The link has optimized anchor text, is completely off topic, links to a commercial site, and most importantly does not have the nofollow tag applied!
Is Matt Cutts *gasp* selling links?
Obviously Google is going to give MC the benefit of the doubt but would they be able to tell whether or not this was a paid link if it were on any other site? Absolutely not.
This is exactly why Google needs to give up the fight against paid links.
Note: No, I don’t REALLY think this is a paid link, nor do I think Matt did anything wrong. I am simply using this post to illustrate how ridiculous Google’s current stance on paid links is.
37 Comments
Is Matt Cutts *gasp* selling links?
Obviously Google is going to give MC the benefit of the doubt but would they be able to tell whether or not this was a paid link if it were on any other site? Absolutely not.
This is exactly why Google needs to give up the fight against paid links.
Note: No, I don’t REALLY think this is a paid link, nor do I think Matt did anything wrong. I am simply using this post to illustrate how ridiculous Google’s current stance on paid links is.
37 Comments
Comments
Yup, looks like a paid review without a disclosure, which violates FTC guidelines that Google treats like laws that Matt quoted here:http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/19/insidious-new-seo-ad-product-will-be-hard-for-google-to-detect/It also looks like he’s going against Google’s guidelines about selling PR, because it is not nofollowed and is given no disclosure on the nature of the link. Thus, it’s a paid link (I am only using Google’s logic here, not mine).This post might be of relevance (if only for amuzement) here:http://smackdown.blogsblogsblogs.com/2008/11/21/matt-cutts-if-this-paid-link-were-a-snake-it-would-have-bitten-you-in-the-ass/
Tamar, did you even bother to read the submission? You completely missed the point. The issue isn’t whether Matt should be able to make recommendations or not, or whether it actually IS a paid link or not (I’m guessing it’s not). The point is that Google penalizes people for selling links and as far as Google can tell, this could just as easily be a paid link. If I do a paid review of a service on my blog, it would be even more topically relevant than this, and there’s a good chance Google would penalize me. Google has know way of knowing for sure whether this is a paid link or not, and the same goes for the majority of the paid links that are out there. And yet, they continue to penalize sites for having links that they THINK have been purchased.
And yet, they continue to penalize sites for having links that they THINK have been purchased.<div></div><div>Do you have lots of specific examples of this? </div>
I have at least two that I can come up with off the top of my head that had their PR drop along with the rest of the paidlinks crowd a while back and neither had ever sold a link. Obviously since Google doesn’t TELL you what they are hitting you for, there’s no way to be 100% sure.However, if we assume that Google does in fact penalize for paid links, then I think it’s a pretty safe assumption that they penalize links they THINK have been paid for, because as has already been stated, other than a couple of very obvious cases, there’s no way of knowing whether a link has been paid for or not.Btw: I’m off to take some meds so I probably wont be repsonding to any other comments tonight. Just wanted to let peeps know so they don’t think I’m pissed off or something :D
This is a valid point "Google has know way of knowing for sure whether this is a paid link or not", even their ’quality raters’ would be confused :) although, as Jill says, we have no way of knowing for sure who gets penalized for exactly what, do we?
Like I said to you when you IM’d this to me, Ben, yes I did. And like I said to you then, I think it’s lame. This isn’t new and Matt is entitled to talk about things he likes. Just because he’s linking to a product he bought does not mean someone bought the link. Are we supposed to call out every single blogger who links to product listings as bloggers who are selling links? Is this the trend you’re trying to start, beginning with Google’s Matt Cutts?It was lame 3 hours ago when we talked about this, and it’s lame now.
Jill, I have a Google PageRank penalty on my personal blog for the reasons Ben cites in his example. I know this with absolute certainty.Still, this is a pathetic call-out on Matt and I think it’s not warranted.
Google penalizes for "selling links" only at a mass level and when things becomes obvious or when you publicly go and tell everyone that you are selling "Links" (without nofollow).If you run a blog, you will notice that there are often times you are writing about ’stuffs’ and you are linking to theam with a Good Anchor text. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the link is "PAID" and i can bet that google doesn’t think that way to..If matt adds a section in his sidebar saying "Sponsored Links" and then he has tons of links there and also a link to his advertising page which says you can buy a link for $99/month.. --- THEN thats something that google may penalize.
Saad, given my case, that claim is not entirely true.
Is Matt selling links? I sincerely doubt it. I agree with Tamar that there is nothing serious here on that angle. And yes there is a paid links penalty. Experienced it personally.But this submission does raise a simple question: given a blog like Matt’s which talks about the search industry 95% of the time, how can a search engine figure out that the remaining 5% "fun" posts are really the blogger’s own and not paid posts or links?That’s a thought for a good Sunday morning :)Pierre
Sad thing is. If he were selling PR. None of us could do anything about it. Not even Yahoo ;)
@Tamar - Well you know exceptions happen...and I believe they do ’hand edit’ some of the things on ’special circumstances’. (Even though G will never admit it).I was just talking generally.... about the whole ’getting penalized for sellng links’. If you were Jane Doe and not Tamar Weinberg then that probably wouldn’t have happened...Internet Celebrities gets too much attention and history shows that this is not the First time google has done this kind of thing.. On Some cases it was the fault of the blogger (they were doing paid reviews, selling links etc), and in some cases the faulty party couldn’t be identified....Whatever that caused your PR to drop has definitely no connection with "paid links" (I think)....because I myself have followed techipedia for a long time (until it stopped getting updated..) and I don’t remember reading anything that can be actually a ’paid review’...So I guess you have a really exceptional case and only the Google Engineers will be able to tell you exactly why your PR went down.
I see Skitzzo’s point. Yes, Tamar, of course Matt has the right to talk about things he likes. We all do. But Skitz is using that very right to make a point. And in my opinion, it’s not lame to use the head of Google spam dept. to make that very point. Matt’s defense is that he doesn’t sell links, and he only links to stuff he likes. And yet people - like you Tamar - have had that same defense and still got penalized for selling links. Skitz’s whole point is based upon the very fact that Google cannot tell what a paid link is or isn’t, and yet it feels that it can arbitrarily make that decision - which of course means that innocent people get punished. Matt is innocent (probably) but he won’t get punished (obviously), yet other innocents have gotten punished. Skitz isn’t "calling Matt out". He’s making a very valid point and using the perfect example to do so.
Tamar said:<div></div>Jill, I have a Google PageRank penalty on my personal blog for the reasons Ben cites in his example. <div></div><div>Is it affecting your traffic or rankings?</div><div></div><div>Toolbar PageRank penalties don’t mean a whole lot unless of course you need to show you have PageRank so you can try to sell some of yours. (Not meaning you specifically do that, Tamar, just speaking in generalities.) I don’t personally consider a loss of toolbar PR to mean anything other than that. But I’m not sure if it’s affecting other things these days.</div><div></div><div>So like even if Matt did get paid for his recommendation, I doubt he’d care if his toolbar PR disappeared as long as it wasn’t affecting anything else.</div>
Of course, Jill, if its only EVER going to be just a tbpr penalty, that’s fine, who cares. But my point has always been, from the beginning, that even penalties that affect nothing important should be paid attention to - because at any time Google could say, "well, we warned you - now we’re going to make good on the threat", and that seemingly do-nothing penalty suddenly turns into a full-blown non-indexed site. But just for fun, wouldn’t it be cool if we could apply a random penalty to Matt’s TBPR because we *think* the link might be paid. Ok, maybe he won’t care, but I bet deep down he would - because it would be the unfairness of the situation that would bother him.
But just for fun, wouldn’t it be cool if we could apply a random penalty to Matt’s TBPR because we *think* the link might be paid.Well, we can vote it down and leave nasty comments via that icky searchwiki thingee! :D
LOL! Good point, Jill, good point. :)
@Saad: "If you were Jane Doe and not Tamar Weinberg then that probably wouldn’t have happened..."Not sure if that’s true either. :) "Whatever that caused your PR to drop has definitely no connection with "paid links" (I think)."Like I said, I know with absolute certainty that I got penalized for paid links. The certainty comes from a statement from Google. And guess what? They’re right. Truth be told, I’m not complaining. @Jill, the TBPR drop from PR6 to PR4 it may have impacted my rankings, but I’m not 100% sure. Around the same time, I stopped being active so the content isn’t fresh. Not a big deal to me, really.@Donna:I don’t think Google is going after every single person who decides to link to products they like. And I don’t think that endorsing a product should be thought of as a paid link. When you say I have the "same defense," the bottom line is that I DON’T. My links are clearly questionable compared to the links that Matt has in his post. Therefore, we’re almost comparing apples and oranges here.HOWEVER, that said, so what happens if another blogger (not me and not Matt) links to a product he likes and recommends to his readers? Are we going to make the argument that these are all paid links (or that they COULD be but we don’t know for sure)? I’d hope not. The only time I’d be curious about this is if the blogger is well known in another sphere and is consistently pushing out irrelevant content with so-called "endorsements." How often does that happen? I’m not really sure, but that guy probably won’t be able to maintain his reader base.
I don’t think Google is going after every single person who decides to link to products they like. And I don’t think that endorsing a product should be thought of as a paid link. HOWEVER, that said, so what happens if another blogger (not me and not Matt) links to a product he likes and recommends to his readers? Are we going to make the argument that these are all paid links (or that they COULD be but we don’t know for sure)? I’d hope not. Tamar, you’re making my point for me. Obviously endorsing a product should not be thought of as a paid link. However, given the fact that Google has no way of knowing whether a link is paid or not, they seem to have resorted to assuming that if a link is unrelated to the blog’s topic it must have been paid. As you said, your blog has been penalized even though you don’t sell links, so obviously Google has a problem identifying links that have ACTUALLY been paid for.By using this post from Matt’s blog, I’m trying to illustrate how ridiculous it is for Google to try and ID paid links. Like Donna said of COURSE Matt (or anyone else) should be able to recommend any product he wants, but we shouldn’t have to worry about Google smacking us for allegedly selling links when we do so.Matt has mentioned that he doesn’t want to have this discussion on his blog but I’m hoping he’ll drop by and explain why Google wouldn’t label a post like this on someone’s blog as a paid link because in my experience this is exactly the type of thing that will get you penalized.
This is completely lame. Calling out a blogger for dropping a link to a website he / she likes is a waste of time. Desphunn for being total crap.
"However, given the fact that Google has no way of knowing whether a link is paid or not, they seem to have resorted to assuming that if a link is unrelated to the blog’s topic it must have been paid."Really, Ben? Where is there *any* proof to this?"As you said, your blog has been penalized even though you don’t sell links, so obviously Google has a problem identifying links that have ACTUALLY been paid for."And when did I say that? I DO sell links. That’s why I said that Google is absoluetly right in penalizing me. (see "And guess what? They’re right")Again, Ben, this is a poor argument. Reread what I said, please -- I think you missed the ball. We’re really not in 100% agreement and I’m not making the same point as you.
fyi.. i skipped all the comments.. does anybody think maybe he is testing something?
who the f*k is matt cutts?
Tamar, the way you worded the comments above, it sounded as if you DON’T sell links. Clearly that was a misunderstanding on my part, and likely on Skitzzo’s part as well. It wasn’t clear to me at all - by any stretch - that you meant exactly the opposite. Sorry for misunderstanding you.
Of course because of the authority of Matt Cutt’s blog, he also ranks #1 for reindeer car antlers.
"This is completely lame. Calling out a blogger for dropping a link to a website he / she likes is a waste of time. Desphunn for being total crap."Haha, yea, Matt is just your everday average-joe blogger.
Sorry for any confusion my comments caused. I meant that Google was right in penalizing me. Otherwise I’d be making a much bigger stink about this.
so everytime someone posts a link to any site that sells anything it must be a paid link why would they post it otherwise ? right ?
@mihaisecasiu - no, but thats exactly my point. Google can’t identify paid links, yet they have frequently penalized sites for doing so. For all Google knows, this was a sponsored review. It shares all the characteristics of a paid link and yet we know it wasn’t.So how can we expect Google to get it right when they penalize or devalue paid links?
"Google can’t identify paid links, yet they have frequently penalized sites for doing so."For the most part, Google is correct in penalizing those sites. Feel free to find an example proving me wrong.
Lame. Matt is allowed to blog about what he wants. It is his personal blog. His recommendation of the furminator a few months ago was a godsend for my in-laws. Calling him out is stupid.
The paid link controversy bait is years old desphinning because the topic is boring
Seems like personal bitterness is driving this thread, rather than any balanced argument about link use. 2c.
sorry, agreed this is lame and the entire topic is getting old.
Hmm, i’ve not desphunn anything for ages. I guess my actions confirm the oppinion I have of this post. Sorry,
clearly not a paid link. google is not going to change its paid links policy to how you want it so crying about it will do no good.
This is nothing new - Matt does this all the time, and actually this is how Google would prefer everybody link as it leads to more relevant results.