Matt Cutts and the paid links

Is impossible for Google fix this situation by the fear way.
They put all the rules and now they want to change the rules because they plan something bad. They want to worry SEOS and stop a little bit paid links, maybe some paranoia is growing up and thats enough for them because they will win more market of advertisemente in internet.
Is like the mystic of reciprocal links is bad, just theory!!
I think if someone who buy links is penalized by google it will begin a big war and nobody is gonna be safe by the web.

 

Please pay attention. As I have said repeatedly, in the vast majority of cases, Google does not PENALIZE purchased links. They COULD do so but they don't need to. They simply DISCOUNT any PR value of those links. You can continue to buy as many text links as you wish, just as people were free to buy as many pixel links as they wish. And what Google said about those pixel links, in no uncertain terms, was that they would not "pass PR".

 

Precisely.

Worse case scenario, the site that is selling links is prevented from passing PR and Link weight.

 

It's not "half off" it's "buy one get one free"

The glass is not half full it's half empty

You are playing with definitions for the same thing...

If the links you are talking about are worth less, then it does not matter what term you apply to it, it's still worth less.

 

I am sorry, but what he said seemed very clear to me. He simply stated that the sites that are being linked too are not going to get penalized. The Site with the outbound link, that supposedly had been purchased, can eventually be prevented from passing on PR and consequently, link weight.

Don't really understand what you meant about "playing around" with definitions there, it clear as water to me.

 

So what you are saying is that Google will not penalize the link, it'll only give it less of a value.

Right?

 

Isn't it the same thing? Who is arguing terms for god's sake?

I say Botato you say Potato.

 

Then Google DOES penalize those thinks... but some people like to call that penalty a "discount".

You are right, it was clear.

my bad...

 

No. A penalty would be this:

1. Google learns you have purchased links for PR.

2. Google penalizes your page/site, either by banning you from the index or by applying a "30" type of penalty where you drop a significant number of positions in Google rankings.

That's NOT what happens. There is no penalty. You simply don't benefit from the money you have spent to purchase those links. Your PR doesn't change. Your Google ranking doesn't change.

The only "penalty" is the money you've thrown away.

Of course, it's always possible that you might gain some additional human traffic from following those links from the site supplying them to your site, so you might recoup part of what the link cost you. THAT is the effect of advertising.

To use an analogy, there are dozens of bogus "herbal remedies" on the market, touted as preventing or reversing aging, cancer, acne, or whatever. Let's say you have the condition this bogus remedy claims to treat. You buy some and take it. You don't get "penalized" for this in the sense that it causes disease or makes the condition any worse. It just doesn't help the condition. It passes no value to you. It's worthless as a remedy.

These links, when detected, are worthless as PR boosters or ranking boosters. But they don't make your status any worse. They just don't improve your status.

 

Actually, no, there is another possibility. There is the chance that Google will not block a sold link from passing PR, but the whole page itself. This could, in theory, kill that site.

Based on history, my concern is not Google doing this, but rather Google doing this and not getting it right. I have seen collateral damage from their spam control efforts in the past, and it's not pretty. They think that as long as they take down some cheaters, it is ok to kill a certain amount of innocent sites.

I explained most of my views on it here:

http://www.seorefugee.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5745

-Michael

 

minstrel, we are referring to the penalization of the site that is providing the link. Not being able to pass on PR juice, is certainly a penalty.

Of course that technically site A doesn't benefit by linking to Site B. But we all know that sometimes appearances can deceive.

 

No penalty would mean that Google treats it exactly the same as a non-paid link. Any "discount" in treatment by Google would mean a "penalty" was given.

While your site may not be penalized directly, your link is. Enough penalized links, and your site will be effected (compared to if you had an equal amount of non-penalized links).

If you take two sites of otherwise equal value. If one site has 100 paid links and the other had 100 non-paid links, they should be equal in SERPS...right? Wrong, well, wrong if the 100 paid links are "discounted".

 

Ok I have an no follow attitude on where you got your information. And I realize there are at the moment over 380 replies on Matt Cutt's blog. But where in the world did you pull this out. IF he explained this or pointed this out, let me know. I some how did not follow the logic in this or where you got your info. My apologies. But I did not read this into the blog. I may be slow on the uptake. But this is first I am trying to understand.

And yes, I understand that Google is "Thee" SE. And that they are into advertising. What I dislike is what they say is ok and not ok on my site, if it is not doing any harm whatsoever. And where I am not manipulating any of my serp's etc. I have seen nothing in me doing any exchanges but traffic. I have not move up in any serps or indexing. But on the other hand my info is not needed by everyone either. So I do not expect my site to be placed #1 on page 1 for 15 weeks staight. All though it would be great. Although would not happen. I have been on page 2 #1 a few times though, randomly.

 

What about Web directories which sell links based on PR (no or little traffic to buyers' site).
Many buy links from Web directories just because of the PR value so that they could benefit from the passing value thru those pages.

Again, I am talking about directories which have good pagerank but low traffic.

 

I am not "pulling" this from that particular Cutts' blog entry, nor from any single blog entry, nor even solely from Matt Cutts. I am looking at the way Google has dealt with this issue over the past few years - and the fact that they have done what I described consistently and repeatedly (do a search for pixel selling or SearchKing or other examples in the past couple of years). Google has said many times that they do not like to do intervene manually - and if they do it's usually a temporary measure while they update the filters to make that manual intervention unnecessary. Instead, they tweak their anti-spam filters (and note the word "FILTER" - not penalty) to devalue or discount certain types of links.

Why is Google asking for paid link reporting now? To TEST changes to the algorithm which will allow better discounting of such links.


http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/002818.html

 

Minstrel, you lost me mate...

You submit your site to a free directory and get a link, cool, it's free PR still counts?
You pay for a featured link (because you want to be listed at the top above all the other listings) and the PR doesn't count?

lets take a look at bigweblinks.com for example, do you not think that he might face a penalty of loss of revenue if he can no longer pass PR?? it won't matter whether it's pr4 or pr6, would you pay $500 for a link that doesn't pass PR?
This is messing with people livings/lives.

how you can say there is no penalty is beyond me.

 

Well, how much that link is worth still depends on a few other factors, of course.

I don't think PR is affected in your example. But from an advertising standpoint, it has value because directory browsers will see your link highlighted and first. The fact that PR "doesn't count" doesn't mean the featured link does not have value to you.

Absolutely not. But then again, I've never purchased a link from anyone. So the person trying to make money by selling PageRank suffers a penalty... true enough but so what? If I out the claims of someone selling a herbal remedy as nonsense, the seller of the bogus remedy will also presumably lose money. Do I care about that? No. What he was doing in the first place was unethical. It's the same with the buying and selling of PR. If you want to do it, go ahead. If you discover that Google knows about it and those links have no PR value, I'm not going to feel any sympathy for either the buyer or the seller. More importantly, neither will Google.

Only those people who are trying to manipulate Google.

It's not a "penalty". That word has a specific meaning in Google and other search engines. For example, there is no duplicate content penalty - there is a duplicate content filter. You can have as many pages with identical content as you wish. You are not penalized for doing that. You're simply prevented from getting any extra credit for the duplicates because only one of them will be indexed (normally).

That's the same thing I'm describing in terms of the discounting or devaluing of paid links (when they are detected).

I'm virtually certain it's the same thing that happens to DP Coop links, by the way. They may have some value as advertising, although because they are not targeted I wonder how much. I don't think they have any value in terms of PR by now. Any PR benefit they may have provided ended a long time ago. But that doesn't mean that you are "penalized" for using Coop links. Google doesn't discourage advertising - they just do what they can to limit the artifical PR increase that would be derived by those advertising links without their filters (including relevancy filters, by the way).

To be clear, I'm not saying that Google is currently detecting ALL paid links. Of course not. But they are getting better and better at detecting them every month. And this latest blog post by Cutts is telling you that they are continuing to work to improve those filters.

 

Your definition of penalty is VERY narrow in scope.

Accordingly, if you stuck to your definition, the only penalty for getting caught for say, murder, would be the death penalty, life in prison, would just be a 'freedom filter'.

In Hockey, you get stuck in a Penalty box...that does not mean you are killed, or banned from the game.

 

It's not MY definition. It's precisely how the terms are used by Google and by most people who understand the way Google works. If it's a penalty, you lose something in terms of Google rankings or indexing. A filter simply prevents you gaining from an action that would otherwise articially or unfairly inflate your PR or rankings.

Now you're just being silly. And let's be clear that those are your words, not mine.

 

Googles not the only search engine in the world, buying links will still benefit you with MSN, Yahoo and all the rest. Won't it?