Google is dropping all Keywords to those sites that have sold text links on them

So far their rules have included indexing (and ranking highly) many MFA sites, so I doubt my 'rules' would be any worse than the ones they are already using.

As you pointed out before, they can't force me, only penalize me. I also believe at some point if they keep exercising their 'rights' to penalize sites then because of their virtual monopoly in the search market they will run into anti-trust issues.

 

You're missing the point: You make rules for your sites and directories. I make rules for mine. Google makes the rules for Google.

More nonsense. Google's Guidelines for Webmasters have been published and prominently displayed since the beginning, with few major changes. The prohibitions against selling PR, link farms, link exchanges designed to manipulate ranking, etc., etc., are simply public statements of policies affecting their ranking algorithms. There is no anti-trust issue there. And their virtual monopoly is still based on delivering better results than their competitors - that's not an anti-trust issue either.

 

it is actually quite brilliant.

brilliant for Google, that is.
Think about it, since the paid text link sites will lose business, these businesses will need to still get advertising which could translate to newbie Adsense subscribers AND the "some" of the paid text link sellers will opt for displaying Adsense ads since they lost some income. So big G could wins both ways. On the other hand, don;t underestimate webmasters, they will go for more traditional selling, basic SEO.

so will it be the SEO'ers or big G.

The 901 lbs chimp to be exact.
it is still growing on HGH or the clear.
if it works out for G, expect the latecomers Yahoo to follow like a year later along with Microsoft.

good thing, I was always getting quality links from good sites.

 

Here's the antitrust issue.

If example.com is selling text link ads, it is ok for Google to cut off the PR juice example.com is sending to the link buyers.

However, if Google penalize example.com in any other way as to unnaturally downgrade its SERP performance, Google is essentially punishing a webmaster for choosing a competing advertising platform over their own.

If example.com has a lot of great content that used to rank high on Google's SERP, why would Google have any justification for negatively impacting its SERP after the TLA crackdown?

If anything, example.com should rank even HIGHER than before. Now that it no longer passes PR juice to TLA sites, it is actually passing even more PR internally.

By taking example.com out of the SERP, Google has made its search results less relevant for the reader.

Here's a good example. Let's say the New York Times joined TLA. Will Google be justified in taking NYT out of the SERP?

 

that is my point too.
Sites like Ticketmaster (a PR8 site), GM, LendingTree , Ebay etc can't have footer partner links at the bottom of the page..?
Keep in mind, these footer links are sometimes sites they actually own. So yes, Ebay would be passing PR to their newly owned sites although they are in a totally different industry. Why can't we do the same ?

Don't some NYSE owned tech companies have co-partnership agreements to co-market each others products. and for that matter, privately owned companies too?

Essentially, that is simply what TLA ads is, co-marketing except for some blatant home-based shops.

If you are a bona-fide company with products or have a plethora of site related on-topic content, you should not be penalized even if you sell text links, (i.e. dropped from your KW SERPS).

 

More misguided and misinformed nonsense. Think about it.

1. There are plenty of advertising companies beyond Google. For many people, AdSense isn't even the biggest source of revenue.

2. Google isn't penalizing advertising links. It's simply nullifying the PR value of certain types of links.

Sorry, but you are also operating on a false premise.

1. Google isn't penalizing sites for publishing advertising, text links or otherwise. That text link ad is still an ad. It just doesn't have an impact on PageRank. And that is not an anti-trust issue.

2. Google has penalized certain sites for blatant advertising of the PageRank value of their ads. It doesn't penalize advertising companies from furnishing ads to its publishers. All it's doing is penalizing companies for what in effect is (or soon will be) false claims about the value of their ads. And that is not an anti-trust issue either.

If example.com ranked high because of links they bought from other companies, they will lose ranking. If they earned their former high ranking legitimately, they won't drop in rankings.

Nonsense. If example.com got to an artifically high ranking for specified terms as a result of buying links, eliminating the PR value of those links will cause a fall in serach rankings for example.com and make the Google rankings for those terms more relevant, not less.

What does "joined TLA" mean? If the NY Times (or anyone else) were to buy ads from TLA, they wouldn't be penalized. They'd still have the advertising value of such links. Similarly, if the Times were to publish TLA ads, those ads would still provide advertising value to the sites who bought the TLA.

Advertising is NOT being punished or penalized in any way. Gaming PageRank is being nullified. Promoting the sale of ads on the basis of gaming PageRank is being penalized. None of these are anti-trust issues.

 

I don't understand why you alway talk-down to people.

You don't know either of these things for a fact.

 

even my site is hit by the new algo . I used to get 350 uniques from google for a pet site now only 10

 

Actually, I do. And so would you if you'd bother to read what Google representatives have said about the matter.

 

I want to say thanks for coming in and giving your 2 cents worth in this thread. I have taken away much from the discussion that has happened in here. I do admit that there was a guru in here shedding some light on the matter. I will be re-reading this later to see if I can take some thing out of it.

 

If that's all Google does--i.e. strip PR from the outgoing links to link ads, then I totally agree with you. That is not an antitrust violation.

As I stated in my original post: "If example.com is selling text link ads, it is ok for Google to cut off the PR juice example.com is sending to the link buyers."

Penalizing webmasters for making unsubstantiated claims about passing on PR really doesn't improve SERPs for readers.

If having a great SERP for readers is Google's true goal, then cutting off the PR juice for sold links is enough to clean out the spam sites from the SERPs. Why should Google care about what webmasters say about their link advertising?

The only reason Google wants to penalize webmasters in this instance is because by selling links, the Webmasters are in effect competing against Google Adsense. The penalty you described is an anti-competitive act: leveraging a huge market share in one business (search engine) to dominate another (online advertising).

We probably agree on this point. I don't think anyone should benefit from paid links. However, I also don't think people should be penalized for selling them.

OK, to be clear, in my hypo, example.com is a webmaster who has built a website using purely whitehat seo methods. He doesn't buy links. He merely sells them. Sorry for the confusion.

I think we do agree on several issues, but may have missed each other's points due to some confusion.

We both agree that it Google should be able to turn off the link juice for paid links. That clearly improves SERP for readers so that's not an antitrust violation.

However, it would be wrong for Google to punish webmasters for selling links. You seem to believe that Google will only punish link sellers if they blatantly talk about their PR-passing ability of their links. As I stated before, this is an anti-competitive act.

We also disagree over how far Google will go. I think there is a chance that Google will punish ALL webmasters who sell links without the "no follow" tag (at least the ones who aren't the big boys like NYT). Let me ask you this, do you think it would be an antitrust violation if Google did that?

 

This happened to me for about 2 weeks and now my site has stablized int he serps again. Google is just tweaking stuff.
Just awhile and see what happens. The serps have been eradicate for last month. IMO
And no I'm not selling text links. I don't even have PR yet..

 

I don't fully trust what Google reps are saying at this point.

Weren't they the ones who once told us that the "no follow" tag is to fight comment spam in blogs?

How convenient for them that now it can also be used to wipe out advertising competitors.

The truth is, Google representatives are not bound by these public statements. They will do whatever is best for their company. No one will defend small webmasters like us because the public doesn't give a rats ass about whether my Justin Timberlake fan site is removed from the SERP or not because there are thousands of other JT sites to replace me once they're gone.

That's why we got to stick together.

 

That is for sure and that is why they won't do what you said below, they will continue to shroud it all in secrecy so there will be no proof to take to court. That is until someone disgruntled employee leaks internal documents.

 

The premise is false. That renders your conclusion false, too. It's not anti-competitive to enforce the rules by which Google ranks pages. That battle was already fought in the courts and Google won.

People are NOT penalized for selling links. They are penalized, sometimes, for selling PageRank. There's a difference.

Google punishes the buying and selling of PageRank. That's not anti-competitive. No one who plays by the rules is punished. Everyone is free to play by the rules. Only those who attempt to manipulate PR or advertise the buying and selling of PR are punished.

You can openly sell links or banners or anything else as advertising as much as you wish. Google will take no action against you for doing that.

No, it wouldn't be an anti-trust violation. And no, I really can't see Google doing that. If any "punishment" is meted out, it would be via nullifying the PR value of all inks without no-follow. I don't see Google going that far but even if they did it wouldn't be an anti-trust issue.

Frankly, I think the no-follow issue is a red herring. I don't use no-follow on any links and I won't. I acknowledge the right of Google to do nwhatever they want to protect PR but I'm not ngoing to do their work for them.

For other reasons (HONCode), all paid advertising links on my sites are clearly marked as advertisements. That distinguishes them from outgoing links that I've added as resources for my visitors. I don't see any reason to go beyond those measures.

 

That's a fascinating issue and I would love to hear your thoughts on the legal aspects (i.e. what cases you're thinking of). Here's my admittedly limited understanding, FWIW:

I assume you're talking about the Kinderstart case. There are two elements that separate the current situation with Kinderstart.

1. Kinderstart decision was handed out before the completion of Google's acquisition of DoubleClick. That acquisition raised Google's internet advertising market share even higher. The higher the market share, the greater the scrutiny a company will receive for antitrust claims.

2. Google is asking webmasters to place "no follow" tags on their link ads. That's an affirmative act of exclusion against other competitors. Google didn't do this in the Kinderstart case.

Kinderstart (and SearchKing) are district court cases. These rulings are not legally binding precedents for other courts.

How about people who sell text links (without the no follow tag) without advertising the PageRank aspect? I think most people around the web are savvy enough to understand that you buy TLA links for PR reasons, so most people don't really need to "explain" the PR situation in the ad sales spiel.

Microsoft: the rule is, you have to ship new computers with Windows installed and offer no competing OS. No one who plays by the rules is punished. Everyone is free to play by the rules.

If you use the no follow tag.

Which is totally cool in my book. The only scenario I see as a antitrust violation is if Google drops the search rankings of link sellers. The link buyers deserve what's coming to them.

Hear hear! Good for you.

 

Searchking.

How is that exclusion? They are saying, "Links for advertising are okay. We will do what we choose to nullify passing of PageRank for paid links."

As for using no-follow, see above. That's a red herring and a non-starter, in my opinion.

Again, Google has been clear on this point. You are free to sell (and buy) advertising. At their discretion, they will nullify the PR value of advertising links. And if you are selling text links, you don't need to go out of your way to tell people, "This link is NOT for PR purposes" - that would be ludicrous. I also don't believe, as I stated earlier, that any of us are obligated to use no-follow - let Google do that with their algorithms if they choose.

As for "no one will but a text link if except for its PR value", as just one example, ever click on links in a blogroll? I often click on links to sites if the URL or anchor text looks like something of interest to me. It's hard for me to believe I'm the only one who does.

Not if they are violating Google's guidelines. See the Searchking case. Google dropped them out of the rankings. Searchking sued. Searchking lost.

 

How would google know what are paid links and what are not?

 

Thanks for answering my questions minstrel.

I think we disagree over how far Google will go to punish link sellers. You think they will only punish link buyers and the link sellers who blatantly talks about "passing PR."

I think Google is capable of doing a lot more. I actually hope you're right and I'm wrong.

I'll go read up on Searchking. Thanks!

 

1st of all i dont think this is true there is no way from them to prove its a sold link for all they know. there is no way of them checking if i sold the link or not. all my sites have sold links on them and never had any problems everyone i know that has sites same thing same thing as always. and why would they do that they sell links dont they that would be the dumbest thing ever.