As we all know, the google clampdown on bought and sold links is attempting to restore the best results to the SERPS. We can like it or not but there is reasoning behind it. So what's the problem? Here is an example: I happened upon a story in the UK news that the Queen of England has launched a royal youtube channel, showing previous Christmas Day broadcasts and where today she will broadcast her annual 'Queens Speech to the people'. (For those outside the UK, the annual Queens Speech is a big thing for a lot of people). As I read the story, in Bloomberg, I realised there was no link to take me to the youtube page, which was pretty key to the story. So I checked the story on some major UK newspapers. Like Bloomberg, the Guardian also had no link. The Daily Telegraph and the BBC had 'redirect/new window' type links that wouldn't be followed as links. Only The Times had a 'real' link. This is the problem. If so many important and trusted sites refuse to link to out naturally, what are google actually basing their results on? Presumably an unnaturally small sample of sites that DO link out when it is appropriate. Should the Queen start a blog and make a few controversial comments, to drum up link popularity as suggested by Matt Cutts? Perhaps she needs to add some more 'real content' instead of old videos? And what hope is there for us with small semi-commercial sites when this reluctance to link without money changing hands is so all pervading?
I agree with you - great post. If nobody will link a site... or if all link with a "nofollow" tags, how google will give SERPs ? And I think, google should ban those sites which shows results in "link:www.domain.com" -- Infact both should be banned.. those coming in the results (for linking a site without nofollow) and domain.com for building backlinks.
I don't know that this conclusion is necessarily accurate. We don't know for sure how G is handling no-follow and redirected links (redirects that contain the target url). The intent is not to pass PR. It is very possible that the "no-follow" effect stops there. The link could still be valuable in the many other ways that links are measured and could still have a positive effect on SERPs. We just don't know for sure if PR is the only factor effected by the tag. I think that if G is so concerned about paid links, they should implement a "rel=paid" tag. As it currently stands, "no-follow" is really a vote of no confidence. So, if I accept ads on my site I have to give a no-confidence vote to the advertiser to protect myself from G, when I may have full confidence in the advertiser's site. That's not very fair or accurate is it? Basically IMHO, using no-follow to identify paid links is potentially misleading and therefore a very bad idea. /*tom*/
What I was thinking is that perhaps google are approaching the problem of paid links from the wrong direction. If they made it clear that sites would be rewarded, by ranking higher in the serps, if they included plenty of links to other, useful and related sources, then the paid links problem would fade away. This is because if the internet had many more 'real' links, it would become much more difficult financially to buy enough links to compete with the sites receiving these links. Currently, if very few sites are naturally giving links to other sites, it makes it easier for less-worthy sites to buy their way up the SERPS.
I really like the theory in your idea, lets hope Google actually read a deasent amount in this forum and dont just come here to jump sites selling and buying links, if they herd this idea I am sure it would be worth a great deal of thought on just how they could impiment it into their algos so it would work. I sure am glad it is not me who has to come up with ways of dealing with the problems Google has but feel they have definatly made a bad move in the last thing they did in hitting sales of links in the way they did, I dont really have a clue how they go about the changes they made but I know I never sold any links yet I was one of the sites which dropped and I am not the only one. I have herd so many stories now of oh my site dropped like a rock yet I never sold or bought a link ever stories even oh my site was deindexed from Google yet they dont sell links or buy links and the reason was for this. Of course some of it is going to be bull and some of them are going to be sites who did sell links and are now just crying cos there site dont make them money off selling links anymore, but from my own experiance I also have to belive that there will also be alot where they are telling the truth and they have been penalised for something they never did.