I have heard that if somebody starts writing paid/sponsored reviews on his blog, then Google makes their blog's PR - 0. But In sponsoredreviews.com they have not asked the publishers to disclose the post as a paid review, so how come google will know that was it a paid review or not. Linking to advertiser is necessary, but a blogger can also link to that advertiser's website, in case he found it useful, then how Google distinguishes between these normal and paid post?
Sometimes paid review looks just too obvious. For a seasoned blog visitor like myself, I can easily distinguish whether it's a paid review or not even before I finish the reading. Usually it has the normal tone of promoting a product stuffed with bunch of keywords.
Google can't distinguish between paid reviews so do n't worry.. Whatever be the algorithm it is difficult to distinguish ..these kind of things..
Well actually if you look at many blogs writing paid posts, then you'll see that they have lost their PR's, i think this may be because they disclose the fact that their posts are paid, by putting the badges below the posts, because although Google cannot understand that we are actually promoting a product through the post, but the links to websites like payperpost, sponsoredreviews, socialspark can easily be traced by google, whether or not the links contain nofollow tags.
Well, that's not true, it is almost impossible to detect with a robot that things and be sure they'll wont employ hundreds of people to analyze by hand the millions of blogs, loll
using nofollow is generally not allowed by them.... If you are talking about Google, then "Expect the Unexpected"
If you are doing paid reviews then do it smartly by placing other links (wiki and blah blah) with the paid links - ant it's really difficult for google to catch you - In most of the cases other people report your blog to google and consequently google slap your blog , So make everything natural and you will be on safe side ! Gnoc
Ya I know that blogs can be reported to google, that's why I don't want to spoil my blog's reputation in google records, may be I may start a new blog, just for writing reviews
In case, its not a paid review, you can use nofollow tag. All paid review may not get tracked by google if posted carefully.
If one posts a lot of paid reviews on the blog, obviously the blog will get penalized. I don't think its a good idea to disclose that you are doing paid reviews as Google can easily recognize it. However, if you are not disclosing, you are almost safe.
You know what in websites like sponsored reviews . com etc. there are options to search member's blogs, now with a small algo, Google can search out all the members and penalize them !!!!
As a blogger, advertiser and investor with the market leader, IZEA, I can share that the above isn't quite accurate. For example, IZEA's SocialSpark marketplace offers GOOG-approved sponsored reviews that match GOOG's quality guidelines (nofollow etc.). Many bloggers disagree with GOOG's stance on sponsored reviews, but you don't have to choose between sponsors and PR. With SocialSpark, you can have both...