Thus, they need a whole new algo that doesn't rely on links. Ever since the whole 'link' thing began, it's been nothing but a battle ground out there for web placement. If they remove the 'link' theory, then website owners would have to rely strictly on content and site design. To me, THAT would make a better web. But how would one rank these sites mathematically? Google doesn't know how, so they gotta stick with the 'link' thing and gather as much information as possible from as many sources as possible.... Webmaster Tools Analytics Natural Search _________ (fill in the blank) Personally, just as a test, I've got a site in the works right now and the only linking i'm going to be doing is via a few directories. Free ones at that. Of course, before that, I'm going to focus STRICTLY on site design and quality content. Then just see what happens. It's a hobby site anyways, so I'm not pressured to get it rolling. According to G, a setup like this should dominate the serps.... contrary to popular opinion (which I happen to agree with). In the end, we'll see what matters most... content, or links.
I agree with MrStitch. Google probably realized that many problems they are trying to deal with now, like paid links, is caused by their own algo that rely so heavily on links. But they haven't figured out a way to reduce the importance of links and still maintain a high quality search ranking. So here you go, a patch here and there, until some breakthrough that fundamentally changes ranking algorithms. On paid links, I assume paid directory listings shouldn't count. Is there a G doc that talks about t? Also what about site sponsorship on a non-profit org's website?
I don't think there would be a problem unless they can catch you. And even then, they wouldnt penalize you, they would simply not count that link, and your money for that link woyld be wasted. That's it.
This document http://www.scriptol.com/seo/pagerank.php is a summary of Google's April 2007 patent application. See the topic "Criterion of the links to the page" and in particular, the last sentence. It lumps link exchanges, paid links and directories together and calls them all spam without any attempt to consider that some might be legit. From this, it seems that G is not going to lose any sleep worrying whether they correctly identified a particular link to your site. /*tom*/
ok so I am no guru by any means but I think that the talk above about reporting paid for links is so that Google can have an "idea" of who is buuying links. they can in return manually trace them, then set up an algo to substantiate the practice and put it into robot mode. After all isn't that what everyone else is doing? Trying to create an autopilot type of income. Why can google not learn how to detect paid links it will only enhance teh market and create more area for people like you and I to learn how to make google work for us instead of us working for them. After all that is what is happening.
I don't think they will devalue paid links too much. You could just post a thread somewhere saying selling links on www.mycompetitorssite.com and then report them as selling links.
Boolean searches - If everyone would begin to learn how to make those work for all of us then everyone in here could make an absolutely retarded amount of money. Adsense on pages that have the ability to be included in theses searches, These pages ranking high in these searches. You have just started at ground zero with Adsense now it's just getting people to use that search engine to search. So you now begin to market the Live search engine so that people begin to use it.
I totally agree with you hmansfield. Although, to me, sometimes you have to buy a link somewhere. I dont like buying links because i would rather have them free like everyone else. I just think sometimes marketing is not always free and in the case of seo, sometimes if you want ranking and you have better competition, you have to pull out the credit card. I do agree with you, im all for the small guy (im one of them), but you also have to look at these big companies with these links that have put them where they are and wonder if it is worth it or not.
if google is frowning on link exchanges and buying links, how are new sites that webmasters make supposed to get indexed?
Well the last paragraph is: "The speed of appearance of backlinks signals spam. It is supposed that the pages of a given type attract the links according to a given speed. So when too much backlinks appear, that implies an exchange or purchase of links, or pages of free inscription (such as directories) and that is spam." The speed of appearance of backlinks signals spam! So no Google hunting for directories or purchases or whatever. Google only tracks the numbers of new links versus time. It's like don't try get 100 new links in a day but we already knew that eh? Link farms, automatized link trading, buying 250 links for $30, ... : all killed by this algo. I'd love to know what is the number of acceptable daily links for all niches.
Exactly, the keyword here is threshold. How much is too much, and how fast is too fast. It is everyone's guess and I don't think G will ever release it. But it is important to note that G mentioned deceleration of link building: "If the appearance of new backlinks is reduced with time, that means that the document becomes staled, its score is reduced." At some point every website has to slow down in building new links. Then your score would drop according to G? Also according to that article, advertisement does count in PR calculation: "The traffic coming from advertisements is taken into account. If advertisements are placed about other sites with strong traffic, then the page will have a better PakeRank than with advertisements for minor sites." Huh? If you have a deep pocket and can place ad on Yahoo front page, you will have a better PR than if you run a banner on a PR0 site. How is this compared with buying links?
I think that Google's manipulation of the web is worse than the webmasters that are trying rank well. It seems that the only thing that will be left for a website is to pay for Adwords to get traffic.