Why Google shouldn’t care about Paid Links
Over the last week there have been stories popping up about Google manually lowering the displayed Pagerank of some blogs, because they were selling links. One of the blogs affected by this was that of Andy Beard.
I know that most of my readers are either bloggers or have an interest in becoming a blogger. Most of you read Andy’s blog at least from time to time, so you know that if there is one guy who doesn’t put up links to sites, just because they offer him money, it’s him.
Unlike The Stanford Daily (PR drop from 9 to 7) Andy doesn’t sell unrelated sitewide links. Heck, he doesn’t even sell related ones.
It seems that he got punished for some sponsored reviews he did. They were all balanced, informative for his readers and relevant to the topic of his blog. His PPP profile even states that he highlights “both good features and flaws constructively and offers suggestions for improvements”.
These reviews were simply blog content, and since they were about a website, they had links to the source. This is not link selling, it’s basic journalistic practice.
That’s what really pisses me off!
- You want to penalize bloggers for unrelated links in the sidebar? Go ahead.
- You want to punish bloggers for reviewing and linking to unrelated websites? Have fun.
- You want to tell bloggers that they can’t write a post for money, which you would have no problem with if it was unpaid? Are you nuts?
Payment shouldn’t be a criterion to evaluate the worth of a link, but relevance should be.
The only website I’ve reviewed on this blog so far was Dosh Dosh. I admire Maki’s ability to write his signature articles, so I wrote about his blog and even put in some deep links. Would they be less relevant if he had paid me? No. I’ve never done a directly paid post, and I don’t think that’s gonna change. But if I did, I’d do it like Andy and only choose sites & products relevant to my blog.
I don’t like to read about day trading on SEO blogs, and I don’t want gadget blogs to tell me about headache treatment.
If it is possible to base the price of an AdWords ad on a quality score, then Google should be able to judge links by something that really counts - relevance.
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Tags: Google, links, Pagerank
It’s indeed a bit sad, I can understand that they want to stop paid links but this just isn’t the way to get it done. Thousands of bloggers are probably being royally screwed over this way when it comes to their pagerank, some might not have cared about it but others worked for it for months.
I wonder what PPP and such will do now though, their opportunities are greatly based on page rank at the moment. But since their own opportunities will be resulting in their members getting lower pageranks this way it’ll probably end up with just pr0 blogs participating.
Andy’s reviews are always filled with relevant information and they’re definitely not just fluff that links to paid advertisers. I don’t see anything wrong with this.
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Andy has some great reviews. I can’t say that I am taking sides either way. I can just say that as bloggers, we all have to expect the unexpected and be prepared to live a dot Com life without Google if one day they decide to ban you. I have worked my butt off towards continuing to increase traffic to my blog while at the same time pull less of my total traffic from Google. Three months ago 50% of my total traffic came from Google. Today only 20% come from Google and I have positive overall traffic growth. I am pretty cautious and a little paranoid about things. So, I try to live by the saying of expect the unexpected.. so if one day Google decides to fry me my goal is to make it so that the blow to the skull isn’t too bad.
It surely looks like you’re getting where you want to go. Those stats sound really good. Hmm, caution and a little paranoia might be the right way to go.
yeah, but it sucks losing sleep over wondering if Google is going to get a wild hair up their ass and remove my site(s) from their index. I don’t sleep that much as it is, and it’s paranoia I don’t need. I am slowly trying to evolve out of the whole “Make money with Adsense” and develop successful online businesses that provide a customized service for readers/advertisers in specific markets. Whether that all works or not… only time will tell. But this whole long issue with Google and the debate about what you can or can’t do and still maintain a ranking is stressful. It is stressful to me, and to many others who solely depend on making money online to support our families.
I really wish some other companies would get their heads out of their butts and provide some “real” competition for Google. Competition is good… it keeps people honest and real. When a business has too much power it can get to their head. I am not saying that this is what is going on with Google… but I do believe that they have ZERO competition. They have totally swept this market and even flew in under Bill Gate’s radar.
I’m not to bothered by it. When I have my ‘blog reader’ hat on, I don’t much care for the paid reviews because, well, they’re paid aren’t they? So it just doesn’t feel like great content.
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I could write a blog doing all the the things Google wants me to so I can make money. I could only read, link and comment on blogs related to mine. I could only link to high ranking blogs like they say to do if you want high pagerank.
I know how to do all these things but I do NONE of them.
My blogroll only has blogs in it that are my friends. Problogger left 7 comments on my blog after I said he failed miserably replying to comments. The fastest way to lose my readership is by not replying to my comments.
I will not link to all high ranking, related niche blogs so I can be successful. Success to me has nothing to do with money. If you make millions blogging, it doesn’t even mean you are an expert in that area.
Some money bloggers techniques only work for them and by doing what they recommend, you may fail because of the fact there are 500,000 people doing exactly the same thing.
I am learning this beast called blogging and simply getting my name out there. Later on if I want a straight cash blog, I personally know thousands of people who will support what I do.
Thanks Tobsy! This is a great post:)
You’re definitely right about the money bloggin part. Being someone who’s able to command a traffic of 10,000s of daily visitors doesn’t mean you know what’s best for one of the 10,000s.
Thanks right back at you, Rev. What better way to call it a night than smiling about a nice comment?
(Right now it’s 3 am local time *g*)
What is important to me is interpreting and offering what my readers want from my blog and not what search engines want. I have many sites that strictly target search engines traffic. However, my personal blog is much different. My personal blog is a center for me to make friends and help people. I enjoy what I do a lot and it just happens to also be my full time job. So, all in all… things are great. Collin, I really like how you have quickly stormed in and took the bull by the horns. Keep up the great work man…it will pay off soon for you.
i agree with ya on this one. google is overdoing it .
Technically, Google doesn’t care about paid links. The type of paid links they care about is the blatant paid links that has no business on the site. If the site owner links to the right websites, than Google is happy.