Google : Report paid links - how fair?

In your Google Analytics, there is a new service to report paid links.

If Google will take all reported linked seriously , many webmsters might be able to target their competitors and claim that their strongest links are bought!

 

Where is this? I cant find it in Analytics

Very valid point. Will be interesting to see the outcome of this

 

haha awesome, I am definitely reporting my major competitor right now using textlinkads.com . Sorry buddy.

On a side note : I am sure google investigates and doesn't just go by any webmaster's word.... They aren't a stupid company.

BTW : here is the tool - https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks?pli=1

 

I know some directories charge for links. Is that what Google is after, or something more sinister altogether? Sorry for the naive question.

 

They put it you can buy links for traffic, or advertising purposes, but not to gain increases in the serps. I am not sure how they distinguish between the two.

Matt said directories are still fine, here is an in-depth article on it - http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-to-report-paid-links/

 

if you read up on that new "service" for reporting paid links, they dont review it on a case by case basis they use your report to "fine-tune" their algorithim to help cut down on it...atleast thats how it was discussed by google prior to it going live

 

yeah, he said it because he afraid to start a war with yahoo. Yahoo have directories and if google try to penalize paid links in directory, yahoo could take actions, i think.

Actually google policy to not penalize paid links from directories is ridicilous. Google thought we paid for directory submissions so those directories will review our site and then added our site in their directories. It must be stupid. Of course everyone who started directories wants money, not to review anything. Don't be naive

 

sure they will not take one webmaster's words to judge. but if there are like 100s of people report the same directory they might do something but i dont think they will take action on all report though.

 

I want to know how they verify paid links. Guess they have to contact each websites accounting / sales dept.

Holy crap think of all the time used to do this.

 

From what i understand they wont be contacting anyone regarding paid links. Simply using all the info from reports for their althogram to help provide more accurate pr etc in the future.

 

They have a wide range of samples (with the fake ones ) as madtay told and they test their success on them to get better results.

 

Ok, in the spirit of following the scientific method, I just reported you. I told them you were buying links secretly from Google itself, and that they should penalize both you as well as themselves.

Please let me know what kind of verification process you have to go through.

-Michael

 

wow, thats amazing i didnt know that before, they have that link for report paid link in google webamster tools, uhu, thanks

 

I don't use any paid links myself but still I don't think it's any good. I will never use it.

 

Yeah, it's REALLY difficult to tell when one splog links to another completely unrelated splog. Splog A is hawking real estate, Splog B is trying to get people to sign up for porn, and they just happen to link to each other for free. Happens all the time.

So you're saying it's your job to determine what Google's priorities should be?

 

That has to be one of the dumbest things I have ever heard. So, you think that every blogger out there, or at least the vast majority of them, is some kind of whore who will link out to anyone for a buck, screw their readership by linking to offensive crap, or who just doesn't give a damn.

Neither you nor Google has their shit straight. If it's that kind of blog, no one's going to be giving them a ton of link love anyways, and it won't make one bit of damn difference to Google's algo one way or the other who the fuck they sell links to.

They need to let it go and quit trying to micro-manage this crap. The algo is designed to work similar to a neural network... on a very minor scale stuff like this might matter, but in the long run if they just let it work eventually it would normalize anyways.

-Michael

 

Well said.

 

Wow, I'm glad you posted this.. I already knew about the "Report Paid Links" from Matt Cutts blog post on 4/19/07, but I hadn't logged into my "webmasters tools" in a few month and I just logged in and saw my one site has 9368 backlinks even though the backlink checker I use was showing 2490 !!!

I thought 2490 was awesome but I like that 9368 number a lot more...


btw, in regards to "selling text links", it was already made more than clear on Matt's blog what Google was looking for.

ie: a linux site with sponsored links for pharmaceuticals or spammy content just to pass PR is what they are looking for.

 

Yes, my understanding is that at this point the information is only for internal testing. I think it is also a way to appease so many folks that have been complaining about paid links making the playing field not level.

I agree that adsense cheaters are a way bigger threat to goooogle and I would like to see them focus there first.

 

If you sell relevant links then there is absolutely no way you can be punished, just keep your site free of anything like "contact us to buy links", it'll just look like you are linking to sites as they are in your niche.