Jennifer Laycock: The Idiocy of Google’s Paid Link Crusade

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Sphinn It!

Went Hot: Sep 13, 2007 - 10:30 pm
Posted By: qwerty 880 Days ago
Source: http://www.searchengineguide.com
Category: Vertical Search

Imagine what you would think if your local Yellow Pages rep showed up in your office to lecture you on the direct mail advertisement you sent out last week. Perhaps they’d tell you that your direct mail piece made it less likely that customers would need to use the Yellow Pages to find you. Perhaps they’d inform you that you weren’t sending it to an audience they approve of. Perhaps they simply don’t like the image your graphic designer picked out and they think you should change it.

5 Comments

Comments

from Halfdeck 879 Days ago #

Votes: 0

Google’s nofollow / paid link policy is like asking people to shoot themselves in the foot. Google has to evolve to a point where it can rank URLs on its own without any help from webmasters.

from robwatts 879 Days ago #

Votes: 0

A good read and echos much of what I think on the topic too, Google at times seems to be sort of stuck in some kind of anti seo trench. Fighting thosse evil webspammers must have some kind of residual drip drip effect that seems to invoke a propensity to come out guns blazing and threaten webmasters with huge sticks. Do as we say or we’ll take away your food isn’t a very nice way of dealing with people. Its a technological issue and thats all it should be really. Its up to them to find a better way to do things. Blogs, SMO sites, toolbars, ISP logs, real world signals, on page stuff etc etc. All stuff like this teaches me is that link buying is effective and they can’t identify paid links and heck lets not even get into a definition of what is and what isn’t a paid link! Backrub, reciprocity, cash, rented out pages, a few drinks in a bar, a mention on some TV or radio show..seriously, where do you draw theline on this stuff? The bottom line for the webmasters and siteowners at the sharp end is that talk of de-indexing and removal of ranking ability and everything else hardly builds goodwill and feelings of niceness, in fact it creates the opposite. Can anyone say Altavista?

from ChrisOD 879 Days ago #

Votes: 0

"Google has the right to do whatever they want with their algorithm and their index. They run a business and they make decisions that impact that business. If they want to discount, penalize or even ban sites that buy and sell text link ads, they’re well within their rights. On the other hand, I as a business owner have zero obligation to Google. It is not my job to help make their algorithmic life easier. It is not my job to limit my ability to rank my web site or to buy and sell ads to make Google happy. It is my job to weigh the pros and cons of each type of marketing for myself and my clients and to make decisions accordingly. In other words, Google has the right to do it, but I have the right to ignore them." Sums it up a treat for me, particularly the first paragraph. But, if people continue to buy links, Google likewise has the right to penalize them in some way.

from emom 879 Days ago #

Votes: 1

I tend to disagree that Google has the right to penalize anyone for paid links. They are basically suggesting my online business decisions should be made according to their business preferences. And that I can’t make business decisions according to my own or my clients preferences without being penalized for creating a 100% above the board and honest website. Can we penalize them when they don’t crawl our original and informative content? Can we penalize them for ranking a spam site above our own? Oh, I shouldn’t have gotten started - this one really ticks me off and now I’m in a grumpy mood. ;)

from LocalHound 878 Days ago #

Votes: 0

Jennifer’s analogy to yp disapproving of direct mail is good but flawed. It would be equally ludicrous for the yp to give you better placement in the directory because you did direct mail. And that is what google is saying. Google’s position has been advertise where ever you want, just don’t use it to get better placement here. I like this policy, it’s more democratic. If Google condoned paid links, little guys could never compete because they wouldn’t have the budget. I also think in the long run their results will be better for having this policy and the web will better for it as well; as people will focus on creating better content instead of going link shopping.