Matt Cutts says Co-op is bad???

Quite easily - This has been discussed extensively here: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=95507&page=4

I would also like to point out that overall "relevancy" has different parts -

Part 1 - Is a link of similar "theme" to the document it is on - i.e is a link to a mortage site relevant to a document page about real estate? - Obviously to a cunsumer this is likely to be.

Part 2 - Is the site being linked to a quality resource ?

So take the mortgage example - it may pass test one, however if it is just a spammy site about mortages, then it would not pass test 2. Therefore the link may still be considered not relevant - as it not relevant to the user - i.e a customer reading about mortgages may certainly want to know about mortgages - but also at the same time, they would probably be pissed off to be taken to a spammy site about mortgages.

This all comes down to what is best for the customer and if you are linking to spammy non relevant sites then it is not. This is what I believe google are targetting and why the COOP is a risk -

1/. The COOP does not provide themed links

2/. May of the sites in the COOP are spammy sites - or at best very poor websites for a particular theme.

Therefore if I have a page about Real estate and it has outgoing links to:
1/. A spammy mortage site
2/. An Seo competition site
3/. A spammy casino site
4/. A health website
5/. A spammy home loans site

Then you have to say that you are really providing 5 non relevant ( some more than others ), outgoing links.

I think it all comes down to asking - is this benifiting my user, or am I doing this to modify my search engine results. If you genuinely believe it is the former then I believe you will be fine, if it is the later, then I think this is what google is now targetting - and if you have not been caught out yet, then expect to be in future when google improves its alogrithm.

 

Good post Big Dick I agree with it all but can't comment on the co-op as I have never used it. I will say this though. If you want to know how effective it can be as a blunderbuss approach, then go read the v7n competition winners thread

Relevancy is the next stage as far as links are concerned, but for the time being the balance of power is still with a link is a link mentality.

 

As far as Google is concerned yes, however how do you tell the difference between someone in the Coop and someone offering advertising on their website with something similar to Google adsense or FusionQuest?

 

Most of those links are via redirects/JS links etc - so I would assume they are just disregarded. Google adsense is generally targetted towards the text on the page. Plus a lot of people consider that there are penalities for providing too many affiliate links on a page (such as mass amazon affiliate web pages).

 

As far as I know, websites who purchase AdSense advertisements don't derive PR benefit from those ads. Google is just doing the same with Coop or LinkVault ads - nullifying any PR benefit.

If you're in it for advertising, you can still continue to do that - Google has no objection to advertising, obviously. It's the "perk" of added PR benefit that is now being removed.

 

I said similar to adsense. Not adsense itself.

Take fusionquest links.

A typical fusionquest link looks just like this:
www.worldfamousgiftbaskets.net?kammistore

How about if you are selling advertising?
Google is going to penalize you for selling advertising?

What would be the point of selling advertising to your competition. That is why we removed adsense from our pages.

 

This is not quite accurate.

This last round of penalties did significantly more than "nullifying any PR benefit." It penalized sites much more heavily than they were benefitting from the co-op.

In addition, this round of penalties seems to have been leavied against sites that were contributing outbound links to the co-op, not sites that are receiving inbound links from the co-op. That is not directly "nullifying any PR benefit", because the penalty was applied haphazardly across co-op sites.

 

Will, I'm not suggesting that the only thing happening since Big Daddy is nullifying the PR benefit of advertising. However, I think that's part of it, just as the benefits of bought-and-paid-for text links were nullified. That's different from a penalty.

The remainder is a combination, I think, of more emphasis on link relevance (outgoing and incoming) and a broken Google.

 

Well it seems to basically just come down to links - if you sell a banner that links to "good relevant site" - then you may possibly benifit - because that is enhancing your page as the advert is relevant to the reader and the place it goes to is a high quality site. However if the link goes to a non relevant spam site, then that may incur a penality.

This seems relatively fair - make sure everything on you page is relevant to the user and don't link to spam sites (even if you are getting paid for it). If you owned a cake bakeing magazine you would not accept adverts from a porn channel.

 

http://www.threadwatch.org/node/7105

Another subject on this.

 

Are you buying/selling advertising or pagerank?

This is SOOOOOOOO simple to work out.

Would the buyer be happy with a jumplink? If the answer is no, then you are selling pagerank/link benefit. If the answer is yes, then you are selling advertising.

I would not give a rats fart how the link was configured, as long as it was 100% browser friendly (IE. anyone who clicks on the link goes to my page) . You have to be honest here, and admit that you are either buying PR/link benefit, or advertising. If it is advertising then you will have no problem in the link being in a non spiderable format, anything else is buying link beneift/PR and you really can not complain about actions being taken to prevent the gaming of the Search engine algorithms.

 

I agree - I think to many want to have their cake and eat it. There have been a lot of people around DP forums saying that they should not be penilised for using the COOP because "It is an advertising system - and not their to modify the SERP's" - however, everyone really knows why so many people use the COOP and that is to game the SERP's. This is why I have posted the following poll: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=101074 to see if people would be happy with the COOP using nofollow tags. The introduction of this would stop any SERP benifits (and also stop any penalities) so it really would be just an advertising system.

 

That's pretty much it in a nutshell, isn't it? And what Google is doing with such links seems to be turning them into advertising links whether that's what the participant intended or not. Google doesn't erase the links - click on them and they will still take you to the sites they advertise - but is nullifying the PR benefit.

Of course, Big Daddy is a lot more than just that and there are problems with Google now that have nothing to do with the Coop or LinkVault or buying and selling links.

(I am becoming a little concerned about your apparent preoccupation with rat farts though, OWG...)

 

Easy isn't it But those in denial will find it unnaceptable. They will scream about oppression from google, and 'why should they be told how to link out' etc. Simple really, it is Google's ball and you play on their pitch under their rules. If G says use the nofollow and you chose not to, then you can have no complaint when they remove your site from THEIR index.

I am not a big Google fan at the moment however, I think they are putting too many noses out of joint, their index is a crock of shit, they are shitting on many small businesses for no reason. The answer is simple however. STOP USING GOOGLE . stop spending adwords $$££ with them, stop displaying adsense and try out other methods of revenue like afiliate schemes etc.

The ONLY way to make a corporation listen is to damage revenue. Until their plateu or dip, G will keep on doding what they are doing.

<edit > cross posted with Minnie

 

a very interesting read this thread. i hadnt heard of this argument before.

 

possibhly because you only joined 4 days ago and this thread is from last year???

you think that might be something to do with it?