Google's been pretty clear - buy or sell links, particularly those that come from broker-type services, and we'll take steps to penalize your site. At one time, this meant simply devaluing the links that come from paid sources, essentially erasing them from the link graph so as to "take the money out of the rankings." Now, however, a considerable amount of new evidence has emerged to suggest Google's doing more than just leveling the field - they're exacting revenge.
How Paid Links Work on a Network Level:
For the last 4 years, a number of large, generally well-known link brokers have operated in the gray area of Google's paid links guidelines. Their operations generally follow a similar thread:
- Contact a number of medium-high PageRank/Trusted websites about monetizing ad blocks with "juice"-passing links. Very often, these sites will simply sell the space without even realizing the potential Google-related implications.
- Start selling links through relationship marketing - connecting with SEO firms who can re-sell the links, attending conferences for personal connections to potential buyers, and even advertising on the web (Google may have killed ads for "text links," but you can still find a full cadre of advertisers for link brokers, high pagerank links, link buying, etc).
- Create blocks of text link ads that point to the client pages from the seller, paying the rental price for the link space while earning a bonus on the extra amount earned from the buyers.
Smart link brokers have taken a number of additional steps to help prevent discovery (and devaluation) by Google, including:
- Anonymizing & randomizing the HTML code used to display the ads. One smaller company I've seen will never use the same HTML styles twice to minimize the likelihood of discovery.
- Linking to half clients / half non-clients in the ad blocks, to help dissuade the engines from wholesale punishing the sites in the ads
- Modifying anchor text and link source (linking to multiple pages on a domain, or even domains/URLs that 301-redirect to the client's pages).
- Running only a few ad blocks per site to help lessen the risk of identification through sitewide/multiple links from a domain type detection.
How Google Fights Paid Links & Text Link Sellers:
On the other side of the coin, Google's actions have turned from preventative and reactive to real aggression:
- Actively penalizing not only sites that sell, but sites that buy (a significant change from 1.5-2 years ago, when those links were merely devalued). Naturally, this suggests that the system is ripe for abuse, but I haven't heard of a "false positive" though I certainly expect to see a few in the very near future.
- Penalties include lowering of rankings (which is somewhat new - most of the penalties used to be just in the toolbar PageRank score). In my experience, there's a two-tier system in place here. Usually, large, important sites will only lose rankings on the specific pages buying and selling the links, rather than the entire domain. Meanwhile, smaller and mid-size domains can experience site-wide rankings drops (the now famous "-XX penalty" is the one I see a lot here, where XX can be anything from 10 to 100).
- Google's spending significant engineering resources to investigate paid link networks and brokers and bring down entire businesses that use this strategy. Obviously, since many advertise and run websites, and some even use their own networks to help their rankings (or the rankings of other sites that share their registrant data), Google has some fairly low-hanging fruit to pluck. I've heard tell that Google may even have some people posing as link buyers to attempt to get data about the sites selling links - personally, I can't imagine why they wouldn't do this. If I were in charge of the paid link detection team, I'd have two full-time interns with lots of fake websites and businesses calling up every link broker I could find and trying to get their full inventory.
- Using "poison," high-commercial value keywords in anchor text as a methodology to discover the sites buying and selling.
- Finding buyers and sellers by playing connect-the-dots. Once Google finds one seller or buyer, they can reverse the link patterns to/from a domain and catch an entire network of link sales.
One of the most interesting tactics I've seen employed thanks to this new, take-off-the-gloves approach from Google is link sellers who work with buyers to first send links to their competitors' sites. If the buying site loses rankings, it's a win for the client and the seller keeps them up. If the competition gains rankings, the links are switched by the seller to point to the buyer's site (so they get the positive impact). I've only heard of this strategy being employed by a single buyer, albeit with multiple sellers, and don't know the final outcome (but it is a brilliant strategy).
The Two Sides of the Paid Link Ethics & Business Case Debate:
First off, I want to say that I am largely agnostic when it comes to the "ethics" of paid links, but I know that others have strong feelings about this. Even my fiancée thinks that buying links to grow search engine rankings is akin to cheating the web ecosphere, but it's one of the rare areas where we disagree. What I do see are two entirely competing business objectives from very different kinds of organizations.
For Google, keeping link value from passing through directly purchased links is a no-brainer. They have to do it, or risk losing serious relevancy. Find a great link broker, even today, and you can use a mid-level domain (PR 6+, relatively high trust, lots of good links, significant history) to rank for very competitive terms and phrases. Google can't have that weakness exploited or they risk being leapfrogged by a competitor in the search space who does a better job with spam detection.
Many times, when I hear Matt Cutts or Adam Lasnik talk about paid links, they address it almost like a philosophy or ethical issue, which, in my mind, is by far the weaker argument. Tell people that your job is to serve the best results, and sadly, the correlation between link buyers and relevance is frequently low. This perfectly explains why you have to discount perturbances like paid links. Make it about the business, and the business owners and operators in the room will respect you. Make it about the lack of morality among SEOs and you build grudges, animosity, and spite ("Oh yeah, I'll show them - I'm gonna go buy me a bunch of links!"). I'm not even personally immune to this gut-level reaction when I hear what should be a cut-and-dry business case presented as though it were a religious edict.
For link buyers, the opportunity to potentially rank atop the engines is irresistible, and even if 9/10 links turn out to pass no value, the ROI is often still there to get the 10% that do send the juice. Businesses justify this with the sales and marketing value they get by being on top of the rankings, and those top rankings can often be leveraged into more natural links (see the now-classic rich get richer theory).
My Problem With How Google Handles Manipulative Linking:
Google's methodology for handling paid links creates, in my opinion, more problems than it solves, and it penalizes the more innocent players far more than those Google truly wishes to damage. How?
- When Google finds paid links, it may discount those links without impacting rankings or toolbar PageRank of the linkind/linked-to page, or it might ding one or both of these in addition.
- This inconsistency in patterns means there's no clear way to determine if Google knows a page is selling links (the toolbar PR can be a good sign, but even then it's not always 100%).
- Google likes this setup, because it means link buyers don't have clear signals about what to buy vs. what to avoid, and link sellers don't know which pages/domains might be passing juice vs. hurting their clients.
In this scenario, the biggest losers are those who buy the links, who end up spending far more than they should, and those who sell links, who often don't realize that link sales are even a bad thing (seriously, go call up a few dozen ad departments at big media websites and ask them if they've heard of nofollow or Google paid links debate - there's simply no awareness in these circles). Now, Google might argue that these are precisely the targets of their Machiavellian machinations, but I find it ridiculous. The real target should be the link brokers and link network operators, who continue to profit no matter what action Google takes.
If Google really wanted to fight the source of the issue, they need to provide some transparency about which sites and pages are penalized (and reducing toolbar PR, which fluctuates naturally is a terrible way to do it, particularly since there's no real source for historical PR information - unless you count SEOmoz's historical PageRank checking tool).
My Proposals for How Google Could Really Fight Paid Links Effectively:
Don't be like Microsoft and try security through obscurity. Be transparent and kick ass at your job. Create a yellow or red alert in the Google toolbar when a site/page has been penalized. Buyers will stay away, sellers will drop the links, and brokers/networks won't be able to use the site anymore. The buyers and sellers still suffer the same retribution, but now you've gone one step further and started on the path to actually eliminating the market itself - fighting the source of the problem, rather than just its symptoms.
Currently, the paid link market is like the casinos in Vegas. The house is the broker, who wins no matter who's playing or how they do. Our link sellers are likely to be the newbies - often with no idea of how much they really stand to gain or lose, or even how the game is played. The buyers are savvier, but with equally bad odds, and only a rudimentary understanding of the game's mechanics. Google plays the dual role of timid regulator and savvy card shark, too paralyzed (maybe by fear?) that a few clever casinos & gamers will find brilliant workarounds if they expose the rules they're enforcing and happy to let the gamblers part with their money. They'd rather have full tables where everyone's losing to the house than empty the floor of all but a few of the smartest and most aggressive players.
Photo credit - mandj98 on Flickr.
Of course, I could be wrong - maybe Google would love to even the odds, shut down the industry and eliminate the brokers. Perhaps it's not actually paid links they're afraid of. Maybe there's some other reason they're playing fast and loose when a more straightforward strategy makes sense. Let's say Google did expose their knowledge of who's manipulating the system. What might happen? The link brokers would be largely out of business (and those who weren't would find it hard to keep customers so long as Google continues to do a good job finding and shutting down the links). Sellers would stop working with brokers
But... There's another angle that hasn't been talked about before (to my knowledge). If Google were to expose their paid link knowledge, you can bet that Microsoft, Yahoo!, Ask, and every other startup engine would leverage that data for their own purposes. Perhaps the paid link industry isn't actually the demon Google claims it is, but an ace-up-its-sleeve in the war for search dominance. After all, if Google's the best spam-fighter among the engines, why share the golden goose?
Just for argument's sake, let's assume that's the case. I'll make one more recommendation to the Google search team - don't expose the data publicly; just do it inside Webmaster Tools on an individual site basis. You still shut down the industry, but only those sites who've bought or sold know which links you've targeted, and any outside entity is going to have a near-impossible time discovering usable, scalable data.
Final Thoughts:
Until Google takes a more transparent, serious approach to fighting paid links at the source, it's going to be hard to take their indignant righteousness on the subject at face value. Until then, I'd recommend that sellers, brokers and buyers keep their activities as clandestine and randomized as possible. Google's built on pattern-detection - eliminate patterns and you maintain the best chance of retaining value. If and when Google comes around on the issue, I'll more strongly consider empathizing with them. It's a hard thing to do when you talk to dozens of folks who've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on what they think is good SEO (or sold ad space to link brokers completely ignorant of the potential consequences) because of Google's desire for search domination (or unwillingness to do anything but spread fear to those SEOs who pay close attention).
I'm particularly unsympathetic on this last point. Google alerts sites that have been hacked, those who have hidden text, and pages that otherwise fall outside their guidelines (at least, in many cases). I'm not buying the "if we draw the line, spammers can go right up to it" argument on paid links - it doesn't fit. Google knows they created the paid linking industry, has potential solutions to fix it, yet chooses to continue letting the so-called "scoundrels" profit most and suffer least. Google has to understand the boundaries of information dissemination through the SEO world. It's far more insular than we often perceive (as insiders), and to punish those who have no way to know what they're doing is wrong, while rewarding the savvy brokers seriously weakens their legitimacy on the topic.
BTW - As with all posts on SEOmoz, the content above represents my personal opinion, and shouldn't be construed as gospel truth.
P.S. This post might make it seem that I have sympathy for the brokers, but none for Google, when both are often guilty of the same offense - benefiting from the lack of knowledge in the market. I reserve harsher judgement for Google, both because I expect better from them and because in many cases, it really is only Google who knows the field, while brokers fumble as blindly as buyers and sellers. I also think it's a bit naive to create a valuable supply (links) and demand (rankings) then stand back and say, "Hey, we didn't say you could create a market economy here!"
Make it about the business, and the business owners and operators in the room will respect you. Make it about the lack of morality among SEOs and you build grudges, animosity and spite ("Oh yeah, I'll show them - I'm gonna go buy me a bunch of links!").
I think that this paragraph has been the most intelligent comment I have read on the whole paid links issue.
Google needs to balls up and admit " hey you! If hurt the way we make money, then we will hurt the way you do" is infact the approach that they are taking.
Its not for them to decide ethics, but I would totally respect them if they admitted the business reasons for going after Link Buyers.
As I have written above, Google does not improve organic ranking for money. They send traffic for money. Why the site that buys links should be treated as relevant? Because the owners know SEO tactics?
It is like your colleague at work doing half of the job you do and earning twice as you only because he knows a few people. He is not smarter, he does not work harder so why should he earn more?
I think it is about ethics but Google is in the difficult position to show it that way...
The whole "make a site for visitors not engines" thing is out the window. Now I'm expected to add nofollow to certain links and if I buy links I could be penalized for it if the person I buy for doesn't nofollow them.
My view is that a site's creditability should only go up or down if the links they have are junk. Whether or not the ads I put on my site are paid or my own, they reflect on the quality of my site. So I only put ads that my readers would benefit from.
I think the key here is for Google to find a way to look at these links and see if the source and destination are credible. If a site about dogs is linking to viagra, then it's clear they don't care. But if a site is about dogs and links to leashes, it's relevant and shouldn't matter if the link was paid or not.
Well said. Ads are to a large extent editorial (unless you're serving AdSense, where it's just luck of the draw), which seems to have been part of Google's standard for determining what is paid or not paid in the first place (see: Yahoo Directory). Punishing site editors who show crappy viagra ads would not be out of line, IMHO.
What about sites that provide information about treating canine impotence?
Edited for being totally off topic and not even that funny. Sorry for wasting time folks.
And again, that's too much transparancy I have doubts about... It's like Google encouraged webmasters to buy liks from everyone else (that don't have yellow/red tlb). And Google clearly states: "don't buy/sell links at all"...
I do see your points on openness and agree with them... but don't think there is one perfect (or much better than today's) solution...
Ok, the one thing I still don't get about paid linking (which I'm sure indicates how much of a n00b I still am in this field) is... are paid advertisements considered paid linking? Are ad networks (like, Federated Media, for example) considered link brokers? And if so, how is this different from Google AdWords/AdSense (or does Google have a double-standard when it comes to their own properties)?
saffrye9 said, "Are paid advertisements considered paid linking?"
I say, good question and it depends. I sure hope my paid yahoo and business.com links don't cause a penalty.
Thanks for a thoughtful morning read, Rand. I've long thought that a notification within WMC would make a ton of sense & have been surprised Google hasn't implemented it yet.
I am not a proponent of buying links other than the big directories like Y and BOTW, but if I had enterprise-level clients whose competitors were all buying links, I might think differently...because pretty much everyone says they still seem to work.
I am not sure that G is on board with your idea of only being interested in killing the link brokers, though. It seems to me they want to kill the entire link buying/selling system.
The brokers might be some easy low-hanging fruit they could cut off. But the rest of it is a little dicey.
As you say, most individual site owners (let alone media ad departments) have no idea what G's guidelines are, and if a company offers them a few extra dollars a year to display a link to their website, they're probably going to take it. But I can't see any way algorithmically that G is going to be able to find those links anyway, without registering a tremendous number of false positives.
Funny, the real estate market is known to be as spammy as many other markets out there (porn, gambling etc). These days the market is so down Google is getting its help from us through recession as real estate professionals cannot afford to buy links.
I would like to make a smart constructive comment but the big brother is watching. Nice post for 2:25 am, Rand
I don't think it makes much sense to have a warning symbol for bought links in the google toolbar. The majority of people using the toolbar are not going to be SEOs but ordinary users and may well attach far more significance to something like that than necessary. One option would probably be to have it off by default but how many people would go into the options to turn it on. Perhaps a special webmaster google toolbar?
Displaying this info in webmaster central probably makes more sense. People are still going to be throwing some money down the drain - presumably they would need to buy the link before they found out whether it was worth anything - but at least it would be limited.
Good post and I agree with your recommendations.
Is this a turn-around from your previous position though?
https://www.text-link-ads.com/testimonials.php (Can't insert links)
Were there not advertisements for text-link-ads on this site a while back?
I can't recall when they were taken down but it wasn't a recent change.
In answer to both the above questions:
I still think that TLA has good people working there and tries to provide a very solid service. The effectiveness of that service has been generally curtailed, as TLA was/is one of the most public of the link brokers on the web, but Google's attacks on them haven't dampened the quality of people there, just the level of ROI. FYI - that quote does come from 2-3 years ago.
We did once have ads on SEOmoz (probably for about 4-5 months back in late 2005), and that included (if I remember correctly) ads for TLA. However, we haven't run ads on SEOmoz in a very long time (other than the banners for SMX as part of our partnership with Third Door Media), and don't intend to do so again.
"Were there not advertisements for text-link-ads on this site a while back?"
I believe so, which begs the question; If a site/blog is being sponsored by so-called “evil link brokers” such as TLA (I’m not saying they’re evil, but I assume they’d be considered as such), will those sites be penalized in the near future? Does G consider shady sponsors to be guilt by association? How far does guilt by association extend?
1. Google ought to authorize and regulate websites that sell links. Perhaps they can even sell "Text Links" by adding to AdWords product offerings.
2. Its unfair to have vague guidelines for selling links. Is it ok for Yahoo, Business.com, JoeAnt.com to sell links, but not the NY Times? Are paid directories ok? Which ones are not ok?
3. Please add link buying to Google Webmaster tools.
4. Tell us the sites that you think are bad, but don't necessarily look like link selling violators.
I really am NOT completely clear on what Google condemns or accepts.
I totally disagree...The LAST thing I want is more regulation from Google.
Agreed.
1. ... Perhaps they can even sell "Text Links" by adding to AdWords product offerings.
This would essentially be Google's version of Yahoo!'s paid inclusion service, although hopefully it would work a little better.
If played poorly, or as it is currently, I think Google will get sued over this issue via a class-action suit or anti-trust litigation, mainly because Google’s current MO when suggesting where to spend your internet dollars remains their singular money earner: AdWords.
Not getting broken up at some point seems like the harder course to chart. Right now they're in a tight row to hoe because on one side they have their business model driven on search result relevancy--which earns lots of user love, but no cash--and on the other side their enormous cash cow, AdWords. On top of all that their field of influence is getting all the more enormous as they go about trying to organize the world's information. If they keep slapping sites out of an index that is largely becoming the Internet and say "You're welcome to come back in as long as you play (and pay) with our system," they're going to inch closer and closer to antitrust or a class-action suit.
I still have people who come to me asking to buy high pr links for them.
Often they are dissapointed when I tell them that I can provide good job building links from niche directories, through press releases, guest posts on another sites they.
There are too many articles about high pr links written, people who is not familiar with SEO often don't know. Anyway, some people still belive that submission in 400 000 "search engines" is the only way to to rank well on Google.
Google should get rid from PageRank bar and provide something useful like website safety analysis.
I agree wholeheartedly - particularly with your final point - this is indeed a monster of their creation.
I think I've said before that I'm not too sure where I stand personally on paid links - are they really evil? To a human user (i.e. not a robot) does a link necessarily mean a recommendation?
We all know where Google stand on paid links - but the reality is that their stance on this is bred entirely because people buying and selling links messes with their algorithm.
Edited for spelling...
"this is bred entirely because people buying and selling links messes with their algorithm."
I think it also includes a healthy dose of 'it messes with their advertising revenue model'.
But bear in mind that Google never boosted organic results of PPC advertisers as it was with other search engines. They only send traffic. Google AdWords does not pass page rank.
Try to look at this from the relevancy perspective. Do you really want to see spammy sites in the top results only because they bought a bucket of paid links?
For me relevancy is the key. I want to use Google that works.
I agree Google protect their own business. But their business is based on high quality free data mining services strongly bases on relevancy. So we benefit first.
I was just preparing my response in my mind when I read John Beagle's -- I couldn't agree more.
Without some better definitions of "paid links" it seems unfair to put any penalties in place for paid links. I know what the obvious ones are, but there are many gray areas.
Rand - I also agree with you that the far majority of website owners and marketing people have no idea what a paid link is let alone that Google does not like them. Some times we SEOs forget that 90% of the world has no idea what SEO stands for and are clueless when it comes to Google's "rules".
Good post at such an early hour.
What has always concerned me is what happens to the SEO who has to buy links that are relevant to his/her site? In today's day and age it seems that almost all links have to be monetized. If i have site that has relevant content to your site why would I link to you for free when I can link to someone else who will pay me?What is the "honest" SEO to do? I think all of the search engines created this monster when they chose to use links as part of the algorithm.
I think the days of linking to good quality sites is gone. The web is about money. Companies pay for search marketing professionals to get their sites to the top of the SERPs. Those companies want to be at the top to drive traffic and in some form or another, customers to those sites. If a site is "informational" in nature it still usually has adds to help make money.
I guess what frustrates me is what are we supposed to do? What if links that are paid for actually benefit the consumer or the user at the same time? It seems that another good post has left me with more questions than answers.
What would you do if you were Google and relevancy was your main target? If there was a better method than links, they would use it, right? Every SEO expert is saying that in another 3-5 years nothing will change with links...
What would I do if I were Google and relevancy was your main target?
Make the algorithm better at calculating onpage relevancy.
People don't always link to a page if it has good content because of....review sites. Instead of people posting reviews in their blogs, they're going to Trip Advisor or even Google Maps where they can't insert links. So you could have 300 blog-like reviews and one link to your site...or sometimes no links if the review site is also an affiliate booking site.
It might just be that links aren't the best way to calculate relevancy for every topic. That links seem to count as much as they do I think is too many eggs in one basket. And it's because links count as much as they do that has caused the worth of a link to have a $. Why give a link for free when you can get paid for it?
You know I was about to go off on google. Pondering the concept of "it's our websites how dare you penalize any of us if we want to sell links". In reality buying and selling links isn't illegal. It's a business where one spednds cash for a service and the other side receivs cash for providing a service.
Then I started thinking about all those years bouncing in night clubs. Some clubs had really strict and stupid dress codes but would let some regular customers come in dressed down. Sure other customers would huff and puff but in the end it's not our club so we have no say.
Google isn't any different. I am pretty sure no other search engine would punish us...but if we want to be listed in google where the majority of all our search traffic comes from....we we gotta play by their rules.
If google was more of a team player though they would be better off by letting people use some thing like a rel="advertisement" attribute and let every one buy and sell links as long as it was set properly.
That way we could use both methods to increase traffic rather then be force to pick one over the other.
This is a side note, but it really pisses me off the way Google will notify larger sites that they are going to be dinged for link-buying/selling or other manipulation, and will just punish smaller sites. Sure it makes sense from a operational perspective, but it just screams of that good-old-boys network that already exists on the web.
Jonny,
I agree here. I would also say its not just big versus small sites, but sites that spend a lot of money on AdWords - which usually are the big ones, but also plenty of smaller sites out there that do the same.
"it just screams of that good-old-boys network that already exists on the web."
I disagree, Jonny. I was an in-house SEO on a huge (F500) site with an enormous Adwords budget. There's no denying that my PPC colleague got much more information from Google about campaign performance and optimization than your average small-to-medium business owner, but I was never given an advantage in SEO. We occasionally ran into serious site architecture and content issues, but I had to diagnose and fix the problems without any insider information. I couldn't consult with Google on upcoming releases or projects. They never warned me of impending rankings changes, penalties or new tools before they were publicly known. I had to rely on my knowledge and experience, the publicly available resources (Webmasters Console, etc), and some inexpensive software that is available to anybody. Our success came from realizing what our strengths and weaknesses were, and trying to intelligently manage both.
I think there is a huge misperception in the industry about how much information is exchanged between search engines and webmasters for big vs. small sites. Believe me, I asked the tough questions of our reps and industry contacts. I exchanged emails and phone calls with people that could have given us the keys to the kingdom but didn't, because they aren't going to jeopardize their reputation and impartiality.
Can't agree more! Maybe I am naive but I still believe in Google. Maybe because of the way they started this business... they wanted to have a good product and they didn't care for money for the long time....
Points well taken
Along the lines of what constitutes a paid link--I am confused as well. Would a paid listing in a directory such as lawyers.nolo.com be considered wrong by google? I know there is alot of that going on in various lawyer directories and they do give a direct link to the attorney's site.
Google are the Hitlers of the Internet. This war on payed links is hypocritical at best. I mean look every SEO is going to build links for their clients and they are going to get paid for the service. So then why are those links good and just going to your friends site and offering $20 bucks for a link bad?
Under Googles hedgemony the only people appearing anywhere in the Serps would be multi-million dollar corporations with huge advertising budgets to build "natural links". I don't know about you Rand but I know many smaller businesses that offer far better products and services then the big name brands and they usually do it a lot cheaper.
I patiently wait for the day Googles empire collapses.
"Create a yellow or red alert in the Google toolbar when a site/page has been penalized. Buyers will stay away, sellers will drop the links and brokers/networks won't be able to use the site anymore."
What will happen is people will start focusing to get links from websites with high PR and not in yellow or red..If the website owner gets greedy or ignorant then it will result in his website turning red soon. This way slowly many websites will turn red which were much better before. Also who had natural links from such websites will suffer.
Excellent post Rand.
Google devaluing links is one thing, but wiping a site off the map is another. I'm working with 2 sites at the moment, both slammed from earnings of $500 a day and $1,500 a day to nothing and ranking nowhere.
One site, yes guilty probably 30% paid backlink profile and the other hit by a competitor with a tool that shunted their link to every guestbook and comment page not nailed down along with the usual Viagra and Tramadol links. Ruined by a competitor with a $450 tool called Xrumer.
Try contacting all these guestbooks and blog farms to get the link taken down, not fun. Meanwhile Google's "link buying" penalty hasn't ruined their business it's ruined their life. People are ringing up the site owners and it goes like:
User: I've searched everything, i can't find your company/site.
Owner: Try Yahoo
User: Found it on Yahoo, thanks
If Google keep heading down this "off with their heads" path, their new motto will be "Can't be Trusted". When users know what they are searching for, and seek out a specific brand or page and can't find it they will go elsewhere. When webmasters legitimate sites get pinged, why not just create 500 spam sites instead? At least the business model is diversified, and you don't go to bed praying every night somebody hasn't pointed links at your business and your on the Google chopping block.
Don't get me wrong, i agree irrelevant paid links hold little end user value and shouldn't be used as a document scoring signal.. But allowing links from site A to site B to actually harm site B is setting the whole system up for abuse and failure and i'm seeing evidence of it starting to happen.
I'm glad to have read this because this is a great post. I agree with your recommendations and definitely think that paid links work. This blog is always really nicely written and I cannot wait to read your next post.
I totally agree with you about the worst link buyers (the ones who just don't seem to care) getting the best results. The way the algo is it is either the links work or they do not, they do not count against you too much (unless you get penalised). So it is a question of throw enough s... at the wall and some of it is bound to stick. The only ones who seem to get penalized for buying are really bad ones like oceanfinance.co.uk, what has there been like 3 other cases or something? Not a lot that's for sure. Some of the UK SERPs on commercial phrases are pretty bad, next level, hardcore link buying. I am telling you. I spoke to one guy who was buying 20 directory links a day, as his links got accepted he was contacting the directory owners and asking them for a link on the homepage: Some were giving him the link for free, others charged him like £5 or something. He had over 100,000 links going to his homepage and he was 4th on Google for a competitive finance term.
I know this post is from a few months back, but I have a new question on this topic. For people who are still considering buying links, is there a list of paid link vendors that Google has devalued? Link vendors insist that even if the page has a PR of 1 or 2, as long as the link is surrounded by other relevant links (regardless of the main content on the page) that links are valuable. I would like to find a comprehensive list of paid link vendors that Google has spotted. Anyone know of such a list?
i disagree with you a little..
while I am one of the people of Google's side of the table, i say;
YAY!!!! they are fighting link spammers...
i had something really cool to say then i read this as i was posting:
"..but the reality is that their stance on this is bred entirely because people buying and selling links messes with their algorithm." - HannahS
This is why I don't blame google.. and for one this makes me happy that they are doing more..
why?<opinion>
I don't use linking as an SEO strategy... yes i know some links, Press releases, PR New Wire, Yahoo! Directory, ODP, (oops, DMOZ aka Google Directory) help.. but that is not what my SEO strategy is based on...
So i love it! my bag o'tricks stays the same.. the competition.. dwindles..
</opinion>
I'm glad to have read this. I have had a website for a long time and it comes up on the first page of Google. However, my page rank is only a 2.
It makes me realize just how little I know or even understand.
A brilliant strategy, but also one that could lead to nasty legal problems. Not to mention this isn't the kind of way i'd prefer to operate a business, but yes, a brilliant strategy indeed.
Wow! 2:25 in the morning and still a coherent and relevant post, I'm impressed.
There is a lot of good information to digest here. I'll bet when I wake up I will even get more out of it.
Thanks Rand, good stuff.
I'm honestly not sold one way or the other on this issue. Do paid links really hurt users THAT much? I think the potential is there but as our industry ages, the tides are turning and white-hats are starting to outnumber the blackhats... or so it seems. MHO.
And I agree that this is a business issue, not an ethical issue. This goes for quite a few of the regulations G has. More and more I hear people commenting on what G will allow or not allow as if G stands for God and not Google.Happy Monday!
I agree with what you are saying about Google; but what is one to do about it? The internet is fast becoming Google's playground, and all of us simply respond to how we can please the master. It's frustrating, because, like you, I believe that most paid links are not inherently unethical. They simply do not fit with Google's business model.
To respond to this side thread - technically Paid links do actually harm the value of the search engines results.
A link is supposed to be a "value proposition" i.e I only link to you if I think your info is good.
Paying for the same value proposition dilutes its "real" value, and hence hurting the search engines results. So from googles point of view, its not an ethical but a business issue, as Rand correctly points out. If they allow paid links to continue influencing their results, then search results will continue to be dominated by big walleted sites, which of course means a poor mix of results.
Rishil, You're assuming that paid links are generally irrelevant or of low quality. I think it's just as easy to imagine the exact opposite: paid links typically have more descriptive anchor text, and the sites that have money to spend on links are the sites that have had some kind of success already. In other words, high-quality sites generally make more money and have bigger advertising budgets. I don't really believe in anything I'm saying... I just wanted to disagree with you. Mostly because your avatar is devoid of any hot chicks or hard liquor, and as such... I find it offensive.
Dear Darren - first - I am going to report you to the trading standards for misrepresentation of an avatar. I am yet to receive my many prizes for evert time I clicked on the thumbs up to win.
Regarding your comment - I dont assume that paid links are actually of poor quality - infact I believe taht good businesses will try and get links from quality sites, and that quality sites wouldnt want to link to poor sites (in an ideal world).
However, its the "mix" of results that get concentrated with purely commercial sites at the top. But this is just a sole opinion...
You HAVE been winning, Rishil! Your prize is my friendship!
lol - well I guess thats good enough. Sheesh. Talk about a booby prize.
I really don't think that's true, and it's flawed in it's concept, you could simply raise 25 grand or so in VC and spend it all on links and then you'd be ranking since google (in this dream world) no longer devalued paid links.
Right, but in theory... the VC-funded business would eventually have to generate revenue, in order to survive. If the site shoots to the top of rankings but it isn't something that Google's users like... then it would eventually fail as a business. If it fails as a business, then it doesn't have a disposable income to apply towards future link purchases and hence its position in rankings would succumb to the quality sites that DO have that disposable income.
I've taken the "market economy rights itself" angle in the past, but I think for Google, it doesn't work well. They can't afford to have irrelevant results for months at a time while they wait for the market forces to take the business down and reward the better monetizers. Besides that, they already have a pay-for-placement listing service :)
Actually the market economy takes too long - I know of companies that intentionally buy hordes of links to jump serps in time for high search volumes - even if they stay on the top for 4-5 weeks, they make their whole years sales.
Right. The flip side of the irrelevance coin is why big brand sites get re-included so quickly even after playing the dirtiest of tricks. If people searching for BMW North America can't find the site in Google, it looks bad on Google, not BMW. Your average user doesn't care about the politics. All they know is that now they can't get to www.bmwusa.com by typing 'bmw' into their Google search bar.
Yeah, you're right... there are certain cases where a high-quality site has influence on Google's SERPs. =)
This is Google's major quandry with paid links. Tons of major publishers and brands are buying and selling links. If they make a real move to squash the market, their search results would shift dramatically, probably causing more harm than good in terms of SERP relevancy. So instead, Google just singles out the sites they want to punish and does so behind the scenes.
You're assuming the user would ever bother to go anywhere BUT the top listings. If your high-quality, highly usable, and highly optimized site is being beaten out by someone who's site has JUST ENOUGH quality, JUST ENOUGH usability and JUST ENOUGH optimization, and is doing JUST ENOUGH to get the user where he wants to go, the users will have gotten their product and will never have a need to go beyond the top 10 results, therefore, assuming buying links is ok, the market would be owned by those with the biggest wallets.
I'm not complaining or saying i'm against buying links, but I don't think it's fair to say that those with the bigger budgets provide the most quality.
Great post Rand as usual. You can expect some more questions from me at the upcoming SEOmoz seminar.
Our firm played with buying links for a short period of time roughly twelve months ago, but now we resort to hiring full time link builders, baiters and social media networkers. We have seen far greater results with this method over buying links. Each of our link/sm employees has a credit card with a certain limit if they find the perfect link to buy, but they are rarely used.
We compete in some extremely competitive national markets without buying links. The sources of our links are no secret, but it does take a lot of man hours.
So... I guess I would be happy if Google found more effective ways to combat paid links specifically for our company's sake.
In the current environment sites that don't have a way to effectively build links, either paid or "natural", get shut out, which means most businesses.
In the world where Google figures out how to stomp out a huge percentage of linkspam, sites that don't have a way to effectively build links get shut out - either because they are a payday loan site that has no reason for anyone to link to them, or they are a small biz that has no resources to get links or they are competing against a wealthy competitor that can afford to go on the "black market", which will still exist, and pay a lot for the links. A stronger linkspam detector would drive the cost of paid links up but the ROI would still be there because there would be fewer buyers. There would be fewer sellers too, but the size of the market would probably stay the same and might even grow. The rich get richer, etc.
I like Gab's idea of pooling WMC data. I am pretty sure most of my clients would be fine with me sharing their analytics info in some anonymous fashion if they could get access to other sites' data to help them with traffic acquisition.
question:
do you not do competitive analysis on your clients competitors?
we do polling of the client's sales team to find out who their competitor's are and also run searches on their client's keywords, etc.
unless your post meant that you are trying to find words that do not relate to your client that have a high search volume? then.. well i'm going to be nice and shut up.
Well. I agree with you although this is something which every "SEO" knows now regarding the paid link issue.
Being an inhouse SEO and freelance SEO myself, I believe the best way to build link is through your content. Have something which is worth reading like you guy do on this blog, people would link back to you happily :)
Content is the king here now.
Regards,Zafar Ahmed
Zafar,
As an agency SEO, I wish I could say the world was as easy as being able to tell the boss let's write 100 pages (with some link bait sources). Man, do I envy the in-house SEOs sometimes. I am not saying you guys know less than the agency SEOs but I am pretty sure you will be shellshocked if you walk on our end of the boundaries. Trying to create results without being able to touch websites (sometimes) and still be expected to create miracles. Rand used to (before he became an SEO Industry magnet) and I still live in that world. I assure you brother it is not a pretty world and no not every answer is content to every client.
I completely understand your frustration with your client's expectations vs. reality. However, being an in-house SEO, I can tell you, we have our own challenges to deal with...
SEO: We need a blog.
Engineering: What do you need a blog for?
SEO: Well, rankings are heavily influenced by inbound links. Nobody wants to link to a product page. We need a location to publish content that attracts the, errr, Linkerati...
Engineering: The who??
SEO: The Linkerati. That's just a term used to denote all the people on the web who are prone to creating links.
Engineering: Ok. What kind of content are you planning on posting?
SEO: Well, (interrupted)...
Exec: New product announcements with a larger 'Buy Now' button!
SEO: Woah, wait a sec. That's not exactly what I was thinking. See, that's just the same as our product pages. We need to come up with new, interesting content.
Exec: Aren't our products interesting to you?
SEO: (cough) Well, yes, sir, they are...but I think we have to come up with content that goes beyond our products.
Exec: Well, why didn't you say so! We'll review our products!
SEO: Uhhh...so you're suggesting we review our own products and then publish that review on our own blog along with a larger 'Buy Now' button?
Exec: Don't you like that idea?
SEO: (sweating...thinking) Well, sir, I think it has wonderful potential. I'm just not sure our audience will, uhh...respond well to that.
Exec: You mean the Paparazzi?
SEO: Linkerati.
Exec: Right. The Technorati.
SEO: Ummm, ok, right.
Exec: Sure they will. Have Marketing run with it. This is going to be great. Oh yeah...make sure you put parameters on all links within blog posts so we can track everything!
SEO: (hits self in head with tack hammer)
Really, I love being an in-house SEO, but it isn't 'just a walk in the park, Kazanski'. The recommendations we make don't just happen overnight. I'm still waiting for a couple engineering requests I submitted in 2007!
Just wanted to add that.
OD
* Edited for grammar
So true! Great story :-)
I had a very similar discussion with Marketing yesterday. Only the question they had was whether having an rss feed available would deter people from signing up for the newsletter.
Marketing really really wants people's email addresses, and I keep saying some people really really don't want to give their email address.
Plus email only newsletters is content that search engines don't see. And by god if we create content I want it to be indexable. (We try not to sell in our newsletters. They are more for keeping people interested in what's going on...local happenings and such.)
Additionally, Marketing buys links to attract human visitors and they really don't care a wit if the link isn't nofollowed. They don't even check. And it seems unfair for Google to penalize us for that. I know the Marketing department just bought a placement on a new local info site for no other reason than the site is relevant to us and the visitors of that site would be interested in us. But when I looked at the code, that site had not nofollowed any of their links.
**** weird placement ****
It went as a reply to the wrong comment sorry...
Awsome dialogue! Thumbs up:-)
I am in-house too and convincing upper management to expand editorial into articles NOT just new reviews took time...
Classsic
I'm in the exact same boat. I'm also ready to launch this fairly large scale initiative for our company that took me weeks to put together. It took the marketing guy 1 hour to "look it over and make the appropriate changes", changes that I feel could impact my project in a negative way.
Couldn't agree more! In-house people envy consultants, and vice versa. Each have their own challenges and opportunities, but the best are capable of using what they have to their advantage while trying to make up for what they lack.
"Trying to create results without being able to touch websites (sometimes) and still be expected to create miracles."
You will find this in in-house as well :-) They don't deserve high ranks, then... I still don't understand companies who don't want to work hard but want to earn money.
One example - ilovetypography.com. Amazing blog about typography. 2nd on 'typography' on Google. Founded August last year. I don't think John bought any links. What I know he has got fantastic content and he is at the top. He desrves it. When somebody is looking for typography, they won't be disappointed with the content on this site. This is what Google is for...