic.
I just don’t agree with many things Google is doing lately, acting like “internet police” and telling people what is good and what is wrong. Google didn’t develop HTML, “nofollow” tag or anything like that. so Google has no ethical right to tell the people, how to use it. Webmasters will be making choice, if to follow the standards of the internet, or if to follow Google’s standards requested by Google. One against all … do the math … and I will not be suprised, if in few years Google would have the same “success” story like i.e. DMOZ … , they were pretty big and famous too, and used to do it for people, not against them :))
laura Said,
September 6, 2005 @ 2:38 pm
I think we’ll all find that search engines will be less and less what some may call “dumb”. Interesting search engine information retrieval documents are out there and Google’s got some real smart people…
But why not test the waters by suggesting rel=nofollow? If I was Google I would have done it. Not if I was yahoo or MSN though. Like everyone else, I dont like the idea for the most part, but if you see this blog as a focus group of sorts - seems worth it to test the waters.
Dan Thies Said,
September 6, 2005 @ 2:47 pm
Search engines are free to develop their algorithms as they see fit. They’re free to decide which links they want to trust. Maybe I’m the heretic here, but I don’t see anything wrong with Google identifying sites that are selling text links, and dealing with that however they like.
I just hope Matt and his co-workers aren’t expecting this to solve their problem. He’s already seen that people are looking for better ways to game the system. I hope Matt and his co-workers don’t seriously expect the entire web to start labeling paid links for them.
The Google ideal may be that “the best links are earned and given by choice,” but what does that mean?
If I add text links to my favorite florist, favorite online casino, favorite unlicensed pharmacy, favorite travel site, etc. will Google decide that my site isn’t worthy to participate in developing their “democratic” search results? If I “vote” for George Bush or Michael Moore as a miserable failure, am I no longer qualified to vote?
What’s the algorithm for determining intent, Matt?
Walkman Said,
September 6, 2005 @ 6:39 pm
GoogleGuy,
how about JUST ignoring possible fishy links? if you penalize the site because someone linked to them sitewide, you open another can of worms. Competitors can link to us from their 100,000 page scrapper site and by the time we find out, were on page 52 on google.
Danny Yee Said,
September 7, 2005 @ 1:35 am
Do affiliate links count as “paid? I have Amazon links on my book reviews, which bring in commissions. I also provide the links because they’re useful to people, but I doubt I’d have them there if I didn’t get sales commissions. (Many of the books I review are obscure enough that Amazon has no reviews, and less accessible bibliographic information than I can provide myself.)
So should I “rel=nofollow” my Amazon links?
rob Said,
September 7, 2005 @ 4:08 am
All this talk of penalties and consequences and superfluous nofollow code, makes me wonder whether some Googlies just enjoy having a little poke at the webmastering community.
I still don’t get how a few links from a pool of billions can still be [b]allowed[/b] to have such an algorithmic impact.
Whatever happened to those ideas around block level analysis and examining the context of where the link came from? Thematic and semantic on topic analysis and all that other search engine geekspeek mumbo jumbo?
I’m sure there’s a mind or two capable of writing a script that looks for off site links and determines whether they are of the style
[list]
Link text 1
Link text 2
Link text 3
Link text 4
[/list]
Or variants thereof and applies a dampening factor to any anchor text or pagerank value. Could be applied nice and quietly, without recourse to scaremongering or Ire inducing tactics.
Sure, it might be holding back the floodwater stuff and sophisticated spammers are just that, but isn’t it the case that most ‘natural’ linking patterns, ( which I assume is what [url=http://www.google.com]google[/url] would like to look for) are found within the context of blocks of text, sometimes with and sometimes without a semantic relationship?
Sure, spammers will adopt there borgesque characteristic stances, but some might actually realise that its easier to create useful stuff that people will want to link to.
Meantime. you guys need to employ a few more spammers
Vincent Said,
September 7, 2005 @ 5:23 am
The use of rel=nofollow invalidates a web page. What is worrying here is that by promoting the use of rel=nofollow it breaks the very core of Priority 2 of the WAI.
Is it Google’s intention to totally ignore this and over-ride validation in order so it can function in it’s present form and it’s promotion of page rank?
TallTroll Said,
September 7, 2005 @ 8:02 am
>> instead of links, why not count each scraped page or stolen bit of copy as a vote of quality for the page it was stolen from?
That just shunts the problem back 1 level. 6 months after implementation, spammers will be building “information” sites of their own to scrape….
Low Level Said,
September 7, 2005 @ 6:24 pm
Well, lots0’s idea is not so crazy.
While it isn’t possible to substitute a web graph based on links with a web graph based on text citations, it should be noted that the PageRank algorithm derives from an old method to calculate the importance of academic documents analyzing their inter-citations, that is texts extracted from the papers or references to a document ID.
HTML language has an useful semantic-rich tag called “CITE”, that should be used to mark (to users and software agents) a text coming from an external source.
SEO rarely pay attention to features that are not generally known to be rewarded by search engines. The SEO world is crazy for links, because links pay the bills, but this approach prevents SEOs to search for other interesting ranking factors.
The CITE tag is really a good help for both users and search engines: not only it assigns importance to the cited documents but it is also a sign of correct behaviour, something that could distinguish a correct webmaster from someone that just steals contents.
I think that citations are part of the ranking algorithms of some search engines and that they are nothing new to SE engineers.
Alfie Miras Said,
September 7, 2005 @ 10:03 pm
>>”What if a site wants to buy links purely for visitor click traffic, to build buzz, or to support another site? In that situation, I would use the rel=”nofollow” attribute. The nofollow tag allows a site to add a link that abstains from being an editorial vote. Using nofollow is a safe way to buy links, because it’s a machine-readable way to specify that a link doesn’t have to be counted as a vote by a search engine.”
Can I use javascript code which is not a “machine-readable way of linking” to link on the other website?
Dmitri Said,
September 8, 2005 @ 3:05 am
Hi Matt,
Perhaps, it’s a dumb question, but:
These sites that buy PR links from great resources (eg linux.org), arent they providing good and relevant content? I just clicked link that said online casino, and it was all about online casino, just what surfer would need. Of course i understand that there’re lots of money involved: affiliates, subaffiliates etc, but why dont rank them? Guys have money to build a good site and to seo, what’s the problem?
Thanks.
lots0 Said,
September 8, 2005 @ 7:59 am
The comment about using stolen copy or scraped pages as a vote of quality was made in anger (a little tongue in cheek).
I did an exact search for a snipit of unique text off of one of my sites and found over 10,000 pages (all supplemental results- BTW thanks for spotting those google) that had ripped me off. It made me alittle angry. The page only has about 3000 natural IBLs and it is not doing very well for its
targeted keywords.
And I thought… what if.. google were to count each page they found with dup {stolen} content and count it as a single vote of quality for the page it was stolen from…
I realize that using stolen copy as a vote of quality or as a positive citation would be open to abuse and that it would only be a short term partial solution to a major long term problem… But, it would be fun for a while…
I think it would be great (and a bit ironic) to have the folks that are stealing from you actually helping you out. It would also be a good way to put to use that supplemental index.
PhilC Said,
September 8, 2005 @ 4:49 pm
>> It would also be a good way to put to use that supplemental index.
The Supplemental index already has a good use - to store many thousands of *my* pages
Justice is Blind Said,
September 8, 2005 @ 6:18 pm
Google is pushing to have webmasters cater to their every whim. This is wrong. I don’t sell links for PR, though I do sell advertising to help pay the bills. I run a business site and as such, selling advertising makes sense the same way Google also sells advertising.
However, who died and put Google in control of how websites should operate? Google is a “search engine” and not a “God” … Maybe those Ph.D.’s can figure that out if their heads are not too far up their own butts?
Funny I don’t see any nofollow tags on any of the outbound links from this blog. Does that mean if you work for Google you don’t have to use the nofollow tags that you’re trying to force on everyone else?
There’s an unnatural focus on textlinks — which was created BY GOOGLE! It’s not up to webmasters to help you dig your way out of the mess in which YOU are responsible for.
If I throw money and gold around on the floor of my house, open all the windows and doors, get in my car and take a drive and criminals enter my home and loot the gold and money — who is responsible?
I left the doors and windows open. I didn’t set any locks even though I had them. Should I ask the criminals to help me build traps to place around my house to catch themselves in, so I can continue to leave my windows and doors open with my gold and money laying around on the floor.
Or, would it make more sense if I just locked the damned locks to keep the criminals out and that would be the end of it?
Google needs to fix their own problems and stop making demands on others who owe GOOGLE NOTHING.
I hear always about, Google does not owe you to index your site.
By the same logic, webmaster does not owe Google to fix their broken algorithm.
Shaper Said,
September 9, 2005 @ 5:37 am
To those who oppose Google’s problem with link-selling, it’s very simple and I’m surprised you don’t get it.
Google’s stated mission is to return *relevant* results for queries. IE, to return sites that people will want to see. This means good sites, or authoritative ones. They assess “goodness” or “authority” by people linking to them, on the basis you’re unlikely to link to a site you think is poor or incorrect - linking to a site is in indication you think it’s worth pointing other people to it.
Selling links directly screws up this process, since now people don’t link because the site’s worth it, but because they’ve been paid to do it. This directly leads to a world where links get high rankings based on their PR and Marketing budget, not on their usefulness to anyone.
This is completely undesirable for *everyone* except SEO consultants, since it renders Google effectively useless (and most other search engines, too).
I also don’t get the idea that Google should condone link-selling on the basis they started offering the PR indicator in the toolbar. This is a complete non-sequiteur - link-selling was clearly an unintended side-effect of a mechanism to let browsers easily assess a site’s “reputation”.
And to the same poster who suggested Google’s dislike “of the industry they created” was akin to strangling their own child, get a freaking grip. They’re trying to stop parasites making money from gaming their system, which for everyone else in the world is a *good* *thing*.
SEOing can be good - it encourages webmasters to produce good content, well-designed, accessible sites and use semantic markup, all of which are to the benefit of normal people. Link-selling has absolutely no benefit to users, since it inflates a site’s reputation undeservedly and corrupts what should be an impartial democratic process.
Get off your high-horse, think for two seconds about what’s best for *real* people and stop having a go at search engines for giving people what they want - easy access to good sites and an essential filter for all the undeserving crap.
Jim Woolfe Said,
September 9, 2005 @ 5:42 am
If I may add a couple of views to a livery and interesting thread.
I’ve run a car modifying Web Site online for about 2 years. When planning the site I researched as much as I could about SEO on Goggle and based my design and content delivery on my learning’s. As a result and with a bit of help from a reputable SEO company who provided me with the much needed first authority link I enjoy good ranking across Search Strings.
After a year of being on line and in an attempt to build relevant content faster I decided to re launch the site allowing direct postings into certain sections of the site, the main one being a specialised directory.
Well you can all guess what happens. Every day I have to go though my database deleting spam links. I have even had to disable my message board and forum as one guy decided that it was a good way for him to post a lot of unrelated links. Every day I would remove these and he would re post. In the end I just got feed up and disabled the boards.
The result. A waste of time of both of us and a loyal community deprived of a communication tool.
So here’s my suggestion to help Stamp out these unethical pests.
Every time I get one of these guys posting to my directory I email Goggle the URL. who can then blacklist them immediately telling them why.
I believe if a few of us out there do that it will go some way to killing this issue. Think of it as a “Honey Trap” for spammers.
My final point. A few comments seem to support the spammer or suggest Goggle are wrong with their stance on this issue.
I can only assume that some of these people must benefit commercially from this activity but I don’t think they get or care about the bigger issuse. This stuff prevents Google and other Search Engines from doing what they are designed for. Delivering relevent content. This results in a diminished user experience which must have a detrimental effect on usage.
All I say to you guys is if you cannot work out how to make profit with ethics then please go and find another market to pester and let the rest of us get on and build the net into what it has the potential to be.
Stephen Malakos Said,
September 9, 2005 @ 9:20 am
Dear Mr Cutts,
IMHO - Reciprocal Link exchanges are more valuable than one way links because they are a test of trust. Google suggests that link between related sites are the most valuable. i.e. links between competitors.
In my experience dishonest webmasters are unable to keep to the principal of honest link exchange for more than one month. A dishonest webmaster is a good indicator of a dishonest website. They tend to have lots on one way links that started as reciprocals.
Regards
Steve
lots0 Said,
September 9, 2005 @ 10:20 am
>>>Shaper Said, “This is a complete non-sequiteur - link-selling was clearly an unintended side-effect of a mechanism to let browsers easily assess a site’s “reputation”.”
There have been far too many ‘unintended side-effects’ of google’s actions. The actions taken to eliminate spam and link selling by google are, I think, worse than the disease. Google’s results have suffered and been degraded, I don’t think anyone can argue that (Well, I guess they can argue it, but they won’t be correct.)
The buying and selling of links WILL continue unabated until links have no value or until google removes ALL commercial sites from it’s index. When are you googlites going to acknowledge this?
Anyone that knows human nature could have told you what was going to happen as soon as there was a value put on links. And trying to hide the fact that links are still the most important factor in ranking in google is NOT going to change anything, cuz the only people you are fooling don’t matter anyway.
You googlites, may understand logic, math, networks and computers but you really don’t have a clue about human nature… I know I have said this many times before, but it so true…
roam Said,
September 10, 2005 @ 3:51 am
Hi Matt
Couldn’t resist posting
Why doesn’t Google just pay closer to its Adsense participants and weed out spammers from there. IMO Adsense spammers are a bigger problem on the web today than affiliate spam ever was. I think 90% of the spam out there wouldn’t be a far off estimate.
Lets just take a close look at who’s feeding the spam frenzy here before we ask others to clean up the way they run their business Matt.
Why do Google Ads show on this SPAM site (I’ve used nofollow hope it works).
I get almost 20 link exchange requests from sites like this everyday. Some of these rank on Google, some even have page rank, some rank on other SE’s. But that’s not the point. To take from Google’s alleged motto…It’s Evil!! It’s evil to make money doing this, whether Google does it…or someone else does it FOR GOOGLE!!
Jim Woolfe mentioned ethics. Lets dwell on that a bit shall we. Can’t your robot figure out that this is spam scraper site? Do your advertisers pay for their ads to be dispalyed on a site like this?
Or are you saying its ok for Google to keep these guys in business and compete with me, but I can’t exchange links ot buy links from where ever I choose? You’ve got to be kidding me Matt
Was Google trying to combat this type of spam when they decided to devalue all directories, link exchanges, everything in one killer update recently? Would your approach be better be termed as positive action or anarchy?
So I now have take 5 year domain registrations, get a million links(without buying or exchanging anything), build my site to all kinds of Google specifications and then sit and wait it out through your sandbox!! Why?
Is there any guarantee that Google will still be a search engine or have an algo of any worth 2 years from now? Very often the secret of succeeding in business is to change the way things are done. Google should know this.
Jeremy Said,
September 10, 2005 @ 10:11 pm
What is the best way to get backlinks, in order
to get higher rankings in the SE.
Jeremy
christian Said,
September 11, 2005 @ 12:51 am
hello,
interesting blog indeed…
type in at google “paid text links” then you see 10 advertisers for it…
so it is ok for Google to take that money although it apparently corrupts the google index??
doesnt make sense to me other then it is all about the money…
regards
christian
Martin Persson Said,
September 11, 2005 @ 4:41 pm
The perfect search algorithm would understand what I want to find, and would also understand what information a given web site offers. It would then match myself with these results. However, todays algorithms are far from perfect.
All the methods of link selling, keyword spoofing etc. only tries to exploit these flaws, and provide me with less than perfectly matched content. Such attempts impacts the service that Google provides for me, and makes it less useful in my eyes. Hence, it lies in both mine and Google’s interest to filter out such attempts.
Thus, the attempt from Google’s side to reduce this impact is a Good Thing for me.
And honestly, how often do we really WANT that crap that gets advertised? I for one havn’t really felt the urge to buy “VIagRa at super-LOW PRICES!” or play at “Ultimate Online Casino” or whatever…
Grinnin' :D Said,
September 12, 2005 @ 2:18 pm
I think it’s rather hypercritical for Google to take AdWords money from the very same textlink sellers that they’re telling site owners not to do business with.
It’s all well and good if the money ends up in billionaire google pockets but don’t let that mom and pop web site make a dime. That would be bad ‘cuz it’s less money for Google AdWords revenues.
The Ph.D’s at Google really need to get a grip. Until you can practice what you preach, don’t preach.
Jeremy Said,
September 13, 2005 @ 10:58 pm
I took a look at a paid text link company, and their clients
results. They said they were #1 in google for a certain keyword,
I checked and they were #1.
So google does not penalize sites that buy links.
So maybe we should buy text links to rank high
and make some money.
Afraid I'd be Banned Said,
September 14, 2005 @ 10:55 pm
Matt,
Based on all the opinions here, It would leave me to believe that your posts as a representative of Google are a bit hypocritical. To actually infer that sites can be hurt in the future for advertising on “Non-Google” sites really send the Adwords message across.
I think you should rethink hurting sites. I can understand not counting links. You have the right to.
But to infer that future action will be taken is anti-advertising. Not everyone want the links just for PageRank. Traffic is as important as rankings!
No one should be told who they can or cannot link to.
It would appear that the reason everyone loves Google, is because of the fact that thay can manipulate it. The “SNEEZERS” (Seth Godin coined) that built Google are now the same ones optimizing sites for it and still helping coin the term “Google It”. Read Seth’s views on what happens when you loose the original sneezer in The Idea Virus.
Google has always seemed to say in a roundabout way that it “controls” how the Internet should be. So the fact that links are necessary to define rankings will only cause people to spam with links and trade from third sites. Banning one has not stopped the others using the exact same methods. But now we have garbage links on millions of sites. Is this the Internet Google intended?
–> More importantly –>Do Googles current intentions only benefit Adwords now, rather then the Internet that they saw a few years ago, before they had more money then the man upstairs????????
No matter what Google does people will try to game it. Its the best game in town!
So my point is when you pull another Florida-type algo in this new algo your testing, at least your warning us here this time, are the intentions for the world of for Google?
Are you are leaving a robot as Judge Jury and Executioner for the sake of Adwords.
MHO!
SRE Said,
September 16, 2005 @ 6:49 am
I wanted to ask about a practical use for the ref “nofollow” tag..
I have an informative site that ranks well in the SERPS and at present links out to many different pages on a banned site. I wonder whether putting the nofollow tag in all these outbound links will stop my site getting banned for linking to a banned site?
I want to keep linking to this site as the content on the banned site is very useful to my traffic!
Any thoughts?
Dr Nick Said,
September 16, 2005 @ 6:55 am
Filtering sponsored ads from counting towards a vote IS the way to go: the problem is for little or niche sites with few inbound links.
Let me explain: first for definition, I’ll use “vote-cast” links as those that are placed in content because they add to that content, and “sponsored” as those that are there because they are paid for (vote-cast or not).
For larger sites, consider this: they have 1000’s of links so an attempt to filter some of them out will still leave a whole bunch of “vote-cast” links. In fact, rip any popular site of all it’s sponsored links and you’ll still get a bunch of links people have posted to it of their own free volition. As long as the filtering algorithm still leaves a large sample of vote-cast links, the result will most likely be a good representation of what that site earned in terms of links. Better to filter out all the sponsored links and some vote-cast ones, and be left with just the vote-cast ones.
But consider the case for smaller niche sites with only 100’s or just 10’s of links. Erroneously filtering out vote-cast links for those sites will greatly affect their position in the SERPS — there’s just not enough links to still get a statistically fair filtered result.
As Matt said in a previous comment, the problem is how to get those smaller sites ranking well against those larger sites with 1000’s of backlinks. Unless there is an elegant solution to this problem, smaller sites may have to resort to some advertising expenditure, and hope that they are of better quality than their competition so that they start earning vote-cast links. But that’s better than offsetting any chance of a high-quality site ranking well if only lower-quality sites that pay for links get the edge.
Everyone would prefer quality sites to be listed on top. Everyone except those people who own a site and would rather spend time figuring out how to improve rankings, because quite frankly they are probably better at doing that than at delivering good content, and they know it.
Both Sides Now Said,
September 17, 2005 @ 6:31 am
There’s rumor brewing that Google have started a new pilot program for ousting sites that openly break Google TOS. News Flash: About.com is a HUGE and I mean HUGE SPAMMER.
See here: http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=20112
Surely Google will not let this slide will they? If a directory as big as About.com can spam and not be banned or PR-stripped, then it’s not fair for medium and smaller directories to get banned, PR0′d, beat up, etc., for much, much smaller TOS violations, is it?
Google show your fairness and punish this violator!
Mike Dammann Said,
September 17, 2005 @ 2:28 pm
Don’t think it is hypocritical to take money from those for a service that is exactly the service that they want. However when you want to provide search engine results that are organic, please keep it organic.
CULPRIT Said,
September 28, 2005 @ 3:02 pm
Well reading through this long list of replies after reading Matt’s post leads me to believe that majority shows Google might need to re-think their views. While I will remain anonymous on this post, I will say the referenced email sent out that Matt spoke of, was in fact something I read. What was so conveniently left out was the reasoning for the comments of putting ads within content and with less noticeable tags. FOR TRAFFIC! How often are you reading a page and there are links within content and links under a SPONSORED title. How often are the sponsored links clicked compared to the links within the content. In addition, these are links bought on relevant, same content pages. Again, something left out.
It may be the simple fact of the person (my guess is seobook guy) who was running to Google tattling on people with the obvious reason to kiss ass, leaving other key bits of information out, but it could also be Matt leaving other key bits of info out. The bottom line is, the referenced email wasn’t as malice as it was portrayed above. I read the entire email and it wasn’t as bad as it’s made out to be here.
I have to admit, agree and concur with about 99% of the responses on this subject. Buying/Selling links is not something that is put together to directly bring down Google!!! Please get off your high horse. Google is not the only engine out there. Granted it is a top dog, but buying/selling of links is a way to help build name recognition, increase traffic from like visitors on other like sites, and of course, to help give a face on the internet for buyers. It also provides sellers a way to supplement their income to pay for their monthly maintenance costs in running their websites…even make a little bread in their pockets. Remember something Matt…while you are on the hunt to provide relevant searches, you must also stay true to those who make you who you are. Without all of the buyers and/or sellers, Google is nothing.
The last I heard, Google does not have a legal monopoly on the buying and selling of text links. In case you might need to refresh your memory on a monopoly, here is a good link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly
My goal is not to say we’re right and your wrong, it’s merely to say that both sides have merit. Google is not the internet police, so to penalize or throw webmasters in jail (sandbox) is a bit extreme. If someone is linking to a good website relevant to their own, regardless of if it’s paid or not, should be counted just like any other link. If the site is full of doorway pages or other obvious spam, then they are fair game to be dropped, you just have to stop considering a purchased link is spamming or scheming.
Another person said it perfectly above. If you begin to penalize people for buying links, the floodgates are open to people getting their competition penalized by building linking structures pointing to their websites.
I guess if you still think you’re the kings of the net, maybe you can turn into the internet government, or shall I say “Legal Mafia”, and start taxing everyone for taking business away from you.
My rant is over.
scottie Said,
September 28, 2005 @ 8:18 pm
It’s a shame that my post earlier was removed. I can’t understand why as it was no different than any other post, other than me saying I read that email and felt some key points were left out in your comments above. I guess all of my time and thought process put into my reply was subject to a simple deletion because I voiced my opinion.
So I’ll leave this one short as I’m sure it will be deleted as well. Maybe it was my monopoly talk. Truth hurts, huh.
Jim Woolfe Said,
October 15, 2005 @ 2:11 am
Strange how things change.
On September the 9th I post text that supports Goggle’s stance and them lo and behold on Thursday 6th October my web Site Email Mum (A domestic services company) disappears off Google.
This was a paid listing via the SEO company that I have used for 18 months.. In fact all of the links that the company marketed disappeared overnight. In one fell swop Google very nearly put a company that I consider to be ethical in their marketing efforts out of business. All very strange and there is one fact that makes me question just what’s going on and if there is in fact a “hidden Agenda” of some sort.
As I mentioned in my earlier post Search Engines stand or fall on their ability to deliver relevant content. The link that was provided to me went straight to a mirror of my Home page which then linked into my site proper. What this meant was that when someone typed in Domestic Cleaning in Cambridge they got a direct link to a web site that offered Domestic Cleaning in Cambridge. Now I can’t see how you can get more relevant than that!
I now invite you to perform the same search and look at what Google currently provides. In the top 20 you get ;
16 directories of varying standardThey all have lists of cleaning companies so of then mixed in with other listings but not many provide direct links to web sites. Some provide email Most provide phone numbers (Maybe Google wants to turn its self into An Online version of Yellow Pages!)
1 link that advertises a cleaning fransise
3 (yippee) link leading direct to companies offering cleaning services.
Study the above and you can see some of the issues Google face.
As you may have guessed I have strong ties to the SEO Company. They have been aware of your search result issues for some time and in their words they were tiring to help you provide better results by Marketing the way they did. They belived that Google appoved of what they were doing becase of the listing they achieved. They couldn’t check with you guys as its pretty tough to communicate with you. Yes they made money but why shouldn’t they be rewarded for their efforts.
The result of all this is they are now changing their approach and refocusing on their directory. Sites are starting to reappear as directory listings. They are tiring to keep the linking as relevant as possible but this harder to achieve with a directory structure. It seems just plain weird that you are forcing them to provide you with less relevant content As a client of theirs I am not happy with this change of direction although I will continue to support them in the same way that they have supported the Internet Marketing of my company. As a customer of Google I am very unimpressed (I refer to myself as a customer as I use your search services on a daily basis).
My views on this as an owner of a business affected by the fall out. Well I can’t do the link development thing very well via my own site as most industry related web sites out there are competitors and I cant see them playing ball. I could spend my time developing lots of independent web sites with relevant content and link them all back to improve my rank but I guess that the last thing the net needs is loads of relevant but in fact irrelevant cleaning Web Sites.
Maybe I’ll just get on with traditional marketing and let all you guys get on with whatever it is that you are tiring to achieve. A shame as I believe that the net could help my company to enhance service delivery in a number of ways. I guess that you can’t win them all.
Jim
Jim Woolfe Said,
October 20, 2005 @ 1:37 am
And so it goes on.
I check my rank for itsaplaything. A web portal for uk car cruising (modified cars) which a week ago was number 5 on Google This week number 41 and falling. I just cannot understand whats going on. This site has links back into it from related web sites. It is stacked full of relevent content. Why is it being beaten by sites such as saga (for the over 50,s I dont think these guys are into car modification ) or “this is cheshire” ,an online newspaper that just happens to have a one related post mixed in with news on child assaults amonst other things. If I was getting knocked out but sites with more relevance I could understand it.
Well at least I’m still number 4 on yahoo.
ps Sorry Matt for keep using your blog to rant off Its just that I,m so disapointed. 18 months of hard work trying to follow the guildlines all for nothing. This will be my last post on this subject. Promise.
Jim
chad Said,
October 22, 2005 @ 11:10 pm
Let me get this straight.
Google controls (according to all my logs) 90% of internet traffic.
Google will penalize my site for selling links with the intent to sell PageRank.
But, Google can not know if a particular link is “sold” nor can they know “intent”, so any link can be interpreted as such.
AND
Google will penalize my site for linking to another penalized site.
But, Google hides site penalties (perhaps to throw off spammers) so any link could get my site penalized.
So, in conclusion it is never safe to link to another site!
I almost never link out in fear of Google wrath… but I have to wonder: “Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”
Don Diego Said,
October 26, 2005 @ 10:12 pm
To All Google-Whiners:
1. Google is not a public utility. It is now a publicly owned for-profit company whose first responsibilityis to maximum shareholder return.
In pursuit of that aim, it attempts to provide relevant search results to internet users. Its success in that endeavour is basic to its reason for existence, i.e., pleasing shareholders by maximizing profit from its activities.
If you do not like that fact of life, you don’t like the free enterprise system. Too bad.
Google has no legal or moral obligation to any webmaster, nor does any webmaster have any obligation to Google.
2. Technology produces opportunity for free advertising. Contrived publicity for newspapers, radio, and television is an attempt at free advertising. High placement in SERP is now also an opportunity for free advertising for the fortunate few. So who owes that to you?
SEO to get higher placement than competitors is an attempt to get free advertising from the internet that you otherwise may not get without the SEO. The SEO enterprise is going to be hazardous to someone. Either you jostle someone else out of high pl;acement or you may get the shaft yourself. So what is your complaint aginst Google?
If the lust for high placement at the expense of others is not the reason for all this fretting about Google’s methodology, then what is it? High placement for you means that someone else misses out on that exact same placement. Too bad for them. So if you miss out, that’s too bad for you also, you selfish pig.
3. Google does not attempt to police the internet. Google polices its own search engine results. How well it does that is really not my business unless I am a shareholder o