Google's Misinformation about Link Buying

We've been talking about the Big G's plans to squash link buying. I decided to write a blog post with my own personal take on the situation. Here is the link:

http://www.simplifiedsec.com/seoblog/?p=28

Here is the blog article:

Pretty much everyone who has an internet connection has read by now that google is “cracking down” on webmasters that purchase links in order influence rankings. They have a new form you can fill out similar to their spam reports which triggers a manual review by a human. They say they will use this information to tweak their algorithm so purchased links can be devalued or possibly penalized. So lets take a different look at things from a logical perspective.

First of all there is no way the big G is going to be able to filter these purchased links from the serps without causing a lot of collateral damage to perfectly honest sites. I think they realize this and have decided to spread some misinformation in hopes of scaring webmasters away from those link sales.

Think about it from Google’s standpoint. Matt Cutts blog is read by tens of thousands of webmasters. His word is absorbed by people as if it has been handed down by god himself. What better way to start wide spread panic than to use him as the point of origin? Everywhere you look on Digitalpoint and other reputable webmaster forums you see countless posts with webmasters in a panic like the sky is falling. All of this and Google hasn’t even done anything yet. Even if you completely overlook the fact that Google is unlikely to be able to ever tell the difference between paid links and non paid links, you have to admire the snowball effect the announcement has already caused. Just the threat of penalizing these links will likely lead to the demise or at least decline of link buying across the net as a whole (even if it is an empty threat). Now THAT is some marketing power!

The search engines expect us to play by their rules, but in cases like this their rules are only to their benefit. It makes me wonder why people walk on egg shells in order to avoid making the search engines angry when in fact they know that we are in control. All they can do is hope that the hype and pr they spread takes hold of the masses and has the effect they desire as an outcome. Time for me to go build some more spam pages



If you enjoyed the article Digg it http://digg.com/tech_news/Google_Spreads_Misinformation_to_Squash_Link_Buying

 

"They say they will use this information to tweak their algorithm so purchased links can be devalued or possibly penalized." - What I got from reading Matt Cutts post and his commnets is...he said they will be testing a few things. I think they are just doing this to give all the whiners a chance to tattle-tale and feel better.

They will never be able to punish the link buyers, only the link sellers and if they did that they would alienate a big part of their customer base.

 

The problem is I think, they are stupid enough to do that.

 

1EightT, good post and i gave you a digg. I hope your right being in the blog network wonder if this will applied to that. G's is stepping out of line!

 

They want to police the internet which is against the free nature of the internet. In the end they will just push link buying underground and label it as "black hat" which again is just a marketing term used to scare people away from things they know work, but that they can't do anything about. It's all marketing....

 

buying and selling is so critical for seo . i hope G will completely remove this stupid idea

 

what about if its just for 6 months or a year? its not really buying as someone else in another forum said. is buying the same as renting?

 

Link sellers are a big part of Google's customer base?? Google is an advertising company, and is able to sell their ads because lots of people use their search engine (in large part). They're trying to devalue links that are only there to manipulate the index. Since they invented the index, its theirs to do what they want with.

 

Thanks 1EightT for adding some calm to this situation.

As observed, how will Google know that a link is bought / sold unless a site has a big -- BUY LINKS HERE sign on it. Matt Cutts suggestion of reporting link sellers can only work in this situation. As long as sellers and buyers are sensible what can big G do?

 

Buying links is unnatural seo.
If someone have lot of money and a "crap site" can buy a lot of links and be first on the search engine ,but if someone have no money but a good site they will be on the 5 page on the search engine.
I hate when I am looking for something and in the first results are MFA ,crap sites, or a site that look like a search engine but more with ads then good result, and are many examples.
I think the best use of buy links is not to penalize but use nofollow.

 

Appreciate the post and agree with you 100%
While I don't really advocate link buying I don't think Google will ever work it out of SERPs. I am number one for many of my keywords without link buys, but I'm not marketing slimming pills. A big problem SEO, and these types of forums have atm is the ridiculous hysteria every time Cutts posts on his blog.
I wish people would just read it, absorb it and realise it is a tool of Google not just independent information.

 

It's just Googles greed, people who spend money buying links will not spend that money on adwords and google wants all the money for themselves. If they get their way then half the people running websites will go out of business and the quality of the search results will get worse not better!

 

"Google is an advertising company." - And who do you think runs their ads? Other webmasters, the same ones that sell links. Maybe if G did not keep 90% of the profits from adsense and paid-out more webmasters would not have to rely on selling text links.

 

Matt cutts has requested webmaster to report google about paid links, I think it may create some controversy.
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-to-report-paid-links/

 

buying links is just making a quick responds to get approved,

but the essence is just to be added and get a good PR after submission.

 

It's also a way for webmasters to monetize their existing sites. Who is google to come in and try to tell us that we can't monetize our sites by selling paid links? It's just another attempt by them to slowly gain control over every aspect of the internet. Pretty soon I will have to get my content approved by them before putting a new domain on my server.

 

I guess Google has already fixed the click fraud thing so now they are on to this. All this will do is to force webmasters to do more black hat things just to keep their heads above water

I predict you'll see Black hat tactics in a lot more niches

 

The term black hat itself comes from google and the other search engines. Things they can't detect or beat they label as black hat and rely on regular webmasters to enforce the rules. They can't detect spam so they make you guys fill out spam reports. They should be paying you for doing their work, but instead they are eliminating the potential ways in which you can monetize your sites. The fact is they are pretty much helpless. People buy into it though....

 

That's the real point here...

 

Plenty of sites use adsense but don't sell links; I'm not sure why you think that everbody who runs a web site is a link salesman?

Also, if you stop and consider the economics here, there really isn't a shortage of webmasters who might potentially run ads, is there?