Thats the key --isn't? Directories are just not link firms. Every directory has a policy which site to list and which not to. They are human edited.
I do agree with the whole private and public information thing dvduval but the biggest worry for me is that G does not have to be too smart to figure out that a directory is charging for listings because the info is right there in the open on the submit pages. Because it will be almost impossible to punish the buyers of the links it would stand to reason that at some point G might take a serious look at punishing the sellers, if the sellers PR's were penalized then I guess the buyers would have less reason to make the purchases and therefore it would net G the end result they want to achieve.
Same thing would happen I imagine, punish the sellers because it is impossible to punish the buyers? I should say that I probably don't see this happening any time soon, if at all. G realizes that it's adsense publishers are the same people selling links and with so many other good options to adsense out there already I don't think they want to shoot themselves in the foot by making webmasters angry. My personal opinion is that spammers are a way bigger threat to G's integrity and they have their hands full fighting them. I really think that G is just trying to appease the folks that complain about link buying and selling.
This idea is beyond rediculous. Are not paid links nothing more than advertising? That real estate site that sells ad space to the local decorator or landscaper is going to get punished or banned from the search engines because they "sold links" - total lunacy. Our local paper has tons of what common sense would say are paid ads on their website. Can anyone honestly argue that this advertising was done for PR? Not very likely. If all paid links are going to be discredited, banned or whatever - assuming G isn't doing this to research a way to make more money - G should start with their own site. Does any Adwords advertiser purchase advertising for PR? Yeah, sure they do. And, there's the entire aspect of being able to torpedo a competitor's site by purchasing a few links. In some ways, as an industry, we've brought some level of scrutiny on ourselves. We all complain at the QBCs who give the directory industry a bad name with their lack of original content, categories and poorly edited categories. Yet, it's the webmaster and directory categories on these obviously crappy sites that fill up the fastest - just a tad hypocritical, is it not?
You have a good point there but I think you are wrong in one affirmation. I don't think AdWords affects the pagerank, the only thing that comes from AdWrods is traffic...
Matt Cuts is no one to tell how the internet will work.... If we go according to him only the things which are for benefit of google are allowed and others are not. Google is allowed to Cheat the publishers on the name of Smart Pricing but we are not allowed to sell links directly because then google will not have its share in those links....
Lets not forget to mention, what happens when someone adds a site to their site just because they came across yours and liked it, even if it's totally unrelated? This is just some sort of scare tactic. w/e
hmm i dont think this worth something ... Matt Cutt [ i got two words for ya] S**k it. i run a paid directory and will continue running one too.
G should definitively not do that! How many webmasters/web owners will be mad at Google... it this giant goes too far, could we expect acting against... let's do something and stop that shit!
there is a whole economy built around the buying and selling of links.The financial risk are too great for alot of webmasters for the system to be demolished
ahh 4 year old thread.. I'm sure this is all accurate try looking for info with "2007" near it...lmao
Only if those filters have 0% correlation which usually doesn't happen. Quite the contrary, those things tend to be rather correlated. Depends. If I have an article about early explorers on my site and I link from within the context of the article to the sailing ships site the algo can easily determine from surrounding text that the link is relevant (the power of presell pages). If the link is somewhere on a links page or blogroll or footer there is no surrounding text to support it, hence irrelevant.
I started this thread based on new comments Matt Cutts made on his blog just the other day. I have no idea why a moderator would have added my thread to one that is 2 years old.....oh well.
Weird? It does seem like an odd thing to do, I agree. Still, they know best and have their reasons for it (the mods I mean. Not Google).
Dude, old or new, this will keep getting new posts and updates. It´s interesting to see how things develop. No matter how right or wrong the OP might be.