Inadvertantly, and accidentally I think, Google has moved away from being an organic search engine and has become a pay to play engine. On first look, most of you will disagree with this, but hear me out. Primary to ranking on Google is the number of back links your site has and the PR of the those linking sites. If you have the budget, paying for text link advertising on high PR sites will result in good ratings. Even spamming blogs can get your site ranked - the 'miserable failure' fiasco for example. So with a few dozen (or even fewer) well chosen, paid-for text ads on highly ranked sites using proper anchor text, you can rank highly. This is becasue Google has no way of knowing if the link to your site is there because someone liked it and linked, or because you paid. As further evidence of this, you can easily find webmasters and site owners who rank very well on MSN and Yahoo, yet don't rank at all on Google. How can there be such a disparity? I know a site owner who ranks in the top 20 for dozens of carefully chosen key words on MSN and Yahoo, yet those same pages have no ranking on Google. Whats the difference here? MSN and Yahoo still use page content as the main determinator of what your page is about. Code it properly, choose your keywords well, write good content with proper density and headings and meta tags, and you can rank well on Yahoo or MSN. Ultimately it comes down to an issue of trust. Google method of ranking is basically 'We dont' trust you to tell us what your page is about - we are going to figure it out for ourselves", while MSN and Yahoo are giving the site owner the power to tell their engines what their site it about. If I sell Green Widgets, I'm going to optimize my page for Green Widgets. Optimizing it for anything else is a waste of time. I'm not going to optimize for Green Widgets and then try to sell you a Red Gidget when you arrive. That's waste of marketing effort. IMO opinion, I think MSN and Yahoo are on the right track. They are trusting the web site owners to decide what their site and or page is about. I do think, however, that there have to be controls and that's where key word density, natural language algos, ideal tag length limits, and other such 'tests' come into play to evaluate that page content to keep people from abusing that trust. For example, a page with the keyword 'Green Widgets for Sale' repeated a thousand times is abuse, yet such a case is easiy for the algos to detect and elminate. Ditto for overstuffed meta tags, hidden or samll text, and off page or invisible divs. I think Google needs to take a real careful look at where their search is a nd where they are headed. When I'm searching for a granular term, like 'Image Rollover JavaScript' or 'Dodge Neon Fule Tank Capacity', Google is the bomb. When I'm searching for 'Discount DVD Players' or 'Cheap [fill inthe blank]) or any other popular for-sale product term, it sucks.
Given any popular subject, the internet community will by far provide many times more backlinks than any SEO or "Link farm".
I agree with TB, if you've been around and you provide good services, you will do well without paying for links.
not to mention, MOST things people search for are not commercial in nature. I probably make a dozen searches a day (not including checking my own/related sites via SE's), and I'd guess than far less than 10% of them are for anything remotely commercial- or even for something that'd have anyone optimizing sites via buying/collecting links.
A caveat: I'm assuming you own and ecommerce site and are selling a product or service. Thus we can discount searches not conducted for such items. As I mentioned below, for granular specific searches, Google rules. But ultimately, the majority of sites want good SE position to attract visitors to sel them something. Businesses use the Internet as a delivery channel. If they have to use PPC, well and good, as those links are usually segregated from organic results. But essentially what Google has is paid links (advertising back links at high ranking sites) showing up in organic results. "if you've been around and you provide good services, you will do well without paying for links" So new businesses shouldn't be able to rank? It takes a long time to build authntic organic backlinks. With a good marketing budget, I can be on the first page within a week. "Given any popular subject, the internet community will by far provide many times more backlinks than any SEO or "Link farm"." Quantity, as far as PR goes, is subservant to quality. Google PR is geometric, not arithmetic. A single link from a PR 8 page is worth many, many, many links from a PR 6, and that many more from PR 5s, etc. Link Farms are bad, most good SEOs know this, and I' not talking about putting your link on a link farm, I'm talking about putting your link on a high page ranked commercial site that sells link advertising. I'm ont talking about reciproval links too. I suspect that route for gaining links will soon be degraded to the point of being worthless. I'm not saying using back links as an indicator of site popularity is bad, it's not. It provides an additional filter to run sites through to help rank them. But when a site can get immediately get top placement from having a few links on very high PR pages, essentially jumping to the top over sites that may have 'been around', the system is broken.
If you are assuming this, than the site attempting to get high rankings stands to profit financially from the high rankings. In this case, why should paying for some links be any different than any other form of advertising? If you have a site that's purpose is to generate revenue, its no different than any other business. Its good sense to engage in any advertising where your return is worth the investment. Especially on the internet, it does not make good sense to attempt to run your business based entirely on advertising you aren't paying for. If we are talking non-commercial sites, than there's no motivation to pay for links, as the site owner would be losing money. This is why IMO most search engines produce great results for non-commercial searches. Its only when you are searching for a commercial product or service that you get in with all the spammy sites trying to make a few bucks. With respect to these sites... while I do not agree that spam or unethical tactics should be allowed (another debate all together), I don't necessarily see paying for links any different than paying the phone company for a larger listing in the Yellow Pages. Advertising is and always will be largely tied to money. Those who have it can get wider advertising. I have a web design business. I can't afford to spend the same amount as Register.com is currently spending in running ads on TV for their sub-par website services. Yet, this is at the very core of capitalism. They spend more, and with a good campaign they stand to gain more than do I when advertising. This is not to say I like the process many people use in buying links. In fact, I dont like it as it only makes for more competition for me as I do not buy links. But, if they are willing to spend the money than in a competitive sense its certainly "fair" as I could do the same thing. All of this said, I agree with earlier posters in that in the vast majority of cases great content, good relationships and unique value typically do a much better job obtaining links than can any SEO or link swap program. This is why Google uses links - as a number of links to a site saying its a great site for xyz topic help to validate that site. A site with no or very few links may very possibly be not as well known or not as trusted a source as one with many links from reputable sites. While this is not always true, its certainly about as good a piece of logic as one can develop when establish search/ranking criteria. Thus its why Google is the tops. Any fool can optimize a site on-page to do well in the other engines, given the time and knowledge - doesn't mean the site is any good...
Personally, I think Google knows exactly what they are doing. An entire industry has been launched around their search engine. While I don't think they ever thought it would be of the magnitude it is today, I think they always knew it could be big. Regarding being abel to buy your way to the top….yea, so? I can buy a commercial during the Superbowl if I have the $$. Having $$$/connections will put you at an advantage in just about every form of advertising known to man. Why should the search engines be any different? My opinion is that Yahoo & MSN both have smaller indexes that have been updated much less frequently than Google. I have "popular" sites that Yahoo doesn't visit at all. Less competition (smaller index) easier to rank. Google evaluates OPC too, and both Yahoo & MSN can be "bombed" just like Google. Mayeb each engine assigns a little more priority to different elements, but they're for the most part using the same factors to rank a site. "Giving the power to the owner" (ie not considering links) would be a huge mistake in the long run - there have to be factors that allow the search engines to place one site ahead of another. What if we both have the keyword "chickenfingersatlunchaftersald" listed 10 times on our sites. Who ranks higher…me or you? If I include it 11 times should get bumped above you? How's that any better or worse than Google trusting other websites to let them know, at least in part, what a website is about (via the link)? No doubt about it. If you're doing a search with "cheap" or "discount" included I would expect that you're looking to buy what you're searching for. Most of the results I see for the "cheap/discount" search terms seem to be places selling the items I search for… The exception being your specific phrase, "Discount DVD Players". The first result in Google took me to a page selling grills. The site itself sells dvd players, but I had to navigate through the site to get to them. Could use a little improvement (or better SEO) to improve this particular result. The title of the page "<title>Etronics.com - Discount camcorders, DVD players, home audio, digital and 35mm cameras, VCR's, televisions plus small appliances.</title>" probably has something to do with the result as well. Not really very descriptive or the page, more descriptive of the entire site.
I guess I'm not getting my point across. I'm saying Google organic search results are an illusion. If you so desire and can afford it, you can BUY your way to the top of Google's ORGANIC search results, which means, of course, that they aren't organic at all.
Read this http://www.clickz.com/experts/search/opt/article.php/3358551 Then read this www.webcenter.squarespace.com You may see some of the things you are talking about here.
Nothing that involves any amount of $$$ stays free forever. I think I understand your point completely, and wouldn't say I diagree. I guess my point is that I think it's ok - buying your way to the top via SEO. I think it helps give the searchers what they are looking for - at least most of the time.
Plus, to make matters even worse, now Google seems to be forcing people to wait 1 to 3 months before getting any credit for obtaining backlinks. So..... it appears that on-page content matters little, they punish for any type of spamming, redirecting or doorway pages, and if they want any listing at all, webmasters are forced to get tons of IBL's that they receive no credit for for three months, which can also be taken away at any time for any reason. But at least 20 times per day, I get lots of Google returns that are completely unrelated to the search string. Why? Because the offending, meaningless site site has TONS of IBL's and high page rank. A perfect example of the idocy is where GuyFromChicago mentioned below a search for "Discount DVD Palyers" returned a site selling GRILLS! Just another, more sophisticated and expensive way of spamming the search engine, but completely excludes newer or smaller sites without a huge network or a huge budget. Hardly organic. Just a Googlopoly.
I think that there can be very little disagreement with the original proposition. The proof, if any more were needed beyond simple observation, comes from the posts of those who would dispute it. They say, mostly in similar phrases, "Why shouldn't we be able to advertise?" Why? Because, in theory, Google search results are not an advertising medium. They are supposed to be a list presented to an inquirer of web sites most likely to contain useful information relevant to the inquirer's exact inquiry. They are not supposed to be a list of those sites who have paid the most money to come up high on a list resulting from a given inquiry phrase. Sure, Google--and the other engines--are businesses, and they can conduct their affairs as, within very broad limits, it pleases and profits them to do. What they cannot do, however, is issue pious pontifications about how pure they are, and how useful to The Little Guy they are in returning results to him. When they do that, they deserve to be smacked up 'longside the head with a four-by-six, and not gently. A search engine will be "honest"--that is, try its legitimate best to provide truly relevant, honestly ranked results--only so long as that is a profitable model. My own feeling is that some one of the search engines has a profitable path being such an "honest" engine. Whether in the long run that will be Google, or Yahoo, or some upstart not yet well known, remains to be seen (M$ couldn't define "honest" in an open-dictionary test)--but Google is rapidly losing whatever meager claim to the role it may once have had. The "links are votes" theory was dead meat the minute it became known. All it does is put a big gap between the sites willing and able to spend money on promotion and the sites--mostly amateur--that have nothing to offer except lots and lots of useful information, which signifies zipola to Google in its ranking system. Even sites that are not overtly selling something themselves are still selling advertising, so a site on even the most abstract topic still has a money-oriented goal if it can get high enough SERPs, which makes it worth paying for those SERPs for players more seriously interested in the web as a cash register than an information repository. I have nothing against stores, and I have nothing against libraries, and I see no reason the two cannot stand next to each other on the street; but I do think it's wildly hypocritical on both sides, besides being bad for society in the long run, for its single by-far hugest library to keep all its books tossed helter-skelter about the basement while it is a shopping mall on all the other floors because the librarians have been paid off by the merchants.
Well said Owl- You've explained it much better than I did. I'm not sure there's a way to build a 'fair' organic search engine, but I do think Google's whole position of that they've built an organic search based on the 'democratic nature of the web' is a bunch of hooey.
With enough money you can buy your way to the top of anything ... and there is nothing us ordinary folks can do about that ... so you can but links on high PR and get to the top fast ... but with good content and a reasonable effort in promoting your site you will get backlinks and maybe someday get to the top. As to everyone's opinion to the topic ... they are all mostly valid ... and I think its good that search engines use various criteria for their results, if you are not happy with the results at G then you go and search at Y or vice versa ... and the fact that different results come up is really good. At the end of the day everyone is entitled to their opinins and google is the best
I guess some folks just have a hard time seeing the big picture, the Google tool bar is a large part of the Google program (software/algo/data mining) and completes the circle of the search engine. Google gets to look at each page view when the toolbar is engaged to show the page rank gauge, now they are going to offer "keyword search" on the toolbar (no need for a URL), Google will decide which sites to deliver via the toolbar to the searcher. Just more pressure for webmasters to "get with the Google program" (Page rank science), Google must compete with another scam "web rank", so they introduce this new "great toolbar feature". I am sure webmasters will fall for this Google trick also, hook line and sinker. This is an attempt to make the user a slave to the "Page Rank Marketing Gimmick" (let us know everypage view and we will help you find pages), Google knows the days of "Larry Page Rank" are going to end soon, so they continue to hype up the old spyware since they really know no other way to operate. To bad that spyware will be outlawed soon, there will be a lot of sad folks in Mountainview. One day folks will see Google for what they are, until then it seems that folks on forums will argue back and forth about what some call a conspiracy, truth is all of the conspiracies are being cooked up right there in "Good Old Mountainview". Forums will grow because of all of this, great for forum owners, Google is the best thing for webmaster forum owners since all of this talk (Gold) about Google is really a product in itself.
In searching and ranking results on over 4 billion web pages, there are bound to be times when the user thinks the search results could be a bit better. No SE is perfect, or will ever be. I guess the key here is that those people BUYING their way to the top will run out of money if their sites aren't actually related to whatever terms they are buying links for. If they do have a good, related site, than their money is well spent advertising. In the case that its a good, related site to the search term, I'm not sure it matters if their rankings are a result of BUYING links or PAYING and SEO or just having a great site... Computers can't think, and some people are dishonest - for this reason the SEs will never give results that I 100% agree with 100% of the time. Thus, I, as everyone, will continue to use whatever SE I think is the best. IMO its Google. If you think Yahoo and MSN are better than that's your opinion and by all means continue to use them and speak their praises. I, however, tend to think that they are FAR more succeptable to "tricks" and spammy tactics from non-related websites. Cloaking and even hidden text is rampant in Yahoo, often producing poor results. I believe Google's algo keeps page content in check to not be swayed by some of these unethical tactics.
While I think using inbound links to a site as PART of the factor in determing where it should position among the thousands of other sites similar, Google has given it WAY too much influence on overall ranking. I suppose though that my initial argument about page optimization holds true for companies buying links. I'm not going to optimize my page to sell Green Widget if I actually sell Red Gidgets, just as I'm not going to buy an expensive "Green Widgets" link on a high PR site if that's not what I'm trying to promote. So I guess it shakes out in the end for the consumer who wants to buy Green Widgets, though the SE marketing edge ends up being in the control of companies with large online marketing budgets. What this means is before you open up your online Green Widget store, you better do your research into who holds the top spots, check their back links, and try to fogure out if you can compete. But then again look at this: cheap comforter sets The number 1 result has NO page rank and NO inbound links and the three search words don't appear next to each other. Number 2 is a PR 4 affiliate site that doesn't even have the word 'cheap' anywhere on its page and doesn't even have 'comforter set' in its page title. Number 3 is a PR3 affiliate site, again without the word cheap anywhere. For the worst example, see result number 6, a blatant affiliate page full of keyword spam. Lastly, number 9 is a Javascript redirect page full of spam and in direct violation of Google's terms of showing its spider the same content a visitor sees. Click it, hit escape and look at the source. Nice. No one can argue that this set of search results approaches anything that's even near quality. It's a pitiful piece of crap. Which is what I find the majority of Google results to be these days. If Google doesn't get their s*** together, they are going see thier house of cards fall apart. So maybe my whole theory about pay to play is bunk. By contrast, search for the terms on Yahoo. At least the site results actually have the search terms you typed in on their page. Number three, however, is a link spammed redirect that is in violation of both Yahoo and Smartbargains (the store is redirects you too) terms. This set too, is pitiful, but not as pitiful as Google's.
One of the things that strikes me about these types of discussions is its not possible for site publishers to give an impartial opinion for the simple reason that typically they're view is dictated by the search engines (mostly Google's) ranking/opinion of their site. A classic example of this is Daniel Brandt who speaks out against Google. The same could just as easily be said (in reverse) about google-watch-watch.org's owner who's sites (on the whole) rank very well in Google, not from buying his way to the top but from having a large amount of PR to hose around from all his free content sites that have been around for years and achieve a large amounts of back links.
Do you have proof that this is the case than? I think not. Can you guarantee that paying *x* for a PR8, is going to give you more benefit in terms of SERP's results than getting a PR6 or 5 or even 2 or 3. It's about anchor text.