Google : Report paid links - how fair?

Wanna bet? Based on what? Relevant, as determined by who?

They say nothing whatsoever about "Well, we'll let it slide if you try and manipulate rankings by buying only on-topic links, or sell to people in the same industry".

Not only do they not care whether or not it i son-topic, they won't ultimately even be able to tell for sure whether or not it's actually a paid link. Trust me, that will not stop them one iota from penalizing you.

Hell, they don't even need a reason, not even a pretend one.

-Michael

 

How can they punish you? If I run a site on say Harry Potter books, and I sell a link to a site about that woman who wrote it, how can anyone possibly say that must be a paid link? Its on topic, it just looks like a natural link. You say "determined by who", but any google bot is going to see the similarity in the pages (as would any human looking at them).

Obviously if you start linking to casinos or pills then its blatant, but I still think there is zero chance of anyone being able to work out you've sold a link if you keep it on topic.

 

Really? So, you trust them to always return results 100% on topic with what you searched for?

Remember, they are using the paid link snitching to improve their automated detection of paid links.

-Michael

 

There's a stack of ways to detect and devalue a large % of paid links without even looking at relevence.

 

So how exactly can they say a link on a site is a paid link? If you don't have "sponsored links". "email to buy a link", or link to casinos porn and pills from a normal site, how can they possibly detect it? People seem to be going into a panic about this, as long as you arent selling links openly, or going completely overboard and filling your site with links, they arent going to detect it. If someone can tell me one single way google can detect a paid link, i'd love to hear it.

 

You are missing a huge point here...

The link doesn't have to be an actual paid link for Google to determine in their minds that it is. They don't give a flying crap about collateral damage, if innocent sites drop, or who gets hurt, as long as they can make it look like they are doing something about the spam problem to their shareholders.

-Michael

 

They are going to spammed with a million and one fake "paid link" reports, they arent going to take them all as fact. I agree the odd innocent site may get hurt, but I think they are just going to take out the obvious sellers - people with dozens of links in their footers, people with "sponsored links", "buy a link" etc in their page, or people linking way out of their niche to spammy categories like viagra and casinos etc. There isnt really any other way I can see that they can do it.

 

does this include bloggers that have payperpost hire me buttons/graphics in their sites? i have a payperpost $100 credit and im still wondering if ill use it. if i use it, then all my backlinks would come from sites that has ppp banners. this might penalise my site, right?

 

Nobody can say for sure what its going to include. It would be perfectly reasonable from googles point of view to exclude paid post sites, they are not really any different from text links.

$100 payperpost credit, you must have got the same email as me today

I've not had a chance to look at it properly yet, but if there is no catches and you dont need to spend your own cash, then i'm still going to use it. I dont think google will actually punish for any of these things (too easy to set up another site) I think at worst they will just discount those links.

 

yea, ive it from an advertiser account i never use. i actually did not use any of my credit card info. the money has been automatically credited to my account. so i guess theres no catch. i think im going to use it. as what they say, inbound links could not hurt your site. i hope thats true

 

I signed up for payperpost as well, never used them. I guess they're sending $100 to everyone whos signed up and not took part, might as well give it a go!

 

I wonder what would happen if I put a table on my site that said:

PAID LINKS:
www.example.com
www.anothersite.com

Would I get them busted for "buying" paid links on my site?

 

Probably, you'd also get your own site punished for selling links!

 

So what? $8 for a domain name, free Wordpress software, easily written auto-blogging script, then charge $10/post to make it look like someones competitor is buying links. Who cares if the site gets penalized as well.

I'm not condoning this, I'm pointing out that G has chosen a seriously flawed solution to a problem that doesn't actually matter. I mean, yes, people do buy links... but has Google actually checked to see if this is even making the serps less relevant...? It can cost big bucks to buy enough linkage to rank in some industries... usually people with that money are going to spend more on developing a f'ing quality site anyways.

-Michael

 

If that's the dumbest thing you've ever heard, you must have been born yesterday.

I didn't say anything in the paragraph above; those are just words you're trying to put in my mouth. What I said was that it's fairly obvious most of them time when a link is bought and not earned. Although since you brought up the term "whore" you must be feeling a twinge of "hey, that's me they're talking about?" All I said was it's fairly obvious when one splog links to a completely unrelated one, that it probably isn't for free.

Again, who the hell are you to decide what Google needs to do? Since you did jack to invent or code the algorithm, you really aren't in a position to demand what Google's priorities are. If they'd like to remove spam from their index, good for them.

Seriously, you've got your head so far up your own butt you can give yourself a prostate exam.

 

And my reply was, that's one of the dumbest things I have ever heard, something that shows that you don't have a damn clue what the hell you are talking about, but obviously still feel compelled to spout off about. You should go hang out at Doug Heil's forum, he loves your type.

You could have skipped over it, let it be, continued to learn, and maybe eventually seen why you were wrong. Instead you decided to highlight to everyone the fact that you have no clue whatsoever about the subject matter. Brilliant.

The fact of the matter is that people link to other people all of the time in their blogs, and it often has nothing whatsoever to do with the subject matter of either site as a whole. For instance, even if I have a site that has nothing to do with, say, photos, but the guy who owns it made some dumbass posts and I discuss him, then just because I link to it when talking about him does not in any way shape or form mean that I was paid for the damn link.

Yes, there are obvious paid links out there, such as on newspaper sites, but Google is already able to identify those with no problem. This push is to have people report sites that they CANNOT detect. If they could, they wouldn't need our help identifying that, and if you had put more than a couple seconds though into it before posting, I hope you would have eventually realized that all on your own.

-Michael

 

If you mean "honest people," you're right, he doesn't have a problem with us.

Thanks, but I don't need to learn how to get banned from Google's index.

I have and will again in my blog. If you had actually read what I wrote instead of throwing a temper tantrum, you wouldn't have so much egg on your face right now.

 

From here:

I gotta tell you Forrest, that's classy. Honestly, you should PM Shawn and let him know how lame it is you think his efforts are, and explain to him why it is you continue to hang out here while ragging on his forum elsewhere.

Have fun there.. but if Doug invites you over to his house for a party, just don't drink the Flavor-Aid.

-Michael

 

Hi

In a new crack-down Google asks people to report paid links found on Web sites.

http://www.pandia.com/sew/431-paid-links.html

 

Really old news buddy. Though I want to see how they will try to crack down on it.