There has been a lot of stories in the news about Google not counting paid text backlinks to websites anymore. While I have to agree that they have a point because the results shouldn't necessarily go to the highest bidder, I just purchased links from text-link-ads.com and I am trying to figure out exactly what this will mean to me down the road. Everything I could find in the news suggested that Google has some way to sniff out the JavaScript that Text-Link-Ads uses on the sites that SELL the ads and lower those sites' PageRank. However, there is nothing about whether BUYING paid links is going to make a negative impact on websites. What's more, the websites where my paid links now appear don't contain JavaScript that makes the ads - when I view the source, the ad appears as an Anchor tag. I really don't see what the fuss is about as Google would never be able to tell that these were paid links through a service vs links that the webmaster of that site decided to put there on his/her own. So can someone tell me what impact Google's decision will have on websites that decide to BUY text link ads?
People who are buying text links are penalized in directly. Lets say you buy text links from 10 sites, 7 of them get penalized and no longer can pass pagerank on to backlinkis, this means your "wasting" money monthly on sites that aren't increasing your pagerank. 90% of all text link sales are for Pagerank. So yes, buyers are getting in directly hurt by this method. In my honest opinion, good. Text links manipluate pagerank and SERPs any way you cut it. You should NOT be able to buy your pagerank or your SERPs, if this way legal technically you could reach any page rank and #1 for any keyword\phrase if you had the finances. Regardless if the system is cheatable this way doesn't make it right.
Cheating? Well, that isn't exactly the way I was looking at it. I feel like I have been cheated since I have had a website that was up for 4 years and I took it down for 1 year, and now I am starting from scratch. The way I see it, buying the text links are a way to get my ranking back while I manually build other links. I really wasn't counting on them for the long term solution.
Just for sake of argument I think that Google shouldn't penalize paid links - it's not economically efficient to penalize the links. Good websites should get high page rank and should be rewarded with the ability to make money by selling links. Business owners should be able to buy their way to the top - just like you can in the real business world - I can get a 6 page Yellow Pages ad if I wanted to. It would be the most efficient form of transfer.
^ thats fine if there was a rule it has to be a valid website. But these days, every man and his dog is running a link directory/selling of links. As a result the quality of the net is going down. Yes top sites with proper content should be able to sell links. In my opinion MFA (Made For Adsense) sites should be dropped from google, and M2SL (Made 2 Sell Links) sites should aswell.
Any way you look at it, both people lose the seller and buyer. Google kills the sellers page rank while the buyer buys links on a PR 0 site.
The internet would be an interesting place, wouldn't it, if somehow the search engines found an accurate way to eliminate the PR-enhancing value of all paid links. That would certainly even the playing field. Then the websites whose quality naturally drew voluntary backlinks would rise to the top without a penny being paid for links. It would be a giant step towards the SE rankings reflecting the users' assessment of the quality of websites out there. Will this happen? Unlikely. But it would certainly revolutionize today's internet.
Buying the search engine rankings is not fair to small businesses and those guys trying to make a buck or two by selling ads on an original blog or forum. It is the same as a huge department store moving into the neighborhood and putting all of the mom and pop businesses out of business. In the short term, it means better prices and convenient shopping. In the long term, it means the value of real estate goes down in the whole area because nobody but the big business can make any money. Same goes for the Internet - if the big businesses can take over just by paying the dollars, it will diminish the quality of the Internet into nothing more than a bunch of gimmicks to sell something. On the other side of the coin - PageRank has forced webmasters to do tricks like build satellite websites with original content in order to keep rankings. This pollutes the Internet with useless nonsense as well, so this really isn't a perfect solution. Still nobody answered my question though - how the heck is Google going to be able to tell that these are paid links? There is no JavaScript running these links, when you view source in the browser they look like they are part of the page.
You are mistaken, 1% of link sales are for pagerank and 99% of link sales are not for pagerank but for SERPS. Pagerank really does not matter.
Just a little question that i have on mind since long time: I have a website in competition with Food Network, Better Home and Gardens, etc. They have huge budgets, which I do not. My recipes are as good as their or even better. According to google: Link exchange is a no go. Paid directories are a no go. (and I still waiting to be listed in about 400 free dirs after submitting 6 month ago). Pay per post is no go. Buying link is no go. I's like Google explain me how I can build natural linking if people do not even know I exist. Moreover, I'm not sure that grandma looking for a choco cake recipe for her grandkids, will put a backlink to my site somewhere. (I guess she barely knows how to bookmark it) IMHO, this links thing by google is a bunch of BS. It's not killing the link building that you will have better results in SERPS. This way, same old big websites will always be on top and good new websites will never outstand. PS: for those that think PR is not related to serp, they should have a look here just as reminder. http://www.google.com/technology/index.html My 2 cents.
The web is much less organic than it used to be. I believe someone should be able to say, I believe in my site so I am going to give it some serps and see what happens. Some sites just are not the sort of sites relevant to Digg type link bait articles. If it was allowable for money to chang hands for links, but reward was given if the links were to quality relevant sites then we may see some integration of selling and real site review at the same time, which would be best in my opinion. I think google should develop a method to tell if a link is to a relevant quality site and reward or penalize based on this, not whether it is sold or not. Thay claim to be able to do this with thier quality score in adwords, if thier claim is correct, thay should apply a similar system to valuing links as well.
Yes, good points. This is the dilemma facing a start up business that wants to get some exposure on Google, which is getting more important all the time. When I look at the top SERP site for my keywords and check their backlinks, they have obviously bought hundreds of paid links, as has the number 2 site (and they are engaging in obvious keyword stuffing AND they have bought dozens of domain names which they redirect to their main site - Google seems to be ignoring these obvious attempts to manipulate SERP placement). Sites 3 and 4 are yellow page type sites where people get listed , get this, BY PAYING MONEY!! I feel for ya, and I'm in the same boat.
Hi I found that Some text links google like, I know those sites who have a lot paid links and still are back links that means google give the importance to the paid links. Any one have more idea about it please share.
If you have the budget to buy text links then its a risk worth taking. some times take a while to get back links organically and paid links from sites and directories is the only way to get started. Don't make the assumption that google does not count paid backlinks and the reverse also applies, google does not count all organic back links.
I totally agree with jim as websites should be rated on the basis of it's content , not on the basis of the money which it's owner is capable of spending on it .. even though it has got nothing but crap .. you just imagine those kind of sites coming up in the search results and the really good ones lagging behind ...it will be such a waste of time searching for anything you need on internet ...
I believe that google should penalized those paid links that are based on their PR. It's not fair for Google that companies like PPP, TLA and others arise because of Google's PR. They have the right to do so.
Google's page rank tool isn't there to rank your website dependent on how much money you've got in your wallet. The entire purpose of this function is to attempt to estimate a websites ranking based on the amount of genuine back links it receives. In my opinion, it's much nicer to have a page rank feature that kinda acts like a score card for your website rather than a score card on how much money you've dumped into purchasing links.
I think part of the flaw in Google's pagerank algo is that it doesnt really take the average internet reader into account. People post links on my forums all the time. Often its about this parts guy or that parts guy. Someone will ask where do I get XXXX and anothermember will respond with a link or two. But those links wont usually get anywhere near as much PR as someone who gets a link in a newspaper story. So the opinions of average people who drive the internet dont seem to carry as much weight. Just another thing to point out -- how come http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/, which is NOTHING but paid links, has a PR6? The question is rethorical. BTW - whoever gave me neg rep in this thread - be a man and sign your name next time.
Googles ranking model places to much emphasis on links, it always has since the creation of backrub. Google needs to move away from this easy to manipulate factor that creates webspam and place more weight on great content and great sites. There is no easy way to "game" this model besides creating great content and sites. Ma and Pa will even have a chance to rank. Sure dont remove links from the equasion, just make them less of a factor.