One of the questions I asked at the search engine Q+A on links was "how do the engines feel about pay-per-post services on blogs, where advertisers can buy links and product reviews?" The consensus answer shocked me and probably will shock you, too.
On the panel were:
- Tim Converse from Yahoo! (smart, to-the-point, clear and genuine; I wish I could have met him in person afterwards)
- Adam Lasnik from Google (who seemed a bit uncomfortable and on-the-spot, but who can blame him)
- Vivek Pathak from Ask.com (never met him before, but we had a great chat afterwards - a truly friendly and interested individual)
- Eytan Seidman from MSN (whose forth-rightness is terrific, even if he comes off a bit gruff on the stage)
Tim answered first and said that Yahoo! wouldn't try to pick one post out of twenty or fifty on every blog that might be running advertorials or paid reviews just to stop link value from that particular post. If the engine looked at the site and saw that in general, the outgoing links were of high quality, there would be no discount of link value for paid blog material. Adam from Google agreed, but said little in particular. Vivek from Ask was quick to note that if the link were off-topic, Ask would be likely not to give that link much weight, but I pointed out that most advertisers would buy links from highly relevant blogs, not just for the search engine value, but because they wanted the qualified, relevant traffic from click-throughs as well as branding. Eytan from MSN agreed but didn't expand and when Tim Converse from Yahoo! jumped back in to say that it really wasn't worth an engine's time to going picking out paid links with that granularity, all the other panelists were vigorously head-nodding and verbally agreeing.
Why am I shocked? Not because I thought SEs really would or could discount pay-per-post on an individual level, but because I've never heard that level of straight-forwardness about a near-grey-hat subject like that before. Kudos to all of you - more direct answers like that will continue to earn the respect and admiration of attendees and industry professionals. Consider me impressed (and thankful).
Wow, I certainly wouldn't have expected that response from the engines' reps...
I bet Aaron Wall is jumping up and down with glee! Wonder how many more review reviewme will sell on the back of that!
I'm particularly surprised that Tim made a point of saying it's not worth their bother to pick out paid links - makes you wonder how broad this way of thinking is across Yahoo (and the rest), particularly considering we are constantly told how 'bad' it is to buy links!
Again, good on them for their definitive answer, and good on you Rand for getting that out of them!
My experience with ForumsFirst was never a good one. The posts were dull and after the deadline was not met. The staff wasted time and money by posting silly topics like "whats your name". Then, I joined the staff side to make a bit of money and because I had submitted a bad testimonial, they refused to pay me for $35 of posts until I submitted a glowing one. Altogether I would not recommend ForumsFirst, They are one of the cheapest therrefore quality is not at a top priority.
The PayPerPost phenomenon has swept the blogosphere to its own hurt, I believe. There are so many blogs now that exist entirely to post paid reviews, from dog collars to mortgage loans to matcha tea.
The PayPerPost and ReviewMe badges are eyesores.
I can't imagine these blogs ever gaining RSS subscribers, or becoming authoritative topical sites because their content is all over the place, and yes, they'll link to anyone.
That being said, not that there are not some really great topical, established blogs that use PPP programs to supplement their income. Like a few commenters said, it should be looked at as the proportion of paid posts vs. non-paid.
Isn't there some kind of footprint that the search engines could easily use, for example "sponsored post" or "sponsored review" keyword on a post's page could trigger a devaluation of the link, whilst posts on the very same blog without that could be full value?
Like Matt said here and in the SMX interview, Google's doing it's best to identify paid links. Maybe they haven't worked out the way now, but this is going to be a growing tactic amongst webmasters to ramp up link juice, so it should be addressed and combatted for the users' sakes.
On the other hand, I think it's fair if you approach a blogger with a blog post idea (say you're launching a new product or software release or something) and offer a sample, free membership or monetary compensation, that wouldn't be evil. PayPerPost services just helps you identify bloggers that would bite.
I think it comes down to whether we as SEO/Internet Marketing professionals decide to use these services, it's just like with TLA's...if you wouldn't mind if the site threw a link condom on and the link would justify the price, then go ahead, but don't buy just for the sake of a link.
I just read a post on SEOBook which led me here. And I just had to add a very similar comment...
I was at the conference (an excellent one) and heard those comments being made. I do think it needs to be clear that the density of paid posts versus non-paid was the key factor.
I don't have the exact quote in front of me, but Adam Lasnik also said that sites that pay for links are probably getting less than their money's worth. In other words if they identify the link as paid -- it's value is being hammered by the search engines. So I would still say you need to proceed cautiously with any large scale paid link strategy.
Why are these folks (Google most notably) telling us that paying for a link via a sponsored blog post is ok, but buying a text link outright is bad?
On a very related topic, why the fuss over "buying links" from publishers listed in a public inventory, when buying blog posts (read: links) from blogs in a public inventory is ok?
It seems a bit disingenuous. I suspect the guys on the panel just haven't had a chance to consider the impact sponsored blogging can potentially have?
Think about it this way. Which link is better in this example:
1. Google Search Engine
2. I really like to use the Google Search Engine for all of my research and I think it gives the most relevant results.
Obviously example 2 is a much better link as it comes across as something that is much more natural. When you normally buy a link, you are buying something like example 1 and to make it worse, it's usually off topic and/or underneath the text "Sponsored Links". Example 2 (how it would be used in a blog) could be anyone writing about it and it is a much stronger link.
The panel even said that advertising (link buying) isn't a bad thing and how could they when their entire operation is based on an advertising model. They just want people to be smart about it and buy links that are meaningful and not meant for the sole purpose of gaining PR or link juice.
Indeed, these kinds of posts with links will greatly supplement Googles semantic indexing/categorizing.
In this case, I wonder if the blog link buying will be hot for a specified period of time. Then, out of the blue, Google could pull the carpet out after they've acquired everything they were after.
Here's a question tho... What if you own a company, a manufacturing company. You are quite literally an authority source on your product.
In this case, drop-shippers, adsense sites, and god knows who else, can easily buy links to bump you from the serps. How fair is that?
Perhaps buying links only serves the semantics side, yet completely dodges the primary meat-and-potato of keywords.
Just to chime in and expand on Adam's comment: Google wants to do a good job of detecting paid links. Paid links that affect search engines (whether paid text links or a paid review) can cause a site to lose trust in Google.
Matt ... maybe something akin to a NoFollow that would allow search engines to determine paid links? Could that be a consideration?
Funny I was under the impression Google told us to build pages for people and not for search engines ... so which is people or search engines ... hmmm
Matt,
does this mean that when my site has paid links that I might suffer pagerank because of this ? Or do you point the finger at the websites the links are pointing to ?
Thanks for the feedback.
What bucket would you throw paid directories in? Does Google look at these as paid, and thus lose trust?
thanks matt!
Hi MattCutts. You say that a paid reviews can cause that lost of trust in Google, but it's a "can" not a "must". I think that this lost of trust possibility must be correctly meassured by your company, not just suggested. This uncertainty is no good for new business models. My experience with paid reviews is that blogs really care about why they accept or not the reviews. They know that accepting many reviews result on lost of trust of their readers (and this acts very organic) And do a good job too by many times not accepting. Also do great constructive reviews that help very much adveritsers and many times are not very positive. Those bloggers (95%) are mature enough and should not lose any trust because they still are high quality content generators. Instead Google should be open and encourage the paid reviews Companys not to hide but to clearly and openly show the paid reviews.
With that sincere information the algorithm has more chances to really understand the relevance of the outgoing link.
Thanks in advance for reading this.
And now we know that Adam is just another noddong head at Google.
I wonder if he is still there?
Wuss!
Who started the concept of an internet marketing affiliate program? As far as we know, the idea originated with Amazon.com back in the 1990's. They began recruiting other websites to promote their business by hosting advertising banners, balloons, popups, info, etc. and paying the host sites whenever they generated business.
Like Made For Adsense Websites with no positive user experience, we are now seeing Made For Paid Reviews Blogs with no trust and fake reviews.
Despite this issue, I think PayPerPost can be a good service for a PR operation, rather than SEO. I have not used them yet, but I'm sure we can decide which bloggers we want to write a review. Bloggers who are working with PayPerPost should also be rated by the platform for their authenticity and trust. That would definitely increase the quality.
CPM, CPC, And CPA: CPM is Cost Per Impression, where commission is paid per thousand impression for product exposure. CPC is Cost Per Click or Pay Per Click, paid once a user clicks the listing.CPA is Cost Per Action, which rewards an affiliate once transaction is complete. Most affiliate promotion programs use CPM, CPC or CPA to reward affiliates.
Nice word from search engines to seos :)
Here, try this one, I've always loved working with this site...
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I think its important to realize that its all about "levels".
The level at which you do things.
I'm willing to bet that Google does not have a problem with an A-lister occasionally getting paid to write a 1000 word, unique content, highly relevant review about a completely legitimate company. And then linking to that companies website.
After all there are very few bloggers, that I know, who are willing to risk their reputation linking to sites that are questionable. Whether they are getting paid for it or not.
I wouldn't expect Matt to say something like that publicly, as it might give some people the wrong idea.
Like the idea that it is ok to create an entire blog dedicated to sponsored reviews, that has very little, to no, un-paid content. A blog that would link to anyone willing to pay them money regardless of the quality of the site. A blog that is basically worthless in terms of link value. Since no-one is going to link to a crappy blog like that. Which would make it practically useless for helping the reviewee's search rankings.
In response to this post..
This particular post would be the signal, and the above linked post would be the noise :-)
Seriously, more people need to read this- it's huge. Pay Per Post is OK in the eyes of the engines, you heard it here (for those who missesd Chicago)
It was definitely interesting (and nice!) to hear them in agreement about this subject. It was also nice to not hear the same question about 301 redirects and site wide links asked over and over again in different ways during that session.
My favorite quote from that session was when Adam Lasnik said something to the effect of "paid links, formerly known as advertising" in response to a question about how paid links were taken into account.
I'd imagine that, unless it is a "flashing neon" sign of avertising, it could be rather challenging and intesive to try to sort through the paid/versus non-paid.
That and they probably feel that there may be some positive checks-and-balances in the blogging system that will help with self-regulation. If someone sells-out purely for profit for garbage or something that the readers are fairly confident that the blogger wouldn't endorse, it won't take long to be called on the carpet for it.
In which case, aren't we really talking about a new form of content focused advertising? How different then is that from countless sites with AdSense ads? In this case, perhaps more credible. They're all probably trying to think how to get in on the action anyway.
Although, if this does become a huge model, how far away are fake blogger sites? Perhaps more challenging and intensive than countless arbitrage sites and content-AdSense/Amazon/etc sites, but I'd never rule it out... a site that at first glance, to the casual surfer appears to be "real" that is solely for the commercial value. Perhaps a group of bloggers working through commenting each other's sites...
I don't know, haven't really thought it all out, but I'm sure someone will figure out how to monetize it... if the money is there, they will come.
identity -- "fake" blogs already exist by the hordes, and their content is usually machine generated in one form or another.
I should say a "higher" level of site. Those kind of pure garbage would not draw this kind of payout... at least I wouldn't think as most sponsors would see it as a waste of money or possible backlash. So maybe fake isn't the exact word... shall we say highly commercially focused blogs, ones created for the sole purpose of monetization opportunities?
Very nice. Our company was planning on buying some links, not just for search reasons, but also to promote our field, which is affordable and can/should be picked up by everyone.
Certainly they wouldn't actually penalize a site for those links, after all.... people that blog post natural links constantly. In effect you'd be striking down a company 'cause Joe's Blog really likes their service.
On the other hand, it does bring to question if and how these links are weighted. I'm sure G and the rest can classify a site as 'Blog', 'Forum', or something related to a niche market. Knowing that, wouldn't it make sense that there is some sort of filter in place specifically for links found on those sites? Assuming there is, then that also brings into question the overall SEO value of a said link vs dollars spent.
The subject is new and exciting, however people here should pay very close attention to their rankings, opponent links, etc. as you may find yourself funneling thousands of dollars to a link company, and gaining nothing more than a couple spots in the serps.
Thanks for the question which I've been dying to know the answer to.
Looks like I'll be testing out reviewme......
One bad thing is that people will know bid prices and that makes me a little standoffish but this seems like it could be very cool!
Now I know why it's been so hard to use blogger the past few days!
Google has announced that it is penalizing paid text links. Matt Cutts is even asking people to "rat out" bloggers and websites that carry paid text links like those through PayPerPost and ReviewMe.
See Cutts' blog at
https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-to-report-paid-links/