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- Sphinn It!
Went Hot: October 3, 2007 - 8:30 am
Posted By: Harith 340 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.mattcutts.com)
Category: Google SEO
Matt Cutts has graciously replied on his blog to David Airey’s concerns:
David Airey, so the paid links for business card printing and ink cartridge refills are gone and won’t be coming back? The other thing I noticed is that it looks like you silently changed the terms of your contest and didn’t mention that to anyone.
I believe your original linking terms said:
“You can describe the draw any way you like, as long as you link to my homepage (www.davidairey.com) using logo / graphic design-related anchor text. A few examples of what you could link back with include: logo designer, best logos, Edinburgh graphic designer, graphic design in Scotland, great logos etc. Be creative with it. Here’s an example contest entry you could use:
David Airey, an Irish designer who aims to create the best logos, is holding an anniversary prize giveaway. There’s more than $4,000 worth in free prizes! Find out how to enter by reading the details on David’s graphic design blog.
Feel free to add any other information you like, PLUS, for every 5 prize sponsors you link to (they’re all listed above), you’ll get 1 extra entry into the draw.”
I think Danny put his finger on it here: http://sphinn.com/story/6899#c9937
If you’re going to play the “I had no idea this could happen; my naivety caused this” card, then it doesn’t benefit you if you’ve specified very clearly how you want people to link to your site, and then silently change how you urge people to link to you — but not mention that in any way in the original post, not even as an update.
Given that you’ve written about nofollow before and posted on e.g. Digital Point about selling links, and that you changed the linking terms of your contest without mentioning it in the updated post, I have to admit I’m skeptical that you didn’t think selling links could be an issue with Google. But I’m glad that you changed how you urge people to link to you and that you’ve stopped selling links on your site. It sounds like you’ve submitted a reinclusion request; I’ll ask someone to check on the status of that.
12 Comments
Comments
I like the “I had no idea this could happen; my naivety caused this” card. I should play it more often !
I think Matt showed admirable restraint in his handling of the Airey situation. Had it been me, I'd of probably nailed him to the wall for the 'feigned ignorance' tactic. But then I guess Matt sees more slimy tactics than most, and, sadly, maybe he's used to it.
Thought I'll throw in David's response to Matt, further down in the comment thread:
Reference: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/still-chugging/#comment-113825
I am glad my advice to David was useful :-) Check http://hamletbatista.com/2007/10/01/a-google-allegory/
Awesome. I wish there would be more public humiliation of people who try to game the system. I continue to be disappointed by people at Sphinn and other industry discussion sites who defend paid links.
@DoshDosh:
Thanks for the reply from David! I love to see a grown man kiss some ***, especially if it's a black hat trying to con the system that allows him to make living!
White hat will prevail!
I'm tempted to say Yay Matt! But I ...blast what the hell, Yay Matt!
David's fortunate, not everyone gets a look in like that.
Trust me I know..sob sob sniffle wail..
Its very tempting to go over board sometimes, especially if you haven't followed the curve for years and years maybe this is one of the reasons why he appears to be getting a favourable look in, that and the fact perhaps that he has a great blog and is a genuinely nice chap who does his best to help out and stimulate debate.
John Chow are you watching? ;)
Another Digital Pointer gets the chop. Seems to be a regular occurrence for people over there.
Seem to have some sort of morbid fascination with kamikaze Google rankings.
Oh, Matt Cutts, you merciful one! Our Mediator before Google, the Onmipresent One! Oh how we bow before you!
*blech*
BUSTED!!!
Busted ???? hardly ......beating up a small very small design shop makes Matt C cream his pants.... Yeah Matts my hero ,,,,,,,,,,,NOT !!!!!!
Now if only Matt would take on players like IAC.
Also you can spam the hell out of Google using paid links..... especially if you pay a nice sum of money to Adwords.
In fact with enough money spent in Adwords... you can have your organic problems resolved with a little pushing & pleading with Adwords Reps.
Google should chase an Irish webg designer.....if they do not screw SMBs they will have to focus on the large corporations that are spamming them and paying them to look the other way.
Keep screwing the little guys Matt....Make google more worthless....
The significant part of this was the..
Here is what Danny wrote, with emphasis mine
So we are probably looking at unnatural link building from the competition, but whilst David was a little too particular about how he wanted links from the competition, it seems to me it would take a manual review to determine intent.
At the same time I can think of multiple whitehat link building methods, or supposedly white hat where people are actually more specific.
Here are some alternative wordings
1. just post this badge on your blog to enter the competition
2. to enter this competition, all you have to do is post this press release on your blog
3. to enter, just write about this competition highlighting the prizes you would like to win. You have to highlight the prize to be considered a potential winner for it.
4. To enter, all you have to do is enter this my favoritie prize meme, highlighting which of the prizes you would like to win most
It seems to me David could easily have been more specific with anchor text and requiring links to enter, and for the competition to be more "white hat"
This gives maybe some insight into how Google look on these link competitions and John Chow's rankings
There seems to be some kind of partial update going on, JC now has a toolbar pagerank of 5
I seem to have been dropped down to a toolbar pagerank of 4 for my home page despite my editorial link acquisition bringing in plenty of quality links over the last 6 months.
There doesn't seem to be any real penalty in rankings, although some pages might be losing a little relevance due to the size of tag clouds and number of external links through followed trackbacks, which might also be looked on as a link exchange by an algorithm.
There doesn't seem to be a problem with pages indexed in the primary index comparing / with /* searches - I have 85% of my pages in the primary index.
Whatever updates there have been, it doesn't seem to have touched deep pages.
This seems almost like Google placing the dunce hat on everyone who has spoken in the last 3 months in class, because a percentage said something stupid or drowning potential witches in medievil times.