I think people need to grab a dose of reality with respect to Google. They certainly have a lot of information available to them, but it is incredibly hard to devise a reliable AUTOMATIC way to detect these issues. And, if you consider how many web pages they index, they sure won't be trying to do this by hand. Finally, their base algorithm is built up from measuring links from page to page on the Internet. Of course they want to try to keep this algorithm as reliable as possible, but they can't stamp out market forces... People have a financial incentive to rank well in the search engines!
Yes, its impossible to determine with 100% accuracy when a link is a paid link and when its a natural link, but there are often times when its blatantly obvious. Sites that have a dozen links on their main page to totally unrelated sites in a footer or other obscure location on that page are easy to spot. Sites that have areas on a page that are labeled "Sponsored Links" also make the job simple. We can only guess at how Google looks at directories whose primary purpose is to sell links. Matt Cutt's recent BLOG posting that asks webmasters to report paid links is raising a lot of heated rhetoric, with the usual accusations of Google being a hypocritical, monopolistic, megalomaniac. Matt never says what action Google intends to take when they detect paid links, but the perpetually outraged amongst the Google-bashers all seem to think they intend to penalize the link targets, although that's not what they've done in the past. What I've seen is Google cutting off a site's ability to pass on PageRank when they detect paid links. If you watch for this, you'll find it sooner or later. A site will have a main page with a decent PageRank score, but all of its internal pages show PR0 no matter how well-established those pages are in Google's index.
The main problem for Google is how to determine paid links from natural Links and also Paid Links for honest advertising from paid links to affect SERPs.
i think that google may realise as well though is that alot of link buyers buy links because they care about they sites they own and buying links is a form of advertising..would you spend money on a site you dont care about?If the links is revelent,then it carries more weight
It all seems rather ironic when you consider that buying membership in the yahoo directory costs $300. That makes it one of the highest pay for inclusion sites out there. If it all turns out to be true, the Yahoo folks won't be too happy.
Google does most things algorithmically, they don't have the time or resources to evaluate sites and determine which are paid links. Even if they did come up with a way to manually or automatically determine this, they simply can't use that information to bring down a sites ranking in any way. It would be way too easy for competitors with decent amounts of cash to bring down their competitors by buying tons of bad paid links. Overall, paid links can only help or do nothing at all. They won't hurt anything. In the long run the paid links will eventually lose their effectiveness as the search engines evolve.
What is the difference between a paid link and an advertising banner/link on another site such as a newspaper? Are you suggesting that they should penalise BMW (again) for buying banner ads in a major american newspaper? Or if they buy text ads in the same? Where do you draw the line? Is advertising (text sales) in a highly related site less genuine than advertising on a site that is not related to your product (i.e in a newspaper) but is seen by more people. I think that link sales (or advertising or whatever you want to call it) are legitimate if in context. Google do not say that they frown on this. Buying links to artificially increase your PR is what they frown on - and already penalise - with a relevance filter.
Google allready has the related: operator command, and in combination with their Adsense technologies are able to determine what a page is about. For outbound links on a page, no doubt they can determine how related it is. All they would have to do is place "weight" for links on a sliding scale in terms of relevency. A page about cars, with a link to a car site = 100% weight A page about cars, with a link to a truck site = 90% weight A page about cars, with a link to a viagra site = 0% weight They don't have to determine if a links is paid, an enchange, a 3 way exchange, a guestbook/blog spam entry etc. Also they wont introduce a "penalty" for unrelated links, as this could be manupulated by a competitor to knock you out of the serps. It just won't "assist" you, ie if you paid for the link you've wasted your money unless it's for traffic purposes.
No one knows what would be the next criteria of google in ranking a site. I'm sure content and quality links will still be one of the most important criteria.
google is responsible to make webmaster fight again each other.They must admit that we buy links also for a traffic.The corporate have really big advantage outsourcing a webmaster like me in term of "money". Honestly, i use it as a legitimate way to increase traffic.The link buyer is being proactive like any good business person, and the seller gets compensated for their time, bandwidth and other assets, such as their own hard-earned Page Rank. Large corporate sites already have a huge advantage over smaller sites, no matter how good the content on the smaller site is. Their brand recognition alone makes it more likely that they will receive more incoming links. So giving smaller sites the ability to purchase a human-reviewed, page-rank-passing listing actually levels the playing field more than dissalowing the practice completely.
i think nobody can decide that the link is paid or not. google can not understand too. i think google can look if the site is the same category or not. G is doing this now .
Ten years ago nobody would believe a search engine could automatically detect spam ... but they'd only be half right. I don't think Google wants to kill every paid link, more like the 80/20 rule. If they devalue the most obvious examples, that will make a show for everybody to enjoy - stock holders included.
I was thinking of possible ways Google could detect paid links for a blog post and came up with the following * 1. Devalue unrelated links more? - If there seems to be no reason why a particular link should be on a page, I suppose it wouldnt hurt to devalue that link. * 2. Increase reliance on the trust of a site? - Not sure about this as even TRUST has been made a commodity by Google as can by seen by the sudden increase in Viagra from educational institutes. * 3. Detect common link selling signs more? - This is an interesting concept as a lot of lazy webmasters will be forced to move away from the Sponsored Sites link boxes into more creative links selling. * 4. Outbound links ratio? - This is a bit hard to determine as all pages are different but coupled with no.1 may give algorithms some clues. * 5. Inbound links ratio? - I think this maybe interesting and by this I mean the inbound linking that a typical site would get would I presume be mostly on one page but this should reflect on links to other pages. If a site is getting 99% links on one page by one or two keywords, say the homepage maybe the algo could devalue it as unnatural linking. This is probably already used by Google in some way but putting more emphasis on this may deter some link buying. Anyone can think of other ways?
I think they are not going to implement this policy. The link market has become too bog which is driving Google and making it favorite to webmasters. As Matt mentioned -- he is just getting feedbacks -for a new search algo to test with some sites. I'll wait what he replies to my comments --and if he takes up my points I'll offer him 2 of my sites (for one I bought links and for another I didn't buy links due to lack of $$ ) and ask him to differentiate. I don't believe their algo has become cleverer than a human. If it has -- then iRobot will become a reality in few years time End of human domination.
They will not do rewarding or crackdown those things. like many said, how the heck can they know which sites are buying links or not. Without buying link and link exchange, can you suggest me any other way to get backlink without anyone visit your website? ..... if they do crackdown, I would rather trust MSN or Yahoo or other search engines.......
- Position of the links on the page - lots of paid links appear near and around footers or at the bottom of navbars. Also the anchor text used in inbound links - I mean if site's have a large number of inbound links with a particular phrase that is not their official site name this would ring alarm bells I'd assume. LOL do you think Google cares about the market. Google's motto is "Do no evil" they are going to do whatever is within their power to make their primary service as of a highest possible standard that means refining the search algorithms to place the best quality sites at the top - not just the ones with the biggest advertising budgets. They will most certainly attempt to crack down on this behavior, but that is not to say that link selling won't continue - it will just have to adapt to the changes that Google implement. One thing that I think people often over look is that Google isn't run as a single entity - rather as a collection of entities that run independant of eachother. For example Matt Cutts works with the search side of things but doesn't have anything to do with the AdSense or AdWords or Google Maps or any of the other sections of Google. Google is run by lots and lots o f development teams. Now whilst there might be a slight degree consideration for other projects, my understanding is that these team are primarily focused on refining their own area of operations without consideration for the other aspects of Google for the large part. The best way I know how to get backlinks without buying or doing link exchanges is just creating a good site and asking your loyal visitors to link to you if they have a related website of their own. It really isn't rocket science. I mean all the best sites in my industry wouldn't be paying a cent for back links, why? because they'd get hundreds every month just by being the great sites they are. As for trust MSN and Yahoo - unfortunately most people prefer good search results and it is exactly steps like this that put Google ahead of the pack when it comes to search results. They have users interests at heart not marketers. So I think you will find that these sorts of changes won't create an exodus of users but rather quite the opposite.