Some of us actually have real jobs to go to, Blobmaster, unlike you. You got fired from your last real job 2 or 3 years ago, followed by being deported as an illegal immigrant, so I can understand why you find that difficult to understand. I was hoping you'd learn some social skills in prison but obviously that didn't happen. All you learned was some new ideas for scamming people.
Best post on this never ending thread. IMO-- Nobody --I think know about Google's real intentions --all view expressed here are individual rather than concrete inside information of Google. have Google hired you guys? Live-and-Let Live.
Point Counter Point Looks like Minstrel is the winner of having superior bickering skills! Is this your site Minstrel: FREE Health & Mental Health Resources Directory If it is, are those featured links at the bottom of the page? If so, how do I BUY a spot? Or do you just sell sig spots, or maybe just freely promote sites which sell links?
One of them, yes. It's a strictly human-edited niche directory and, yes, listing are free. Yep. AdSense at the top. TLA ads at the bottom. Thanks for the plug. You can also see them at Psycholopy and Self-Help Forums: - AdSense at top, another ad banner at bottom, TLA ads below that. Have you ever known me to say anything anywhere suggesting that I think advertising is bad? What was your point.
Ohh -Yes --I sell links. I also buy links. I posted 4/5 comments about it on the page of Matt Cutts' BLOG we are discussing here. I even left my site link on his BLOG and with very few links it got PR6 ( Matt Cutts' Effect ) Besides --On that post-Matt Cutts' praised a particular BLOG for following Purist SEO technique (Calcacium or something like that ) . What I did was --extracted all the backlinks of that BLOG Matt Cutts was referring and posted its backlinks which had manipulated PR9 link from Netscape, and some PR8 backlinks which were surely bought ( I still have screenshot of that link extraction operation of mine for proof). I predicted that --that BLOG would be PR7 by this update as the owner bought lots of high PR links as well. And lo-and -behold --it is PR7 now After the update --I went to the post again and asked Matt some specific questions like -how does he judges Good SEO from Bad SEO without knowing anything? Or is it the case that Matt Cutts has personal favorites and they are allowed to buy links!!!!!! I also asked Matt again and again to send me an e-mail -so that I could send him concrete proofs as I didn't want him to embarass publicly because he was personally endorsing that particular BLOG and I had proof against that BLOG. It was doing the same most f us -5% webmasters do --BUY/SELL LINKS. PS -- One commentator pointed out that Matts Favorite BLOG was displaying Text-Link-Ads Banner--and he was really embarassed.
I doubt that. Why would Cutts be embarrassed about advertising? Google advertises and Google accepts advertising. So do most sites these days. No one is worried about that. Cutts isn't telling anyone they shouldn't buy or sell advertising. All he is saying is that when you purchase advertising, whether it's a link or a banner, don't expect to see any boost in PageRank coming from that advertising. By the way, you do realize that .gov and .edu links are not special at all regarding PageRank or search engine ranking, don't you? By selling those links, are you not exploiting the hopelessly uninformed and naive?
Sorry --I could not explain properly. Matt Cutts was giving an example of a SEO BLOG --and prasing the owner of that BLOG --for following traditional pure --SEO technique. When we visited that BLOG --we found that it was displaying the affiliate banner of www.text-link-ads.com ( Google is just a Hypocritic giant --on the one hand it tries to stop paid links and on the other gives authority status to sites that exclusively deals with paid links --Pls CHECK HERE)-- the ultimate example of what Google was is trying to stop. So much for PURIST SEO --BOOTOMLINE -----All BUY/SELL links. Matt was embarrased because the example he was giving was also engaged into what he was trying to STOP. Are you sure about that? As far as my understanding goes after reading Matts posts -- I reckon he is asking webmasters not to give indiscriminate VOTE ( in Google's terms) to other sites and use NO-FOLLOW or use Javascript ( as Google does) so that PR does not Pass. Matt never said NO-Advertising. What he was trying to say was not to make site who advertise STRONGER by passing PR and hence let them MANIPULATE SERPs. I guess you might have a fair idea of --what I know and don't know from above comments. But I am a professional links dealer and have to cater to different clients and their different wishes --whatever weird that may be. So Chill and Cheers. PS: Example of a client's DEMAND ::: I have a client who specially instructed me not to build more than 5 links per month.
That's exactly what I said in my previous ^^^ post. And neither Matt Cutts nor anyone else at Google is naive enough to believe that webmasters are all going to use rel=nofollow for their advertising links. Google will solve this issue the way they solve all issues - through changes to their algorithms and filters.
Yes --you are right there that Google is allowing webmasters to advertise. But do you think anybody would buy links if NO-FOLLOW tag is used? I am a person of reality not Theory -or dreams -my friend. Have a look at OZZU, Webproworld, --webmasterworld -- they are as good as Dead forums. And please compare them with DP. On the other -hand I think Sitepoint also uses No-Follow ( I am not sure -lemme admit it) -- but it is still vibrant because its more than just a forum. PR has been a Google product --and now it has become its Frankenstein ( sorry if the spelling is wrong) --can it stop it? The question is -- Can google stop it? That is what most webmasters asked to Matt --and he had no answers to those questions! Maybe he just took inputs from webmasters and after getting them -he is now busy working on it with his engineers. ( Please notice the word "Maybe") Practically --it looks impossible. Because --you don't charge to list high quality sites in your directory. But I charge to list crappy sites in my directory. You are also giving votes to high quality sites and I am also giving votes to crappy sites. It the BOTs --not humans who are deciding the status of links --are they smart enough to differentiate your VOTES and my VOTEs? I am not selling links --I am selling advertising space in my directory. And webmasters are buying advertising from me because they want their site as visible as they want. I remember one commentator -terming Google as Gestapo and Matt and ..... Matt was really upset about it. But in reality Google is really doing that. By trying to force all advertisers to only advertise through AdSense. Monopoly is not GOOD in any sense --I think Bill Gates and Microsoft have some experiences.
Absolutely. I really can't see how a bot will be able to differentiate between a paid link and a non-paid link. My gut feeling is that they'll resort to webmasters reporting paid links which, of course, opens up a whole new can of worms. In their own way, they're admitting that the whole PR approach is screwed. Is it part of them wanting an online advertising monopoly? I'm not so sure about that. Sure, they want to create a few barriers to entry for the new players but I'm sure they're not so stuck up their own a** to think that they could do that. Do they? Do they?
Well, some sites are more obvious than others. But of course, if they do it right, they will still not be able to tell whether a blog post which is well written with a link to a site is paid or not.
I think we should all just give Google access to all of our bank accounts, paypal accounts and credit cards so that they can determine if we have paid for our links. (JOKE)
Advertising space is NOT the same as a link that passes PR. Places that I buy advertising from give me a javascript link or a no follow. They don't help my SERPs, but I'm paying for that targeted traffic. People should not be able to pay for links that help their serps, because it won't be about quality sites anymore, it will be about who can spend more money. If you really want to be that lazy, then pay someone to write good content for you instead. At least THAT will add more quality to your site. Google DOES want everyone to use adwords/adsense, because that's good business for them. Adsense does NOT pass page rank. You are still free to use any other advertiser, but Google prefers that you use advertising that doesn't pass Page Rank. Google IS evil, but in this case they are helping out the little guys/girls while they are helping themselves.
Oh god minstrel give us a break. Google has been whoring links for centuries and making huge money off of it. Spare us the google is holier then thou attitude. If google can do it why cant these people do it also? Gabriel i disagree. for years it never has been if a site is a qulity site or not. If this were the case webmasters would concentrate solely on buiulding huge authority sites with great info and as we all know this simply isnt the case. Im sure there are sites out there that are just as good at craigslist orbusiness.com but they dont have the deep pockets to get links and seo'ed witha massive link campaign. This is a business first and foremost, lets not forget this. Arguing against buying links on a moral standpoint is simply hillarious.
Bullshit. Google already discounts links known to be purchased. Can they stop ALL of it? Probably not. Can they stop most of it? I'd say so, given time. And that's fine with Google. And fine with me. And fine with anyone buying those listings as long as they understand that they're not getting full PR, if any, from most of those directories. Umm... yes you did. Would you like me to publish the emails from your former boss? Quite. Well said. And that's what Google has always said. Build your site for visitors, not PR, and the PR will flow organically. Another one who apparently cannot understand the difference between advertising and PR buying and selling. It's not rocker science. Why is it so difficult for you people to get this? Who's arguing on moral grounds? I'm arguing on pragmatic grounds. Google doesn't want those links to contaminate their search results. And they have the power to devalue them and they will devalue them, make no mistake about it. That's business, not morality.
Google is selling pr6 partner links for 10,000/year, but I do not see them using nofollow on the links http://www.google.com/enterprise/gep/directory_apps.html
Forget the rel=nofollow part - that's a red herring and a smokescreen. There's some suggestion that even Googlebot isn't respecting it. But with or without nofollow, it doesn't mean that PR is flowing along those links. Google sells advertising. They've never made a secret of that and they've never condemned that in anyone else.