Sphinn - Matt Cutts Says Financial Arrangements Should Affect All Links Within a Post

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Matt Cutts Says Financial Arrangements Should Affect All Links Within a Post

Went Hot: December 31, 2007 - 1:47 am
Posted By: neyne 289 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.wolf-howl.com)
Category: Google

From GrayWolf: Matt Cutts claims that in paid content, all the links should be nofollowed - even the links added for informational purposes and not paid for. Plus some of Gray's opinions on Google we all learned to cherish.

22 Comments

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from ViperChill 289 days ago #

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I wonder how sphinn allowed mine as well, sorry

from neyne 289 days ago #

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I wonder which one is going to get sphinned, if they both remain :)))

my bet is on yours...

from dannysullivan 289 days ago #

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I pulled yours, Viper, and cross-linked. It happens if two people start submitting at the same time -- then a dupe can sometimes make it.

from dannysullivan 289 days ago #

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You should also see Andy's similar post, which went hot here on Sphinn.

from TimDineen 288 days ago #

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And also see Andrew Girdwood's observation that Matt HAS in fact replied and discredits the original conversation.

from rishilakhani 288 days ago #

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It might be well worth looking at Teds response to Matts response (posted elsewhere as well)

from pcunix 287 days ago #

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Has Google really thought this through?

As I explained at my More thoughts on the Google Slap, no follow and a Slap Back , I've added "nofollow" to ALL outgoing links, organic or not.

Why? Because Google sure isn't going to tell us how they determine that a link isn't organic - that would help people game Google, so I understand that. But since I can't tell WHAT they might think is slimey (my free Unix/Linux Consultants list, for example, or book and product reviews), I'm going to play it safe and put "nofollow" in everything..

Onviously this isn't good: if everyone did this, Google's PR algorithm would be worthless. But what's the answer? I got slapped from a PR6 to a PR3 - I may never recover by forcing "nofollow" but I sure as heck don't want to get any worse, so I'm doin it anyway.

How would Google work if everyone did that??

from cctech 287 days ago #

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Google can't determing accurately the thought process behind a link. That is why 1) they are painting all links with the same "this link must be an attempt to scam our index" brush and 2) relying on others to report *cough* suspicious links to them by filling out a form.

from neyne 287 days ago #

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What Matt states here has a very shaky logic. "If it wasn't paid for, it wouldn't exist" can be applied to so many things on the net that I am not sure there would be many links left for Googlebot to follow.

from JMorris 287 days ago #

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IMHO, Google is Blowing Smoke to cover up for the fact that they cannot differentiate between quality content and junk. Paid or not, a quality editorial post about a product or service should at least have a link to the product or service so I can research it further on my own. If the content is of high quality, it should effect search engine rankings.

What about the thousands of corporate blogs and portals out their that write editorials for products and services. eWeek is a good example. Do you think for one second that eWeek is not getting paid in one way or another to write about a product or service? I expect EVERYONE to get paid in one way or another for taking the time to review a product or service. Whether that payoff be traffic or cash, in the end, it all leads to $$$ for most anyways.

As far as the TLA method of effecting rankings goes... Google will never ever stop link buying. It's as old as web pages and will be around long after Google is gone. The practice of link buying is fundamentally the same as manufacturers giving retailers bonuses for promoting their product over a competitor's product. It's a standard business practice. Google will never change this.

It's not Google's job to dictate what gets published where. It's Google's job to index, categorize, and rank what it finds on the web. If paid links are effecting Google's index, it's Google's responsibility to fix their algorithm so that paid links rank the way Google wants them to. It's not the webmasters job to bend over and take one for Google because Google can't fix its own algorithm.

from brian 287 days ago #

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pcunix, we want your editorial posts/links. I'm sure if you submitted a reconsideration request we'd lift the penalty under your current changes (people on my team handle reconsiderations). However, I hope you change your mind and just add rel=nofollow to your sold links, which appear to be on the left sidebar of posts, and labeled on your home page. Of course, that's entirely up to you.

from dan404 287 days ago #

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@JMorris
You gratefully articulated my thoughts on the subjuct, Google invented this tag for a specific purpose and now are clouding our thoughts. Follow or Nofollow?
Links is links to me and target="_blank" are the only thing that follows my links.
Ban me Google, I learned how to live without your garbage traffic anyhow, Alexa rankings have slipped but not ROI.

from wheel 286 days ago #

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>>>>pcunix, we want your editorial posts/links

OF course you do. It's that content that's paying your paychecks. You folks at the plex might do well to reconsider the idea that we should be in a symbiotic relationship, not polarized to extremes like the situation you've created (it's not webmasters pushing all of this drama). You're treating this as one sided. It's not. Don't forget you're scraping the very sites you're penalizing to earn your living.

Maybe we need a 'June is block Google from our blog' month. It'll never happen, but blocking Googlebot from a large swath of blogs for a month, and all of a sudden MSN/YAHOO are the ones with fresh content. Then we might have some more interest in keeping this an equal relationship instead of the dictatorial entity we now enjoy.

from brian 286 days ago #

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"Don't forget you're scraping the very sites you're penalizing to earn your living."

Ambiguation of the term scraping with crawling, indexing, and adding value is an SEO fan favorite in some circles, and I don't think it's too late to take the term back. I pretty much dismiss that, as it's not scraping if you're taking content with permission. Google will not crawl if a site asks us not to.

google.com has a robots.txt that asks other sites not to crawl their results. The day your garden-variety scraper site adds a robots.txt directive to block search engine crawlers is the day I very well may eat my hat. :)

from SlightlyShadySEO 286 days ago #

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Google is opt out. That IS taking without permission.
"Permission" implies that it has been given.

from wheel 286 days ago #

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It is scraping. I'm sure you don't like being branded that, but it's exactly what you folks do for a living. The ONLY reason people put up with it is because you deliver traffic in return. But delivering that traffic doesn't change what it is you're doing. You scrape my content and slap ads on it for a living. Your 'I'm just a librarian for the www' doesn't fly with me. So fine, you can think it's not scraping - but you folks should soon realize that the rest of the world believe it is exactly that.

The day when webmasters feel that either the traffic you're delivering in return for scraping our sites, or when we start to feel like we'd like to hit back a little bit is the day Google is going to have a problem. And your company in the last year is making serious inroads into the second of those scenarios. That's my point, and what Google these days doesn't seem to understand. You're getting awfully close to biting the hands that feed you.

Here's a live example. I'm working on a hobby site. 5K pages of completely unique content of interest to both the general public and researchers. My preliminary look at the arena makes me bet I'm going to get a ton of .edu's linking to me and I'm pretty sure I'm going to get some .gov's. Let's assume I'm right and can actually know what I'm doing enough to create an authority site like that. Since I don't care to monetize it, and given both the general interest and research related nature of the site I can get plenty of authority links that will provide traffic. Beyond that, i really don't care since it is a hobby. I'm sitting here wondering why I'm going to pay the bandwidth for Google to scrape my site. Well normally I'd say that I don't care, go ahead. But as it stands, I'm feeling kind of testy about Google right now - and the traffic you send has no value for me for that site. So I am going to seriously consider banning the Googlebot.

Of course it's only one site, so it doesn't matter in the least, right?

(aside: maybe I should do exactly that - and document it like that lady did with her business...read about it here on sphinn a couple of weeks ago and dis'ed the idea personally :) ).

from wheel 286 days ago #

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I also just reread this little tidbit:

>>>> I pretty much dismiss that, as it's not scraping if you're taking content with permission.

Yeah, just like every other MFA and scraper site out there. I gave them permission. They find me using your website, scrape my content and republish it. But they're not scrapers because I didn't catch them first right?

You're implying scraping has to do with permission. It does not. Scraping means republishing my copyrighten content and the monetizing it. Thats what the scrapers do, and thats what you do.

And I will say that your belittling tone is just that. You think coming here and saying you just dismiss my point is a smart PR move?

from neyne 286 days ago #

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"Google will not crawl if a site asks us not to."

Can I go into a store and take anything I was not asked not to take ? And while I'm at it, demand of the storeowner to cover all the promotional material in his window with a black cloth ?

from wheel 286 days ago #

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Neyne, it's not quite the same. We publish our content on a public network for anyone to download. So they've got implicit permission to download it.

from neyne 286 days ago #

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Neyne, it's not quite the same. We publish our content on a public network for anyone to download. So they've got implicit permission to download it.

A. So content scrapers are legit ? They are also taking only what is out there in the open... not cracking any passwords to get to the premium content or anything, right ?

B. You are taking my content AND telling me how to write it so it can be easier for you to organize it so (among other things) your monetizing model will not suffer ? Anything else ? Do you need your windows polished ? Car washed ?

I don't mean you of course, I mean Google

from KevinW 286 days ago #

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What is google going to do when paranoia makes webmasters for all notable site use NoFollow for EVERY link? How are they going to know who wins the election if there are no votes to count? Personally, I can't wait for the next "Google" to come along and unseat Google the way they unseated Yahoo.

from neyne 286 days ago #

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I have to admit that a lot of the bad vibes about it come from the way it was presented. The general feeling about it was that the webmasters are threatened into nofollowing their links, "but they have the option not to if they don't want to".

Rand has actually put it quite nicely here: http://sphinn.com/story/20879

Had Google said something similar, I feel there would be less controversy about the whole thing...