Now that paid text links are doomed...

According to Matt Cutts, Google is now making good on their promise of adapting to paid text links, and devaluing these links/sites.
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-to-report-paid-links/

How do you feel about this? How will it affect the future of SEO?

 

Isn't this open to abuse? I mean, what if I claim thay my competitor pays for his/her links and report them as such?

I guess, like anything, it needs to be human reviewed.

However, reprots of paid links demise are greatly exagerrated, I think.

 

My thoughts exactly! I wonder how long it will be before Google actually releases whatever algorithm changes they're planning, to combat them without penalizing people unfairly

 

It's just a PR stunt by google. They have no way of determining if a link is paid or not so they are throwing up a form you can fill out to "tell on other site owners". What a sorry attempt at coming up with a solution. This is not going to be effective, and will likely just end up costing google millions in man hours to review every site submitted.

 

Google is way too secretive. i understand they must protect their secrets and what not but they trust their algorithm way too much and it has failed them especially with AdSense. Yahoo and MSN will take a HUGE market share from Google soon in the PPC market.

And if Google does the same stunt with SEO, people might focus more on yahoo and msn...but its upto the actual searcher

 

I agree 100%

 

I should in fact write a quick script that submits "paid link" reports to google for random sites. Once they get a few million bogus reports they might see the light

 

Well, I think people are too conditioned now to switch. No one ever 'Yahoos' someone, they google them.

No kidding. And to your point before, it would just become a game of tag between me and my competitors, reporting each others' websites...

 

That would be funny

 

Oh man....now that's devious.....but very funny indeed

 

Script is done and running on three servers across 128 different ip's

On a side note, paid links aren't dead, that's just the type of misinformation google wants webmasters to buy into a believe. THink about it this way. What better way to get rid of buying links, then to have matt cutts spread a rumor that they will be devalued, and possibly penalized? Look at how much press the rumor has already had across the net.

 

They didn't say that paid links are dead really, they just need the following:
1. disclosure
2. uniqueness of content
3. relevancy

Am I right?

 

thats true..if you have a paid link with your related niche then there wont be any problems

 

Its just the first steps or an experiment, I think his is just Google seeing what types of links webmasters see as "cheap" then they will see where things are at.

I really don't see this as a big negative change.

 

Well said!

I agree 100%. There is no way that this could be anywhere close to "foolproof", and Google knows that.

 

Dear Google,

The sites in my signature are not paid links. If you still see it necessary to devalue them please give me advanced notice so that I may resell offer them to my competitors.

Regards
BDM

 

Is it still April 1st? I thought this was a joke.