Google's recent clamp down on paid links

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Lawrence L
Freelance Web Consultant at architxt.net

12 November 2007 14:51pm

Links provide traffic, so there is that.

What Google are trying to stop is the market that has grown out of buying and selling PageRank, which is a measure of quality and not a currency.
Iain Forrest
Owner at Wynyard Consultants Ltd

13 November 2007 09:27am

Hi - I find the info at the link below from danielb very helpful in relation to how to handle paid links in an 'upfront' manner so that we can all sleep at night, but I do have questions about how anyone other than the parties involved can know if a link is paid for or not.

It seems pretty clear that in order to avoid being perceived as attempting to pass PR we should all use 'nofollow' for any paid links including, for example, the ad links on this page. So, I don't have a problem in continuing to recommend that website owners look at purchasing links but primarily for the quality, targetted traffic they bring.

However, if a site attracts incoming links because it has relevant, great content (a client of mine has links from itv.com that they did not request for example) what happens then? Will Google perceive that I have paid for this? If my competitor sees it when researching my incoming links will they report me?

Also concerned therefore about the effects of all this on the recipient of the 'non-conforming' paid (or perhaps not ..) link, as I think we can assume some kind of negative impact on the destination site since the Google Guidelines below talk about 'buying & selling' of links. Any other views on this?

I think we all understand the problem Google are trying to solve but we need more clarity from them about how they'll make sure the 'good guys' aren't caught in the crossfire.

Thanks,

Iain

On 13:11:43 5 November 2007 danielb wrote: google's policy is still that you should 'nofollow' any paid links:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66736&query=nofollow&topic=&type=
daniel
Ashley Friedlein Staff
CEO at Econsultancy

13 November 2007 10:20am

Google don't typically answer these kinds of questions very explicitly. They say (and you can understand their point) that they can't because that would then just make clear to the bad guys what they can get away with, or how to cheat the system.
There are lots of grey areas here. For example, if you did a link swap, or some kind of contra deal (look at the links in the footer of our site for example) then are these 'paid links'? They are in as much as both parties understand that there is value in them. I guess, though, the point is that the value should be understood as brand value + direct traffic and not about conferring page rank and therefore should have "nofollow" on them. (although I would still argue this point - we should have the editorial right to choose that we DO want to confer page rank and for good reason).
The bigger question that this raises for me is around whether Google (and indeed other search engines) should have to have some kind of SLA (service level agreement) whereby they had a clearly described process (with associated contacts, timings etc.) for resolving issues or problems?
I talked about this last year in the context of delistings and re-indexation (see What re-indexing processes should / must Google offer?) but I don't think that anything has changed. In the instance we're talking about then I think it is understandable that Google might make mistakes in punishing these 'paid links' inappropriately or, indeed, that a site owner might make a genuine mistake. However, at the moment, I'm not aware that there is any clear way of resolving such possible issues?
As mentioned in my earlier post, I think it is fair enough that Google could charge for such issue resolution services, but I do think it at least needs to offer them.
In the meantime we can all scrabble to do what we hope and believe is the right thing and pray that we don't get accidentally crushed by the juggernaut that is the Big G...
Ashley Friedlein
CEO
E-consultancy.com
Andrew Rogoff
Founder at Resourceguruapp.com and StagsandHens.com

13 November 2007 20:53pm

hi ashley, so are you going to jump to avoid the juggernaut? will you be using "nofollow" for your ads?
On 10:20:59 13 November 2007 Ashley wrote:
Google don't typically answer these kinds of questions very explicitly. They say (and you can understand their point) that they can't because that would then just make clear to the bad guys what they can get away with, or how to cheat the system.
There are lots of grey areas here. For example, if you did a link swap, or some kind of contra deal (look at the links in the footer of our site for example) then are these 'paid links'? They are in as much as both parties understand that there is value in them. I guess, though, the point is that the value should be understood as brand value + direct traffic and not about conferring page rank and therefore should have "nofollow" on them. (although I would still argue this point - we should have the editorial right to choose that we DO want to confer page rank and for good reason).

The bigger question that this raises for me is around whether Google (and indeed other search engines) should have to have some kind of SLA (service level agreement) whereby they had a clearly described process (with associated contacts, timings etc.) for resolving issues or problems?

I talked about this last year in the context of delistings and re-indexation (see What re-indexing processes should / must Google offer?) but I don't think that anything has changed. In the instance we're talking about then I think it is understandable that Google might make mistakes in punishing these 'paid links' inappropriately or, indeed, that a site owner might make a genuine mistake. However, at the moment, I'm not aware that there is any clear way of resolving such possible issues?

As mentioned in my earlier post, I think it is fair enough that Google could charge for such issue resolution services, but I do think it at least needs to offer them.

In the meantime we can all scrabble to do what we hope and believe is the right thing and pray that we don't get accidentally crushed by the juggernaut that is the Big G...

Ashley Friedlein
CEO
E-consultancy.com
Julia Pendower
Marketing Director at NutriPharma

14 November 2007 01:14am

I think that it would be reasonable for google to post a specific definition of what they are calling 'paid links'. There is no need for them to give away the specifics of how they are measuring this in their algorithm, but a fundamental description of what they believe a 'paid ad' to be is reasonable to expect from them, with some worked examples of what sort of link they expect to have a 'no-follow' tag added. Otherwise it is all guesswork on the part of webmasters and marketeers, and given the potential financial consequences, not very reasonable of them to apply this without any kind of guidance. Without specific guidance or 'rules' being issued, I can forsee a time in the future where a leading e-commerce site gets penalised and they end up suing google for damages for lost revenues.
On 20:53:40 13 November 2007 AndrewRogoff wrote:
hi ashley, so are you going to jump to avoid the juggernaut? will you be using "nofollow" for your ads?
On 10:20:59 13 November 2007 Ashley wrote:

Google don't typically answer these kinds of questions very explicitly. They say (and you can understand their point) that they can't because that would then just make clear to the bad guys what they can get away with, or how to cheat the system.
There are lots of grey areas here. For example, if you did a link swap, or some kind of contra deal (look at the links in the footer of our site for example) then are these 'paid links'? They are in as much as both parties understand that there is value in them. I guess, though, the point is that the value should be understood as brand value + direct traffic and not about conferring page rank and therefore should have "nofollow" on them. (although I would still argue this point - we should have the editorial right to choose that we DO want to confer page rank and for good reason).

The bigger question that this raises for me is around whether Google (and indeed other search engines) should have to have some kind of SLA (service level agreement) whereby they had a clearly described process (with associated contacts, timings etc.) for resolving issues or problems?

I talked about this last year in the context of delistings and re-indexation (see What re-indexing processes should / must Google offer?) but I don't think that anything has changed. In the instance we're talking about then I think it is understandable that Google might make mistakes in punishing these 'paid links' inappropriately or, indeed, that a site owner might make a genuine mistake. However, at the moment, I'm not aware that there is any clear way of resolving such possible issues?

As mentioned in my earlier post, I think it is fair enough that Google could charge for such issue resolution services, but I do think it at least needs to offer them.

In the meantime we can all scrabble to do what we hope and believe is the right thing and pray that we don't get accidentally crushed by the juggernaut that is the Big G...

Ashley Friedlein
CEO
E-consultancy.com
Ashley Friedlein Staff
CEO at Econsultancy

14 November 2007 09:18am

The short answer is, yes, we will be adding "nofollow" to any ads. Just as soon as we get to it on the long list of "to do's" on the development list!
Ashley