We had posted in April that Google will penalize people for selling text links. We also surmised that this would bring the fall to companies like Text Link Ads. Over the last week or so bloggers have finally seen that those selling links are being penalized through page rank. Lower page rank to them means a lower income.
Has Google with this penalization brought the Fear of Google God into you?
This may only be the beginning of penalization for those sites that sell links. If you do sell links you may want to add the nofollow to those links ASAP and notify your customers.
Collin
October 13, 2007 2:48 pm
I really don’t see what the problem is or why google cares. Is it because people are basicly buying there ranks?
Matt
October 13, 2007 9:54 pm
There’s nothing wrong with what Google’s doing with paid links. Google is based around linking, and the idea that you link to quality sites. By people buying links on another’s site, this unbalances Google’s index. This is one of the reasons “nofollow” exists; for that if you’re linking to a site that isn’t good quality, you don’t want to give them any “ranking juice” or it’s a paid link. But, companies like Text Link Ads don’t allow people to add nofollow onto the paid links, and will actually ban you if you do.
What Google is actually doing is detecting paid links and making sure that those paid links to a site aren’t counting towards their ranking in Google’s index (their PageRank basically, but Google’s internal PageRank is much more complicated then the number they give sites). Basically, paid links are unbalancing Google’s search index, and Google is just re-balancing to the way it should be.
What Google is doing is perfectly acceptable. Paid links should only be for traffic, and not getting a higher ranking in Google.
blogadmin
October 13, 2007 9:59 pm
How do you know which are paid for and which are not?
Matt
October 13, 2007 10:16 pm
Well, it’s Google, I’m sure they made up some complex mathematical algorithm for finding paid links. ;)
Besides, a lot of paid links are either listed all together, around something that says “Paid Links”, “Featured Sites”, etc, near a link that says something like “buy a link”, etc. Or they’re banners that’re placed in without the use of JS, meaning the links to them will affect search engine rankings, and meaning that Google’s Bots are able to see them and probably “label” them as paid.
blogadmin
October 13, 2007 10:19 pm
According to Google Matt it is user submitted.
Hence why I worry about a witch hunt.
Matt
October 13, 2007 10:23 pm
Hmm… I can’t see that lasting long if Google actually does want to stop paid links from affecting their index… It would cost way to much (in money, time and resources) to keep it at just user submitted, eventually (if they want to) they’ll probably just end up making an algorithm for it…
Actually, yes, I now remember reading that it’s currently user submitted to…
blogadmin
October 13, 2007 10:25 pm
So that leads me to believe that people will either have to do one of the following.
1. Sell your links through a 3rd party like Text Link Ads
2. Private sales on a domain setup just for selling links.
3. Using a large image to sell links.
Matt
October 13, 2007 10:27 pm
What people need to do is add a nofollow to paid links, that’s all…
Ashok Kumar
October 15, 2007 1:43 am
Ya, No Follow link may helpful……………