We all know that Google hates paid links and link farms. This is because links are one of the prime ways that Google uses to list web pages for searches to the keywords on its search engine. Webmasters try to manipulate Google by paying other websites to link to their site so that they are able to rank well in the search engine. PayPerPost is one of the most innovative ways that has come up as a way for websites to get links from blogs. Through PayPerPost, advertisers pay bloggers to review their website and also link to them with the appropriate anchor text. Now while this looks very simple to go undetected by Google, the bloggers leave considerable number of 'fingerprints' that makes it easy for Google to detect them and penalize them for getting paid to link sites. PayPerPost has continued to exist and is popular among the bloggers. But for the benefit of the blogging community,here are 'Three reasons PayPerPost members can be sniffed out by Google and be penalized'. DISCLOSURE POLICY Every PayPerPost blogger needs to display a link called 'disclosure policy' where they confide that they get paid to review websites and products. While that may look innocuous, most disclosure policies link to one of PayPerPost's affiliate sites http://disclosurepolicy.org/ Google's algorithm can easily sort out blogs that have disclosure policy pages on their sites and it won't take long for them to ban or penalize such blogs. SPONSORED POST Though not all paid posts need to be declared a sponsored posts, a few of the advertisers require bloggers to display a badge that says it's a sponsored post. Since this is again an anchor text in HTML, Google's algorithm can so easily detect this and penalize or ban bloggers BLOGSEARCH This is a point that can affect both the advertiser and the bloggers alike. If you visit the Google Blogsearch engine (http://blogsearch.google.com/) and check for the keyword any particular advertiser has requested for in his 'opportunity', you will come across all the recent blogs that link to the same advertiser with the same keyword. This is an easy way for Google to detect the advertiser and the blogger. Google realizes that not many times can a website receive so many links to it at the same time with the same keywords (and also possibly the same image linked). This may not be a foolproof method, but Google can always build a sophisticated algorithm to detect paid links with this blogsearch. Both the advertiser and the blogger can expect a ban through this method. Lastly, this is not something that Google can possibly use in the future. Rather, it is mostly speculated that Google has already used some of these methods already since a good number of blogs got their PageRank reduced recently. Google has been working aggressively to penalize websites that are trying to manipulate its search engine and it will not be long before other bloggers are also gunned down!
Very good points you've made here. It wouldn't take much for Google to look for the tinyurl that TLA uses or any of the links that PPP uses. It's just a matter of time before they are penalized, I imagine.
Interesting post there.. I had recently made this post on why I won't be doing reviews from PPP or any third party like them becuase it wouldn't be in tune with the kind of brand image that I want to portray with my blog.. so knowing this certainly helps me realize i made the right decision
It does? Have you read this somewhere? I'd love to see something on this because being able to use PPP would be kind of nice.
Frankcow..I think you are mistaken..Google only approves links which have the nofollow attribute. But advertisers most often require bloggers to post without nofollow because their very purpose of paying the blogger Google juice..
Hi Travin., I do agree to the ethical aspect of writing for getting paid. But this post was made presuming that this was not an issue
I have a contact at Google. I was asking him about paid links, which he was very adamant in his disapproval. However, when I asked about 'generating buzz' by paying bloggers for reviews, he said it's OK. Now, this was before PPP was huge, and no one was really using it manipulate rankings at first. I don't know how they feel now.
Google's strategies have been dynamically changing with time. But one thing they have always remain deftly against has been the link farms and link exchanges. And PPP is just another form of manipulative linking. And I guess Matt Cutts can be taken as Google's spokesman in this regard. And its no secret that he has always been against PayPerPost.. I do reiterate that Google should have no problem with using paid links to generate traffic ONLY (that is by using the nofollow attribute)
You mean the concept, or ones that don't have a nofollow tag? It wouldn't make sense for Google to disapprove of me selling links on my site, but having no problem putting AdSense ads for apartments in Bowie, MD on my David Bowie page.
Adsense ads do not manipulate the search engine ranking. They are in fact not 'seen' by the bots. But on the other hand, text links are fine as long as the advertiser only gets the traffic and not the Google juice. PayPerPost just exposes both the advertiser and the blogger too much in this.
Getting banned is HUGELY misleading - in fact there is little evidence to show it will even reduce rankings or Google traffic. Hence why many PayPerPost publishers still get lots of Google traffic. However, the points you make about being easy to detect are valid. This is why I have never touched PayPerPost as a publisher. However - I know that many of the honest reviews on PPP publishers sites I have purchased have ended up high up in the SERPs. What Google will actually do is not ban you but: "individual links can be discounted and sellers can lose their ability to pass on PageRank/anchortext/etc" Source: Matt Cutts (works for google's spam team) http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-to-report-paid-links/ Whether being part of PPP removes your ability to pass PR sitewide or for individual posts I couldn't say.
Very good points you've made here. It wouldn't take much for Google to look for the tinyurl that TLA uses or any of the links that PPP uses. It's just a matter of time before they are penalized, I imagine.
what about Adsense revenue sharing with the poster? Some time ago this very DP forum was like that showing adsense code of the poster 50% of the time, not any more.