May 1, 2007 19:00
Category: Link Making
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It all started when Google's Matt Cutts sounded the warning in his April 14 post that henceforth Google is going to look at paid links more closely.
On the face of it, his reasoning is justified because incoming links from high PR page being a big criterion to rank well in SERPs, Google cannot be seen to be promoting pages that have earned links by paying, thereby 'gate-crashing' into top ranks.
In his post, Matt gives an example of 'ill-intended' hidden link that attempts to befool human eyes while having the robots to take notice of.
It is likely that Google's algorithm put out a red flag on this instance while crawling, along with many others, which were then manually checked by its engineers.
What is surprising after Matt's post is the wave of protests from every corner of search industry.
Some are so vehement that it becomes pretty obvious that the paid-link 'disease' is indeed very deep. It's a flourishing industry out there, and if Google does what it means, it is possible that many of the paid-link experts will be in trouble. Which perhaps explains this enormous brouhaha.
Of all the comments and re-comments floating about, a couple of sane voices make good sense to someone like me watching the whole thing from the fence. Before going into that, let's briefly examine what could perhaps be 2 types of end-result expectations out of paid links:
1
If a site is popular like those in mainstream media, I'll be interested to buy a link, a little space - in the form of a small banner ad may be - so that visitors coming to that website may click on my ad and come to my site. I don't think there is much confusion here, simply because it is an established form of marketing, having passed on from print media.
The question is do those sites mention anywhere in their pages that these are paid links? Or, do the links have attributes like 'rel=nofollow' so that search engines know not to follow them?
If not, then the pages paid links point to enjoy an unfair advantage in SERPs over the lowly-ranked yet relevant ones just on the strength of one or more heavyweight incoming links, and may be no other value addition. This is what I feel Matt Cutts' argument in his post is about.
2
If the first one is a straight-cut case of buying link in a heavily visited site, the second type of paid links is of a different genre altogether. What happens is that pages with high PageRank sells space to link-buyers to earn revenue.
Note that a page with high PR doesn't necessarily mean lots of visitors to that page, so a paid link here is not meant for attracting high direct traffic. It's rather that an incoming link from high PR page weighs a lot for favorable rank in SERPs.
No doubt the second end-result expectation is the direct fallout of PR figures that Google makes available publicly. It's an irony that Google now attempts to put the genie back into the bottle after having created and nurtured the uneven turf for website owners to battle it out for supremacy in search results at least in terms of incoming links.
Is this awakening of Google not expected? Not really. I recall an article by Jill Whalen on buying text links in which she was quite categorical about the problems associated with buying and selling text links.
Which is why Jill's voice makes sense in this entire lot of arguments when instead of nitpicking she just expresses surprise at Matt's request for acting as Google's informer. She says: Why should we mark paid links for them (Google)?
Now that the lines are clearly drawn, what next? One feels when Matt Cutts sounded the alarm, it only means that Google is well on the path to identify and show the paid links their 'proper place'. The plan is ready, and action is about to begin. Perhaps it has already begun.
This brings me to the question of affiliate ads. What about them (both banner and text) that small website owners put out to earn revenue? There have been anxious queries as to whether they transgress the line of paid-links dictum as explained by Matt.
In my understanding, affiliate ads are a safer lot because money is not exchanged for just their placement in web pages. They are rather what I term as PPP ads, or pay-per-payment ads. Which means unless a potential buyer clicks on an ad and goes on to make a purchase, there is no money earned.
And between paid links and affiliate ads comes AdSense itself, where you earn money when an ad is clicked although the process of calculation is too complex to follow. Now, will Google ban AdSense?
Too silly a question you'd say.
