Can Google really tell a paid from non paid link?

Is there any proof of this? If so, what is that? I would have to assume that a robot really can't tell, and that the staff at Google simply have a list of sites which they have found notorious for accepting payment for links. I'm sure they have done plenty of snooping around for these types of sites. So if they find a link from one of these sites to your site, what does Google do? Does the PR algorhytym work the same way for a paid link as for a non paid link?

 

no one really knows the answer since google hasn't really tried to crack down on link buying that aggressively... i dont think webmasters will really know what will happen with G algo until major changes are made

 

i dont think so ..

 

you can find some of the paid link depending on the some criterias but i dont think google can find the all the paid links

 

Google can't find paid link but sure they will able to find in future.

 

maybe cross linked with public list of sales database, but I dont think so. It is usually best to have a mix of paid / non-paid links

 

I don't think so unless your link is under something like "Sponsored Links", "Buy Link Here" or totally offtopic.

 

i don't think they can identify, it's just that the better sites charge therefore the link is more respected

whereas the link won't be as powerful on a free website with proabably less pr

 

They surely have a way. They will not declare it publicly, whatever method they are using until someone discovers it accidentally.

 

And even then it won't be confirmed. My guess is that they'll do the usual... look for links around text with words like "sponsors", etc. My guess is though most of it will be editorial. Some of the bigger paid directories, etc. might be flagged as selling PR... and their value just won't be counted anymore. On wide scale with known big sites selling links, it could really affect the serps.

 

Diversify to protect against any algorithm changes and don't lose sleep over it - if one type of link gets devalued you got a lot more to keep you afloat.

 

In many cases where you, as a human, can tell the difference, it's likely not all that hard for a robot.

Sig's are easy enough to tell, just look for the "__________________" and the end of a post (at least on vB forums). Then look after the first post here on DP, yeah, they say "ads by google" but even if they didn't there is a good chance the average human would say there was something amiss with such link placement. With that, it'd not be all that far off, to think a robot could also see something 'different', especially if the links were non-topical. Footer links would be even easier to tell, as would rotating links.

While these things may not be applied mathematically in the algorithms yet, they likely will be in the future...and I'd honestly not put it past Google to already have something going now in a test phase (or even in partial effect).
Q

 

I've always thought it was: If your site is a golf site, and you link to someone's Britney Spears site, it's pretty obvious and easily detected. That, and of course, location near sponsored, ads, etc.

 

They can only assume that if a site has a footer with 20 unrelated links it is paid links.

 

I think they use a combination of Algo and human procedures. Certainly they are trying to get webmasters to grass on their fellow counterparts
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-to-report-paid-links/

That said they aren't levelling the playing field at all. Take someone like moneysupermarket.com, do a link search on their domain:
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.co...wm=i&bwms=p&bwmf=u&fr=yfp-t-501&fr2=seo-rd-se
and you see loads of links from http://money.independent.co.uk/personal_finance/tax/
and
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/8e7f311c-9735-11db-a680-0000779e2340.html
(I'll leave you to find the links, it's not hard)
These are very respectable sites yet you can bet your bottom dollar they are not banned from passing on link juice! So what that says to me is "you can buy links from sites on Googles "respected list" but all others, you must grass in! If I reported the FT or the independent do you think Google would ban them? Answers on a postcard!

 

Thanks for all the responses! I'm sure Google won't let on to what they're doing either. It always seems in their best interests to not let the cat out of the bag in these things.

That money.independent.co.uk site is a PR7 with a 2600 Alexa.. I'd like to get a link to my site from them. :>

 

I just have to say that following links is the absolute heart of the google algorithm. Even the very day that google started people have already bought links from different sites. It will be interesting to see how google tries to stem this "problem" without eventually getting their hand bitten quite hard.

Imagine if they somehow start to automate a "who has paid links" set of algorithms and it runs amok reporting and acting 20-30% of the indexed sites there-by decreasing those site's ability to pass PageRank. I would suspect that there will be a huge change in serps for almost any keyword and I'll bet my bottom dollar that the searches will not be as relevant any longer.

I personally think its too dangerous for google to be messing around with this core algorithm of theirs. Any executive inside that suggests it might even get a good tight slap from the bosses. Unless you are Cutts and he tries to get around it by not touching the algorithm and instead relying on webmasters to dob each other in.

 

Practically, at this point of time, its impossible to tell if any links are paid ones or not.

But seeing some patterns, google can close down to figuring out what paid links will mostly look like. It's a tough game, but not that tough to figure it out .

~G

 

Quite the opposite - most things easy for humans are very difficult for 'bots or 'droids.