How To Turn Google’s Paid Link Reporting Into Profit
I’m pretty sure 99% of Matt Cutt’s post about Google Paid Link Reports is FUD and 1% is ideology. He’s a smart guy and probably taking too much of a beating around the Internet Marketing worlds for doing what we all love him doing…putting human inflection into a FUBAR corporate communications strategy. With that said, …
My biggest issue with the whole “Narc on people for buying links” gig is that the verification of the alleged link buying infraction should assume innocence before guilt or Google is looking at a situation that looks less winnable than Iraq. But that doesn’t scale from a Google Human Resources Department perspective, so it probably wont…
Basically, what I’m saying here is that I’m going to go start a bunch of blogs, buy some old 1990’s sites (you know, for the “trust”), and list all my competitors under a bright, shiny PAID LINKS section. Then, I’m going to go buy them links all over the freaking internet at my favorite text link brokerages so all this activity looks premeditated. Then, I’m going to report them as being paid link evil doers from one of my many trusted Google Webmaster Tools account. Then, I will take about a 15 minute breather to laugh while I’m taking screenshots of SERPs for a niiiiiice Before/After poster.
When I’m done laughing, I will call my counterparts at the competing companies and be all like “Whaaa? Google tanked your site for paid links that you are saying you never bought? That’s just craaaaazy, man!”
I will then laugh some more and run around the room doing a victory lap throwing fake high fives at my invisible fans. It will be glorious.
So, what’s that…6 Steps to Bang Your Competitors? 4 Steps if you don’t act like Ricky Bobby.
I’m sure this is all a simple bout of Google FUD because when we start using words like transparency, granularity, scale, and trust…Google would need to hire about 2500 more Matts to defend this half-assed policy from its own manipulation.
I think you’re a bit off there. That’s not really how Google operates. I think, if they haven’t already, they’re trying to develop an automated process to “detect” paid links. It doesn’t really matter to them if some innocent sites get killed. Just collateral damage to them. Anyway, Google is all about automating the process, and something that would take 2500 Matt clones would not be something they’d consider.
[...] Brian/Scoreboard: How To Turn Google’s Paid Link Reporting Into Profit [...]
Well said. There is so much room for abuse here that it could all backfire. Although you are joking (right, right?) about undercutting your competition in the way that you mentioned, there is just no way that Google can validate paid versus natural links.
I think you are on to something.
Regards,
MattK
The Article Writer
See, that’s where low-paid staff and low-rent office space with plastic desks come in handy. Then you’d have true fans, real high-fives, and a flock of goons to go forth and mimic the 0wnErrrr of The Borg.
Great strategy. LoL. I’d like to be the first link in your paid links section. :D From day to day it’s intresting how human beings think that they could learn a bot something like logical thinking. :p
Maybe it’s just me, but my understanding of Google’s link policies always was that the linked site never experiences any penalties.
If this wasn’t true, you wouldn’t have to wait for the “paid links” denounciation scheme, you could easily point to your compatitors’ sites from “bad neighbourhoods”, as this is deprecated by Google just alike.
But there’s another chance to cause deliberate collateral damage via paid links reports:
If your competitor happens to sell links, report their site to Google. They will suffer from a drain on income as soon as Google’s FUD has reached the link buying masses, and subsequently their business will eventuually go belly up.
Do not try this at home, kids ;-)
What Google will evolve toward is just ignoring seemingly paid links, without penalizing the site to which they point. If they can do this well, without revealing to the world which links count and which are ignored, then purchasing links becomes an expensive and often fruitless gamble. Google can’t wave a magic wand and get rid of paid links, but they can incrementally, relentlessly, lower their effectiveness.
By reporting fishy links, we help Google get it right. Without our data, they will still attempt to screen out paid links, but just leave more collateral damage in their wake.
>>>My biggest issue with the whole “Narc on people for buying links”
Actually, what he asked for reports on was people “selling” links. I think their goal is to devalue the link sellers which in effect devalues the links they’ve supposedly “sold”. Since the “sellers” are in control of their sites, competitor sabatoge is a minimum… but, as I said, Google has no way to tell who is really selling and who isn’t if they’re doing it well.
I’m still confused about why anyone cares if links are paid or not. I’d rather favor a small business that pays for links than some SEO robot-built site. Everyone pays for advertising. Links are advertising. Who’s Google to decide that commerce isn’t commerce anymore?
Funny how people weren’t sure if you were joking or not. Your hypothetical situation makes a great point.
Hopefully they’ll just go after the really obvious ones first.
Does anyone think we should turn pagerank off? Could they be scanning our user data for paid link activity?
I still don’t understand how they can differentiate between paid links for traffic versus pagerank. If the site is contextual it should be fair game.
>> I still don’t understand how they can differentiate between paid links for traffic versus pagerank. If the site is contextual it should be fair game.
@ Robert >> Maybe it’s just me, but my understanding of Google’s link policies always was that the linked site never experiences any penalties.
The minus 30 and 900 penalty’s are given for unnatural link profiles.
[q]Justyn: Everyone pays for advertising. Links are advertising. Who’s Google to decide that commerce isn’t commerce anymore?[/q]
I think the thing is that Google aren’t interested in finding stuff in a search because someone else told them to find it - they want to find stuff that people are looking for.
Presumably Google can look at listings and see if a site is an index site (separate pages with related links to pages in a specific locus). The density of links to content is probably key too. Differentiating that with the ODP? Something like if X% of sites linked have low “quality” (some Google metric) then assume it’s paid linkage.
According to me
All this reporting will just make the website a suspect of manipulation not convicted unless Matt scans it manually (with his undercover team).
I give you an example. I saw a .uk site (complete crap) coming to #1 for a very good financial key phrase just because of links. Now people can complain and they can look at it manually.
Has no lne figured that maybe Google want thier cake and eat it? If they drive all the link seeling site of the internet then the only plave left to advertise will be Google Adwords. I agree though that this must be impossible to manage.
Nice post dude.
I have been complaining about Google’s misguided efforts for a while now.
They better be worrying about all the “Made for Adsense” sites out there which have already polluted their index and the entire internet.
There are already engines on the horizon which might dethrone them, and I can not wait.
Google has definitely lost their way, and gone in the direction of Microsoft. We should banish them to communist China where their policies will fit in perfectly.