Paid Links Get You Banned In Google?
It’s funny, but I’ve heard a couple of questions this week about Google banning sites for buying links. What’s funny is that it is only Tuesday.
The thing about it is, no matter how much Google hates paid links, no matter how much they’d love to get their algo sorted out enough to decipher which are paid and which are “natural”, they will not ban you for having paid links. Their snitching program paid links notification program and the request that webmaster put no follow tags on paid links is more of a ploy to get you to help them figure out which links are paid so they can discount the value of a paid link (and perhaps all links from websites that sell links) in order to make their results pages more relevant. In my mind this is more telling about how reliant Google’s algorithm is on links and the types of links than anything else.
So in short, if it makes sense to buy a link from a site, go for it. For best results I recommend making sure it’s relevant to your site, is on a page with decent Google Tool Bar PR (though personally I’d weight relevance more than TBPR) and is a site that not only get crawled regularly, but your link is on a page that gets crawled regularly. Oh, and if it’s on a page or site that gets decent traffic, all the more better.
“Buying links is all fine and good, but I don’t want to get banned by Google!” you say. In my opinion, don’t worry about it. Yes, there’s a chance they may devalue the paid link coming into your site. But the chances of them banning you for a paid link is slim to none, and I’m leaning towards none.
Stitches for Snitches, Part 2: It’s Live
Well, it’s been done. According to another Matt Cutts post, Google has added a paid link report to Webmaster Central console. What’s interesting about it to me? They put it in with their spam reports.
So now Google is encouraging webmasters to rat out anyone selling links instead of doing it themselves. They could do it – these are some of the brightest people in the USA, if not the world. But instead they’re telling us, well, perhaps insinuating, that we ought not be selling links or advertising via text links.
I wonder how many Google fanboys and girls and Cuttlets are rushing out to do their duty as dictated requested by the Overlords of the Googleplex good people at the world’s favorite search engine? Surely no one is using it to mess with the competition. As Google know, people aren’t like that. Just look at all the MFA sites. Those things provide good, quality content! And this selling of text links? Surely that didn’t get to the state it is today because of the little green thingy in the Google ToolBar.
The thing is, you can either comply or not. They don’t owe us anything and we don’t owe them anything. You can give into their arrogance or go about business as usual. My guess is a majority of the website operators out there aren’t going to do anything. They’re too busy as it is without having to worry about getting snitched on or losing revenue via advertising. My concern is what is Google going to do with these snitch reports this information and how is it going to affect those people reported in it? Is it going to be like the arbitrary StopBadWare.Org listings (which you receieved no warning for having done anything wrong and would be listed as such until you found out, even if you weren’t doing anything wrong?)? Only time will tell. And who knows – this might amount to nothing or become a huge PR (and I ain’t talking PageRank) fiasco for the arrogant bullies good people at Google.
GoogleSayWhat? Stitches for Snitches & My Two Cents on the Matt Cutts Post.
Alright, it hasn’t hit any mainstream press, and it probably never will. But unless you’ve been living under a friggin’ rock in the SEO world, you couldn’t have missed any of the firestorm regarding Matt Cutts’ now infamous blog post about hidden links.
What’s got everybody set off isn’t the information on hidden links; to the contrary, that kind of information is useful. Google, regardless of the quality of their SERPs, are still by and far the perceived most important search engine for online businesses. And they still provide the most traffic from what everyone says. Knowing what they could smack you on the hand for is good.
It’s what was the latter half of the post that has everyone worked up. Well, everyone one in the world of search. Basically, Matt Cutts went on to say (and I’m paraphrasing here), “Google is thinking about considering paid links as a type of spam. So, why don’t you tell which of your links are paid or not so we can do our job better. And while you’re at it, if you know of a site selling links, tell us that too.”
That pissed off a lot of people. Sure, it’s their game and they can play it how they want. But considering a paid link as spam or something bad . . . that’s just obnoxious. Even throwing that out there, regardless of whether they’re considering it or not, is bullying at best. It’s horrible.
Of course there are legions of Cuttlets and other Google fanboys and girls out there saying it’s better for the internet. BFD. First of all, having us do their job smacks of laziness. C’mon, people! Use those big brains! You all could figure this out! Besides, if it weren’t for Adsense your SERPs would probably be a helluva’ lot better! Well, perhaps that’s unfair, but that’s how I feel.
There’s a solution out there. But slapping webmasters for selling advertising via paid links isn’t it. While at one time perhaps links were a good way to judge the popularity of a site, perhaps it’s time to take a hard look at how that’s influencing the current state of Google and the web in general. Links are good. Getting free relevant links is great. Buying relevant links is good business.
Honestly, in the long run, probably not a whole helluva’ lot is going to change. I think more than anything we’re seeing Google’s arrogance in play. They’re going to dominate the online advertising space with their purchase of DoubleClick. Telling mom and pop sites (who probably wouldn’t know Matt Cutts from Frylock and don’t spend a lot of time studying the subtleties of the Google Webmaster Guidelines) they can’t do with their website what Google is doing with their search engine without risking some sort of vague punishment is borderline criminal.
And if I’m wrong about what Mr. Cutts wrote, then I think it shows the building backlash against Google and their clumsiness with PR and their message, “Don’t Be Evil.” I think one they need to take to heart is “Don’t Be Assholes.”
