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Went Hot: July 8, 2008 - 5:16 am
Posted By: rjonesx 53 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.thegooglecache.com)
Category: Google
14 Comments
Went Hot: July 8, 2008 - 5:16 am
Posted By: rjonesx 53 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.thegooglecache.com)
Category: Google
14 Comments
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Comments
Interesting stuff. If true, it shows Google is less interested in ending the paid link economy than protecting the SERPs, since implementing this will probably encourage more people to sell (by using a nofollow class, the sellers can sell without using nofollow and now with zero risk).
Most folks who sell links on their site dont understand the purpose of noFollow.
This would not have as big of an impact as you might think. (if it were true)
why should you have to add a no follow attribute if you want to sell advertising? That makes no sense. Let Google figure out ways to detect what is paid and what isn't.
"Most folks who sell links on their site dont understand the purpose of noFollow."
Care to prove that Brian?
If you're not currently using nofollow on your paid links, there's no reason to mark them with a nofollow class attribute. Let Google figure it out. But if you stopped selling links out of fear (I can name a bunch of SEO blogs that stopped selling links after they got their home page foolbar wacked), using a nofollow class lets you start selling links again with no negative repercussions. Buyers will get what they pay for - ad space.
Is this a fake? I don't see that "No Follow Class" in any of the webmaster console accounts I manage for my own stuff and clients
Hi folks, this is my article so I thought I would respond to some of your comments here...
@cemper: Yes, the graphic is "fake". This is speculation on my part about what Google's end-game is in the fight against Paid Links. The graphic was really created to show you just how easy it would be for Google to create a poisoning system to take the trust out of Paid Link networks.
@MikeDammann: The incentive to no-follow advertising is clear - you do not risk being penalized by Google and you can horde PageRank. In the current set up, that incentive is not possible because advertisers will see you use the NoFollow attribute and choose not to advertise on your site. If Google were to implement such a tool, webmasters could disclose what they wish to nofollow in a secure, hidden environment only available to Google and the webmaster. Advertisers would have no way to determine whether or not the links they purchased were worth a dime.
@BrianChappell: I think that many of the smaller link-sellers may not know about NoFollow, but the biggest and best sites will certainly protect themselves using this method.
I like your foresight, but how can you assume just because Google would offer nofollow code that webmasters would use it? Risk of being penalized? I think too many people are sipping the Google Spam Kool-Aid.
Why would they feel compelled to use it? Hording pagerank is a concept few outside of search understand, let alone, you must link out.
Furthermore, how many webmasters use WT?
In my experience of buying links, I have expressed that there be no ‘nofollow’ tags, and have even had it written into contracts.
The reason why Google beats the paid linking drum so hard is because if you buy links under the radar it is extrememly difficult for them to find out.
@homelessSEO: You bring up some good points. I do think that too many people are sipping the Google Spam Kool-Aid. You mention, even for a second, a gray-hat technique at an SMX conference and there are hundreds of blog posts written about the controversy. People are scared stupid and this is a risk-free solution for them to have their cake and eat it too.
This would offer webmasters a way to sell links with no known consequence. They lose no PR, they won't get in trouble for selling links, and their advertisers will never know.
I agree that many webmasters do not currently use WT - but if you know enough to Sell Links, you know enough to figure out Webmaster tools. It only takes a fraction of webmasters to use it to cause great disruption - as the actual # of webmasters using the program will be unavailable to the public. The mere perception that a substantial proportion of paid-links are valueless would be enough to stymie what is already an industry of questionable value (at least, link renting is of questionable ROI in many industries).
I agree it is a risk-free solution. I don't believe in buying a link if it will be nofollowed... unless the refering traffic will be great.
I disagree that advertisers won't know, unless they aren't buying the links for SEO, in that case, nofollow is perfectly fine.
I disagree with you that if you know enough to sell links, you know how to use the Webmasters tools. When I'm looking to purchase links, I am actively looking for webmasters who do not understand the value of a link, and therefor will sell a great link for cheap.
You know those websites who are "designing like it's 19-9-9"
I think Google would want us all to believe it would cause great disruption, but many in the know would well... know better.
I could forsee Google actually incorporating link policies articles into WTs where they attempt to deter webmasters unaware of SEO not to sell links.
You can almost do this already yourself. Use the X-Robots tag in the header which is harder to detect than using rel="nofollow". There is now a plugin to detect this and you could also look in the header info beign returned but how many people do that.
Cloaking. It's fairly easy to cloak so engines see the nofollow and users don't. Bots see the same content as users so shouldn't be a problem according to official Google statements.
Sure, these are both detectable to some degree and your example isn't (or probably isn't, I can't think of a way right off the top of my head).
The backlash from this is pushing people to become more blackhat and create their own sites which pass link juice to their primary domain, and cluttering the SERPs even more so I don't think that's their best solution to this "problem" of paid links.
I just don't see it happening. Telling Google to nofollow all your outgoing links would immediatly send a signal to them that you're a garbage site that offers no real value. Part of the whole link/trust algo takes outgoing links to other related/authority sites into consideration. If you nofollow all of that you're simply shutting yourself down as a site that offers anything of value.
IMHO, of course.
things that make you go hmmmm
Quite simply, Google is never going to be able to stop paid links. They need to spend time working on making their algo less dependant on links and better at detecting paid ones rather than spending time developing new ways to mess with the paid link market.
Only just read this now and I think that is is a very clever idea. There may be some downsides though, people may just nofollow all their links, even the editorial ones.