7 Comments

Matt Cutts and the Silly Firestorm Over Paid Links

Apr 16, 2007
by

Now everyone is up in arms about Matt Cutts and his oddball way of addressing paid links. Check out what he launched here and the nasty response it triggered.

Matt basically explained how someone can report paid links, including using a spam report form (spam is a four-letter word). Unfortunately, you have to drill through countless comments to get any additional insights from him about what he intended by request to gather more information about paid links. He could have minimized the confusion by offering more information without jeopardizing trade secrets.

So Google hates some paid links? Maybe Google wants to continue to try to keep them from influencing natural rankings. OK. Well, if it’s a paid link I assume the paid link will drive traffic and lead to conversions/sales if the site isn’t lame. If some paid links influence rankings (because the paid listing isn’t detected by Google), great. Take it while you can.

Google has every right to track websites. Clearly from the junk that gets by (i.e. hidden text and poorly conceived website content), Google isn’t going to shut every door. It sounds like they just want to give more credit to links that people get naturally. If you don’t have something worth linking to or sense enough to generate interesting buzz, then you lose.

It is odd that people can make doorway pages for Google for paid search, but not organic. But that’s OK. Just make new pages on a website and include it in the navigation. In other words, the search world will continue to evolve. And many bad apples will ruin it for everyone else for a time.

For Matt’s large audience, I wish he would be more clear. We’re all a little tight on time. Communication games aren’t that attractive.

Filed under: Search Engine Marketing
  • http://www.revenews.com/carstencumbrowski/2007/04/are_affiliate_links_paid_links.html ReveNews – Carsten C

    Are Affiliate Links Paid Links? Are They A Vote? Or Spam?

    My fellow blogger Mike Murray already mentioned in his post "Matt Cutts and the Silly Firestorm Over Paid Links" here at ReveNews.com the discussion that erupted at Matt Cutts blog and around the internet marketing community. The infamous posts at…

  • http://schaafco.com Brook Schaaf

    Nice posting, Michael.

    While I understand Google’s desire to combat people who game the system, this idea of “pure” natural links and “impure” paid links is of limited use. As a general rule, policies can only go so far to identify compensation, as the compensation can easily change forms.

    In this situation, I’ll bet you have a whole lot of shady people reporting on their competition, whether or not their competition is shady.

  • http://www.fathomseo.com Mike Murray

    Hopefully Google will look at the nature of the site being questioned given that they won’t know the motives of the person complaining. Thanks for the comment.

  • http://www.cumbrowski.com Carsten Cumbrowski

    “Hopefully Google will look at the nature of the site being questioned given that they won’t know the motives of the person complaining.”

    They surely will, but what is more interesting than the question if they look at all, is the question what they will look for when they do it.

    Cheers!
    Carsten

  • http://www.Extravagantmedia.com Russell Rockefeller

    This is an example of Google being “evil” again.
    If you were to ask the general internet population if they feel that paid links are spam, my gut instinct tells me that they would say “no people have a right to advertise on websites.” I mean whats next? Google bought Doubleclick so now are they going to start regulating that websites can’t display banners? It’s bad enough that in order to gain any kind of relevency in Google you have to uglify your website, now they are dictating the terms about how you can advertise it.
    Poor Google… Very Poor.

  • http://www.cumbrowski.com Carsten Cumbrowski

    Hi Russell, just to make sure that you did not get the wrong Idea. Google does not has an issue with advertisements on websites that are being paid for by an advertiser.

    What Google wants is that you create the links for paid advertisements in a way that search engines will ignore the link. It's a technical thing, invisible to the user. For the user would nothing change. You would either have to add <a>a rel=nofollow attribute to each html link or <a>use javascript links which search engines can't read.

    Either of the two will do what Google wants and not create any problems for users of the site. People can use the links as usual. For search engine ranking however would they become less worth than a penny. That does not sound too bad at first, but the devil is in the detail.

    And there are a lot of details, all bad in one way or another and most likely causing problems for people that would least expect them. People that are not SEO savvy.

    Next to the thing that Google dictates that a link you get paid for (what that is was not specified and on purpose not answered by Google yet) is not an editorial vote of the webmaster? Is it not possible to get rewarded for a link and at the same time truly believe in the product and service and recommend it to friends and strangers?

    Google thinks that those two things contradict each other. Well, Google is probably not in the majority with this attitude.

  • http://www.evokemg.com Dave Cole

    How about Google invent a rel=sponsor tag?