Matt Cutts and the paid links

You are getting it wrong..
according to Matt Cutts in the update you will not harm your competitor this way.. because they simplay discount those links from passing any PR to the target site, but the site you bought with high PR to dismiss your competitor will eventually loose its ability to pass PR. so by your action if anyone will get penalized, it would be YOU, not your competitor.

However the scenario will be different if you go and search for your competitor's backlinks, and report 'Potential' paid links to google, then you 'may' get those links discounted and 'may' see a huge drop in your competitor's ranking as well as other sites linked from the reported sites.

Thats the way it works..

 

These are copyright notices. I think it highly unlikely that Google has any interest in discounting such links. They are legitimate "votes" for the software and the webpage for downloading the software.

That's a different situation from your first example. That's just cross-linking your sites.

No. Nothing is going to happen merely as a result of reporting a competitor. Report as many "potential paid links" as you wish. You cannot do any damage unless those lin ks are "actual paid links".

 

YES!!! I AGREE...

Matt Cutts will rub his lamp and a genie will come out and tell - "Ohh Matt, Ohh Matt, this is not a paid link.. don't filter it.."

Or Matt's got his own Oracle???

 

Are you seriously suggesting he's just going to take your word for it?

 

No.. I am not suggesting that, neither Matt has said so in his blog, but there is no way of telling accurately that whether a link is actually paid or not. Ministrel remember, To err is a human or machine for that matter..

Suppose someone has a site with a column named 'other useful resource' with 10 links under it. 2 of those are paid but still relevant to the subject of the site, rest are unpaid. now how can anyone tell which link is paid and which is not other than the owner of the linking site and the owner of the linked site?

and if google is sure that there are paid links on the site but unsure that which are paid, they will simply devalue the entire site/page/links, because google's policy is 'guilty until proved otherwise'. and that is what should concern anyone.

While if they concentrate on only mutual relevancy of the linking and linked page, and quality of the information provided by the content regardless link payment, it would work better.
It will work even in the examples given by Matt in his update where a site providing info on Linux links to sites selling Viagra, Porn and promoting Gambling. Why is it so difficult to focus on relevancy and quality without creating fuss about paid links?

If he is talking about paid but only spam links, then it doesnt make any sense either because his job is to eliminate all Spam no matter paid or not.

 

I think you underestimate Google. See http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/tell-me-about-your-backlinks/

See above.

Nonsense. The doomsday scenario you describe is ludicrous.

They're already doing that. And link buyers and sellers are aware of that. This is the next phase.

This is one arm of a multifaceted attack on attempts to subvert Google rankings. You continue to react as if this is something new and one dimensional. It's neither.

 

So why did you ever join the coop network, Minstrel?

 

hey minstrel I agree with everything you have said on this thread...people are blowing this thing way out of proportion.....plus matt cutts said they will use the information submitted to improve the algo......not to penalize individual sites.....

 

To try it out.

1. It was a long time ago, two or three years now.
2. The major Google campaign aimed at discounting invalid clicks became apparent to me shortly after I joined.
3. I had tried it on two forums. It was removed from both within 2-3 months because (a) it didn't help and (b) I anticipated that if continued longer it would hurt those sites.

In other words, I learned that 2004-2005 technology and SEO strategies were not going to work much longer. Apparently, you and others lack that capacity.

 

Ahh, ic. So you didn´t want to manipulate Googe rankings and outrank others by doing something not benefitting you in other ways than improving your rankings, right?

 

Huh? Is there a point in there somewhere? Preferably a point related to this thread, which is a discussion of Google's decision to discount paid links?

ALL search engine optimization is designed to improve search engine rankings and to "outrank others". Didn't you know that?

 

Interesting. So please explain to us the difference between joining the coop network to try to increase your rankings and someone buying links to increase his rankings. Other than one being free and the other being paid of course.

 

I would have thought that was clear from my first reply to your question.

There is no difference. That's why I stopped using the Coop a long time ago. I think those links were long ago discounted.

 

Exactly. I dare google or anyone else to go to one of my sites and find links that are paid for. It won't happen because it isn't possible.

 

Read this.

 

Considering how impossible it is for Google to detect paid links, there are an awful lot of nervous link sellers that have passed through this thread.

Even if Google is totally incompetent at detecting links, people won't be so quick to buy links. Just look out how many hundreds of blog posts/articles have popped up about Google's war on paid links. That info will spread and new webmasters won't be so quick to jump into link buying.

I can also see a lot of new webmasters spending time reporting paid links of competitors, rather than improving their site.

Don't worry though, when your link selling biz tanks, you can always go start on of those forex, ponzi/or HYIP scams instead.

 

Nothing Outstanding, that clears my doubts..

Although I have a feeling that Google is not able to detect all the paid links neither they have any intention to do so, as of now.

The points in the Matt's post -

Its not hard to tell the link is paid if you know the network that is selling links.
Matt knew that the linking site is selling links.

Its not as easy in broader scenario, he further says

Not hard to tell if a site is OVER doing recip or paid links, but what about the sites those are not overdoing it? Not so easy...

and thats my point, its not so easy (Virtually impossible) to tell the exact paid link.

Ofcourse, it doesnt take a genius to tell that TLA links are paid, or links under 'Sponsored' or 'advertisment' tag are paid or links in paid review blogs are paid. if someone look into ketv.com example that he mentioned in his blog anyone can notice that links tagged under advertisement are paid, These link are ads but still passing PR to linked site
Links example -

<div class="link">
            Uline.com for cardboard
            <a href="http://www.uline.com/">

              Buy moving boxes
            </a>
          </div>
          <div class="link">
            <a href="http://www.crystaloccasion.com/">
              Personalized Gifts
            </a>
          </div>
          <div class="link">
            <a href="http://www.internetautoguide.com/">

              Used Cars for Sale
            </a>
          </div>

Code (markup):

No nofollow, no internal redirect, just direct links
People unaware of Google's stand on paid links would still believe that these links can help them in ranking high.

So detecting such links are not a genius job, pretty easy IMO and doesnt prove google's ability to detect 'any' and 'Actual' paid link. They are going to target 'potential' paid links, no matter whether it is actually paid or not but certainly not all potential paid links.

 

I don't think anyone is saying that all paid links are equally easy to detect, or that Google knows how to detect all of them.

If that were the case, why would they be working hard to improve the detection rate?

But you'd have to be a naive simpleton to think that Google doesn't have a lot of information about who is buying and selling links. They have an immense database of links and backlinks - and enormous aggregate computing power. Do you really think they've been using all that information for the benefit of link buyers and sellers and other SE scammers?

 

Yes, you were suggesting that, when you say google is going to target only 'actual' paid links. you suggested that they exactly know how to detect all of them.
if Google doesnt know how to detect them all, and they are 'trying' to improve their Algorithm, chances are many( not few, not some, but many) 'potential' or 'suspected' paid links will get devalued no matter whether they were 'actually' paid or not. Despite all Computing power, human resource, there is no sure-shot method to tell whether a link is paid or not. The Computing power runs on mere human made Algorithms that were never been Accurate, far from being perfect.
And I am damn sure they are not/will not put any manual effort on the links already detected/devauled/banned by the Algorithm...

They have the same massive computing power and human resource for adsense, and dont tell me that all publishers who got banned from adsense were violating the TOS..

Not all link buyers and sellers are SE scammers......

 

For the love of Pete, please try to refrain from the absolutely absurd. What I said was that Google was not going to take your word for it when it comes to a spam report. They will check your report and make their own decision as to whether there is link buying going on. How do you trune that into "Google can detect ALL paid links?".

So is your point that this allows other webmastes to defame your site? or that Google may accidentally discount the PR value of some of your incoming or outgoing links? And if the latter, why are you so concerned if a link or two IS discounted? You may not have paid for a link on some two-bit link-farm directory either (I have some of those pointing to my pages that were not requested nor approved by me) but if Google discounts that link and it kills your site you have a lot more to worry about than Google's spam filtering algorithms.

That's off-topic here but if you'd like to start a new thread I'll be more than happy to debate that issue with you as well.

And where did I say they were? You really need to learn to read English. That's part of the reason (only part) that paid links are discounted rather than penalized. As has been said repeatedly ad nauseum in this thread, Google recognizes that it is legitimate practice to purchase advertising, whether that's a link, a blogroll, or a banner. You are free to do this as much as you like. You should be aware that you will likely receive no PR value from these ads, however. And THAT is the whole point of what Cutts has said and the whole point of this thread.

How to report paid links: Update, May 12th, 2007