Matt Cutts Says It's Illogical To Penalize Sites For Buying Links?

Great Post!!!!!

Most of my results are due to a lack of over zealous link building and some small effective link purchases with the keyword anchor text and the great thing is Google will never know which sites or with whom I purchased any links....

See unless Google follows me or others I use in the real world it will be hard to prove money or favors exchanged for a link was committed. In addition I have done do free or low cost SEO analysis or PPC work for links...

so I guess the almighty Google will say link barter is against their TOS.....

The next thing people will say that giving links for work done will hurt your rankings lol.....

As for the PR drop... a site or two with high PR linking to you may have fallen off or if Google hit them in the last update, then your overall PR would likely suffer.

Peace!

 

Google does not care about paid links in general, they care about paid or free links used to manipulate the SERPs. They want the most relevant SERPs possible, if a 'marketing' website sells a link to another 'marketing' website this would likely not be punished by Google but when a 'marketing' website sells a link to a 'viagra' site then Google would care. Obviously the 'marketing' website linking to 'viagra' doesn't deserve the linking power they have, so they lose it. If you are using your linking power to manipulate the SERPs then you don't deserve to keep it.

Based on the above, Google punishes 'bad' link sellers to keep their SERPs relevant (to increase SE market share). They are not hurting themselves by punishing link sellers unless they make the mistake of punishing ALL link sellers, including the ones without bad (manipulative) intentions.

Link sellers should only link to quality sites, just like a free link. Same goes for reciprocal links.

If a link seller is linking to rubbish sites, THAT is when they should use nofollow. This gives link sellers the option to link badly without being penalized, or to link legitimately also without being penalized.

 

It's amazing to me that everyone is an expert on how the algo works, the spokesperson/evangelist talks about this that and the other thing, yet neither seem to say anything to prove that it works one way or the other....

On the flip side, I cannot prove the opposite.. But since I've not seen any evidence to the contrary, it can go either way.. that said, I am skeptical that it cares or even knows what is or is not relevant, irrelevant, paid or unpaid...

I think to much credit is being given where sheer coincidence has ruled the day...

 

Obviously they know how to distinguish relevant from irrelevant links, we all know that backlinks from relevant websites are more beneficial than those from irrelevant sites.

 

Really....

How?

 

Did Matt Cutts say anything about whether the stock market will go up or down tomorrow?

 

I would like to know that as well?

 

The keywords used in the two pages. Almost everything related to search engines revolves around keywords, and this is exactly what Google is working on at the moment, such as LSI.

If the 'viagra' site the 'marketing' website doesn't have the keyword 'marketing' or a synonym of 'marketing' it is likely the two sites are unrelated and shouldn't be linking to each other. This may go to a different level as well, such as whether the 'viagra' site has any links with the anchor text 'marketing'.

If you get a link from the Digg front page, or a link from an authority site RELATED to your website, which do you think will have the greater SERP impact? Obviously the related website.

 

To live_cms_com: I wouldn't bother replying. According the these yokels, Matt Cutts is full of it, I'm full of it, you're full of it, and anyone else who thinks Google can detect paid links is full of it.

Do you really think anything is going to penetrate a closed mind?

Ba-bye, folks. Enjoy your dream world.

 

Minstrel undeniable proof often tends to do the trick, if this is really a case of people having closed minds.

 

I have given many logical reasons why Google would penalize link sellers. Mainly revolving around the relevance of the SERPs which in turn will increase Google's market share (and profit).

There is no way to prove that they do so, as I did not develop the algorithm for Google, but I at least assume that they would do so, because of the advantages of doing so and the disadvantages of not.

 

Aside from the fact that you still do not realize the scope of the amount of computing power we're talking about, you did just underline a third problem... where the data sample that they use to train the algorithm comes from.

It comes from other webmasters backstabbing each other, and many of them just as smart as sem. You wind up with standard GIGO (or often times GIBSO).

-Michael

 

You show your ignorant, scum, low life way of doing things by choosing to accuse me of something you have NO proof and without so much as even a remote scintilla of intellect.

ARE YOU SO STUPID TO THINK GOOGLE WOULD REMOVE A SITE DUE TO ONE LINK REPORT???????????

You have to be stupid as the shrink

The both of you should join forces and try to put together an IQ past the two digit range....

Stupid is as stupid does....

 

SEM, I don't think he was trying to offend you.

 

Unfortunately all his past posts in my regard are insults and put downs....

He is so smart.... I am thinking of making my first link sales report to google regarding a certain boring blog called smackdown.blogsblogsblogs.com or maybe one of his more important sites......

If I am going to be accused of something I haven't done.... I might as well do what I am accused of and give the accuser the prize eh?

Some people need the taste slapped out of their mouths.....

 

Who defines what a relevant link is though? I mean take my auto-dealer link example.. They could have links to parts stores, banks, other lenders, insurance companies, auto detailers, body shops, and web design companies..

What here is not relevant?

 

Google defines what is relevant, if all/most of your links are useless to your visitors then you most likely do not deserve the linking power to effect the SERPs. If a 'viagra' site is linked to from a 'marketing' website, should Google assume that the link is paid because it is not from a 'pharmacy' which has the keyword 'viagra'? In general, yes.

Google has the brains and means to refine this concept until it has very few problems.

If your auto-dealer had a page of content about 'insurance' then it would be ok to link to an insurance company but without the accompanying content, enough to make the pages relevant thanks to the keyword relationships, the link is useless. Why should an insurance company have a sitewide link on an auto-sales site unless it is paid or reciprocal? A page of content shows that the link is legitimate, an unrelated site-wide link does not.

It is up to Google to do this fairly, but I believe they are doing so, since stopping SERP manipulation through paid links must be a high priority because as I have said -

relevant SERPs = higher market share = more profit

 

Proving yet again that you cannot read. I never said you submitted any of those reports.

-Michael

 

F Google.. they lie worse than pinocchio that made me giggle

Your right in a way google are just trying to confuse everyone.

To tell the truth i don't know how google can tell us to stop buying and selling links , its our sites , they make there money from us adding adsense on our sites, without us adsense would be nothink.

 

They make more money from displaying ads in the SERPs. If they let people manipulate the SERPs by buying/selling links the quality of the SERPs drop so their market share drops so their profit drops.