I am officially nofollowing All link exchanges. PLEASE READ

[George]

Google's war on Paid Links Continues

http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/015518.html
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/12/information-about-buying-and-selling.html

All together now..... 1, 2, 3... F%$#!!

OK so though they say Google’s stance on selling links is pretty clear and we’re pretty accurate at spotting them, both algorithmically and manually I'm just not gonna trust my site's ranking's to some paid link detecter algo that's supposed to detect what is OBVIOUSLY impossible to detect with 100% accuracy. Or some $40k/year employee doing manual edits.

I've seen first hand on multiple sites I own that either lost pagerank, lost rankings, or both because they have non-nofollowed links on them. So I know they're no f'ing around. They mean business.

So I'm making this announcement that if you've done link exchanges with me on any of my sites I will be nofollowing them all. It's pretty obvious that any sitewide link without a nofollow is gonna be flagged as a paid link even if in reality it's just a 3 way link exchange.

If you're smart I'd suggest you do the same..... But hey don't take my word for it. Just watch the serps fluctuate as all the deep pocket folks at the top of the serps start losing their rankings and buying more links and wondering why it's not helping.

Just another reason why the myspace game isn't for amateurs anymore IMHO.

[NYCBORN]

You nofollowing mine too? :(

Chicken :P

[NYCBORN]

No bomba for you.

[George]

In the words of Chen from Rush Hour, I'm no punk-*****! (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rush_Hour)

[steveAR]

im sure a lot of people have started to do this. keep us updated on what happens to your site once you do this. im sure there will be a change.

[RKGraphics]

two can play this game george.

i'll return the favor (even though i have no effin clue whats going on)

[NYCBORN]

If you have paid links then you should disclose with a nofollow. There's nothing wrong with having links that are not nofollow'd on your site. I don't see anywhere in Matt's post where he says that you need to nofollow all your outgoing links.

[edit]

I think if everyone were to take the stance of "all outgoing links will be nofollowed" as far as link exchanges made here for myspace sites we'd all end up losing in the end.

Paid links and link exchanges are different and should be treated as so by google. Now I'm not sure if it does but if we all nofollow'd each other I think in the end we will just sit at the bottom of the search engines hoping for some traffic.

Right? Or I could be completely wrong and nofollow is the way to go. Time to start reading the mass list of discussions :)

[minnseoelite]

thanks for at least giving a heads up

[agoldfinger]

On a link exchange google knows there's a link back and therefore gives you very little, if at all, pagerank benefit.

3-way links exchange might be a risk, as george said, it might seems as a paid link.

[minnseoelite]

google also claims to be able to detect all three way link exchanges and treats them as reciprocal. IF this is true then there is nothing to worry about but we all know google likes to blow smoke to protect their algo

[PGZ]

George you should just get an account with Linkfacts and use it as a nofollow while tracking the hits at the same time for each paid link.

[George]

I think if everyone were to take the stance of "all outgoing links will be nofollowed" as far as link exchanges made here for myspace sites we'd all end up losing in the end.

Paid links and link exchanges are different and should be treated as so by google. Now I'm not sure if it does but if we all nofollow'd each other I think in the end we will just sit at the bottom of the search engines hoping for some traffic.

Right? Or I could be completely wrong and nofollow is the way to go. Time to start reading the mass list of discussions :)
Yes and no.

I mean certainly if we ALL do this our rankings will shift. Whether that be for the better or not remains to be seen though. Matt has stated that the best thing to do if you've taken a rankings hit would be to nofollow your links and submit a reconsideration request (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35843) in webmaster tools. And I believe a lot of you have taken a hit and some may not even know that's why you lost PR or rankings.

But seriously though, read their statement (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/12/information-about-buying-and-selling.html). I don't see how they could make it any more clear that the last PR update was their initial warning and that it also wasn't the last time. They also even hint that the penaltys are going to get even "stronger".


I hear you on the paid links being different from link exchanges point and sure they "should" be treated different, but the reality is they're not. It's impossible for them to and I have given you solid proof by using my own mistake as an example. I have a site with absolutely NO paid links on it but several link exchanges. It had enough backlinks to make it a PR5 and was showing predicted PR5 everywhere I looked. Then suddenly all the predictions started showing 3 and it ended up being a 3. I also lost 2 PR5s and a 4.

So in the end.. I don't really know a nicer way to put it so I'll just say that I can't really be concerned with how it will effect "us all" when it's obviously effecting my sites.... It's a choice you have to make on your own but seriously... can you show me where they left any room for you to misinterpret what they said??

This is why I said that the myspace game is seeming to not be for amateurs anymore. There are ways to get those links to count without link exchanges or paying for links. Good SEOs and/or the people with the money to pay for a good SEO will know that.

[minnseoelite]

i agree the game is not for amateurs anymore from an SEO standpoint which is kinda funny seeing as most people in this game are amateurs or even beginners

[DLGx]

Any link that isn't nofollow can be seen as a paid link by Google, and it's happening. Sites are getting dropped from the SERP for just having outgoing links without nofollow. It's just random and a bit rare, so far.

[Benahue]

Yea, so I suppose Techcrunch will see a penalty soon. Oh, wait, no they won't because google is having sex with them. Google, you hypocritical whore!

Google was brought to prominence by the webmaster and "geek" community; now it bites the hand that feeds, and unfortunately, most people are just taking it lying down. This is just a slipperly slope. Google wants SEO dead, and this is just the beginning (or middle?). Eventually, google will have everything under their roof, so it will be impossible for anyone to do any form of SEO at all. This will happen because most people are willing to just cave in and take their ****.

It's going to be up to ASK.com to save everyone. If their algo can improve, then the "geek community" can get behind it and spread it to the masses. Just like they did with firefox and google etc. That's the only hope. That google's power corrupts them so much that eventually the community turns on them.

[n3o]

Google is greedy ... they wants everyone to use adwords instead of paid links ...

[Benahue]

OK so though they say I'm just not gonna trust my site's ranking's to some paid link detecter algo that's supposed to detect what is OBVIOUSLY impossible to detect with 100% accuracy. Or some $40k/year employee doing manual edits.

Ha, actually I heard that Matt Cutts actually does manual editing himself sometimes.

[lyzyrdgyzyrd]

How come none of my sites have been penalized for sitewide links i have all over them to CJ, Linkshare, Shareasale, and a multitude of other ad networks? I've got them plastered all over every one of my sites since 2001. The ONLY that time any of my sites have ever been penalized, interlinking between sites on same Class=C IP range was a common denominator to those sites, and those sites alone.

"The sky is falling!"

[Benahue]

Well, the sky may not be falling, but the writing is on the wall. If you're going to kill SEO, you're obviously not going to do it overnight. You kill SEO gradually, which they've been kicking into a higher gear since the creation of the no-follow tag.

[George]

How come none of my sites have been penalized for sitewide links i have all over them to CJ, Linkshare, Shareasale, and a multitude of other ad networks?
You're seriously asking why you didn't get penalized for linking to well known ad networks??

[George]

I can go to posts I made since a few years back on DP and show where I've been saying stuff like this would happen.. I've said it many times and I'll say it again... SEO is by it's very definition against Google's TOS.

Did you notice that in that post they mention several times how they love their relationship with webmasters and that they want to continue to support webmasters? Notice they were specifically careful not to say SEOs?

[lyzyrdgyzyrd]

Well it seems that the only ones who get penalized for this are those who think they are penalized for this and say that they are penalized for this. It's kinda like one of those group-shared hallucinations where the only people who saw the UFO are the ones who had eaten the cactus buttons several hours earlier.

If a site starts losing ground in SERP's, it is time to step back and take a detached view and ask yourself "what differentiates this site or page from every other site or page out there?". Or even better: "What differentiates this site or page from ANY other site or page out there?". And then determine what needs to be done to make it either better or more different than all the others.

Another thing to keep in mind is that you are using a pre-fab script, you are starting off on the wrong foot to begin with. No self-respecting or professional "SEO" would use a cookie cutter to build their website.

It is far better to put time and effort into producing good, unique content that will rank naturally without any need for "SEO techniques", than to split hairs and fry nerves by spending twice as much time and effort playing phantom cat and mouse games with an opponent (Google) who isn't playing by the same imaginary rules that every Chicken Little in the barnyard chooses to play by.

[George]

Well it seems that the only ones who get penalized for this are those who think they are penalized for this and say that they are penalized for this. It's kinda like one of those group-shared hallucinations where the only people who saw the UFO are the ones who had eaten the cactus buttons several hours earlier.
Hey I hear you on the group SEO think. It does happen.

Here's what you're missing though..... In all the past SEO rumors they were just that. Rumors and hearsay with no real basis. Well... if you actually read the google blog post I linked to, they state flat out that they did it and plan to in the future..... It's hilarious the one time Google actually comes out and makes a statement and says what they mean and state exactly what happened people are trying to put it down as misinformation and hearsay....... amazing.

Please do not confuse me for an amateur webmaster with statements about me using a prefab script. It not only screams that you don't know what you're talking about but it puts me in that same category.......... translation... there are a million vbulletin forums, phpBB forums, wordpress blogs etc that use the same script and rank top in the SERPS for tough terms. So you'll be needing to find another theory yourself there because it looks like you're the one spouting flawed nonsense and trying to *** it off as if you have SEO knowledge, no?
It is far better to put time and effort into producing good, unique content that will rank naturally without any need for "SEO techniques", than to split hairs and fry nerves by spending twice as much time and effort playing phantom cat and mouse games with an opponent (Google) who isn't playing by the same imaginary rules that every Chicken Little in the barnyard chooses to play by.Totally agree and couldn't have said it better myself. Hence my decision to stop playing cat and mouse and follow the rules they've explicitly laid out for us (nofollow your sitewide external links) while building quality content on my myspace sites like I've been doing on my other sites (hint myspace isn't even close to my most successful niche)

[lyzyrdgyzyrd]

as if you have SEO knowledge

I like to think that I don't "need" to have any SEO knowledge. The Google SERP's are testament to that fact. :)

George my rant about the prefab scripts etc was not directed at you personally, but at the constant deluge of crybaby tears that has been so prevalent around here in relation to SE ranking and Adsense payout issues.

And when you offer a very simple solution that would take 5 minutes of consideration and effort to fix, the crybabies generally prefer to wallow in their own misery instead of applying their time and energy to something constructive and productive. The *****ing and moaning continues ad-infinitum. It really is sad and it gets tiring after a while.

[George]

Oh then I apologize for taking it as so since I obviously took it as being directed at me.

And yeah whining and not offering a solution that people can either accept or reject is really counter productive and urks me to the max.

[Ad disengaged]

Google has become increasingly picky with regard to linking and they are issuing more penalties than ever, and these penalties tend to be very hard if not impossible to reverse. Once googls nails your site you're screwed. Seen it happen many times to successful sites.

[lyzyrdgyzyrd]

Google is not the be-all and end-all source of web traffic. For freebie traffic, yes, in most cases. But Google may only be a small piece of the traffic pie to many who would rather depend on word-of-mouth and paid advertising than on the whim and weather of a fickle search engine.

If you can't come to grips with the way Google does things, you should open up your eyes and your mind to other sources of web traffic. There is a whole big world out there. Google can only be your master if you want it to be.

[minnseoelite]

you should open up your eyes and your mind to other sources of web traffic. There is a whole big world out there. Google can only be your master if you want it to be.

I agree, I'm all for trying to gain better rankings and more traffic from Google but just like with the advertising you use to generate income on your site(s) you need to be diverse and not waist 100% of your time chasing an opponent that is not playing fair. When I'm not updating my sites or coding I usually spend 1/3 of my time making adjustments and doing things to improve my rankings and 2/3 of my time seeking out traffic from other sources which I have more control over.

[Ad disengaged]

Good rankings are crutial for a site's success in most cases. In 95% of the time when the ranings fall, so does the traffic and it doesn't recover unless the rankings are restored. Viral marketing is a vague buzzword but what does it mean? I dunno.

[Vort]

anybody with any common sense and decent knowledge of graph theory can easily implement an algorithm to detect reciprocal links and three ways (to some degree) with 100% accuracy -- hence one could come to the conclusion that the big G knows precisely what's a link exchange and what's not (ie. a paid link or just a normal link)

so don't go nofollow-ing your link exchanges -- think about it a bit and put yourself in google's shoes for a moment:

1. they can make the difference between a link exchange (2 and 3-ways to some extent) and a paid/normal link
2. how do you think they're going to accurately discern between what's a paid link and what's not? (it's going to be moderated to some extent and it's going to fall under an algorithm that uses the g's index to associate ''selling'', ''paid'', ''textlinkads'' with your website somehow) ...
3. just like the PR cut a couple of days back ... people went berserk about it for no reason ... think about it ... google's not out to destroy your rankings ... they're just trying to keep their results clean ... the damage (if any???) will be insignificant

just chill ppl :)

[Ad disengaged]

3. just like the PR cut a couple of days back ... people went berserk about it for no reason ... think about it ... google's not out to destroy your rankings ... they're just trying to keep their results clean ... the damage (if any???) will be insignificant

just chill ppl :)

look what happend to johnchow.com completely blocked. Doesn't even rank for its own name. When google cracks down on a site the damage can be anything but 'insignifigant'.

[minnseoelite]

yeah but i doubt google is going to go cracking down and dropping 3/4 of its index just cause these sites exchanged links. google can tell the difference between a paid and reciprocal link even a noob webmaster can tell.

[Marty]

look what happend to johnchow.com completely blocked. Doesn't even rank for its own name. When google cracks down on a site the damage can be anything but 'insignifigant'.Mad sh*t.

Watch out, googles out! Muahaha!

[bubbles]

i think i will do this too

[George]

anybody with any common sense and decent knowledge of graph theory can easily implement an algorithm to detect reciprocal links and three ways (to some degree) with 100% accuracyI LOL'ed at the irony/ridiculousness of that when I read it. Hey bro, I 100% agree with you... (to some degree) ROFL

-- hence one could come to the conclusion that the big G knows precisely what's a link exchange and what's not (ie. a paid link or just a normal link)

so don't go nofollow-ing your link exchanges -- think about it a bit and put yourself in google's shoes for a moment:

1. they can make the difference between a link exchange (2 and 3-ways to some extent) and a paid/normal link
2. how do you think they're going to accurately discern between what's a paid link and what's not? (it's going to be moderated to some extent and it's going to fall under an algorithm that uses the g's index to associate ''selling'', ''paid'', ''textlinkads'' with your website somehow) ...
3. just like the PR cut a couple of days back ... people went berserk about it for no reason ... think about it ... google's not out to destroy your rankings ... they're just trying to keep their results clean ... the damage (if any???) will be insignificant

just chill ppl :)
Well that's just fantastic..... except they themselves have stated publicly in multiple venues and mediums that they cannot detect whether a link is paid or not with 100% accuracy.....

So let me get this straight.... Even though they've said they can't detect paid links with 100% accuracy, you're trying to argue that they can detect paid links with 100% accuracy? You're a genius! :detective:

[steveAR]

just do whats you think is best for your site and thats IT!

[Benahue]

I wonder if one of the ways that they detect paid links is to search people's gmail accounts for phrases like "want to buy a link," "pay for a link" etc.

They could probably weed out some sites that way. Ha, that would be a funny question to ask on Matt Cutt's blog.

[offthedome]

I seriously think the reason they're doing this is to get the dominant spot in link purchases (through adsense and adwords)

[john_doe]

I think if everyone were to take the stance of "all outgoing links will be nofollowed" as far as link exchanges made here for myspace sites we'd all end up losing in the end.

Paid links and link exchanges are different and should be treated as so by google. Now I'm not sure if it does but if we all nofollow'd each other I think in the end we will just sit at the bottom of the search engines hoping for some traffic.

Right? Or I could be completely wrong and nofollow is the way to go. Time to start reading the mass list of discussions :)

I agree with this post. Link exchanges with relevant sites should be fine. Also look at all the top ranking sites for myspace layouts. The top sites have tons of link exchanges.

Without even to much digging you can find sites that have advertise here all over that have been reduced to PR0 from PR5 or higher. Other sites like some of the top sites with tons of link exchanges still have PR and rank very well. I think that speaks for itself. I would like to see what would happen to the serps if everyone nofollowed all their links since links from myspace almost do not count anymore.

[George]

I agree with this post. Link exchanges with relevant sites should be fine. Also look at all the top ranking sites for myspace layouts. The top sites have tons of link exchanges.
That's true but they all got those rankings before google started cracking down. And as they've stated, this is only the beginning.

And if they are direct link exchanges with an obvious reciprocal link on the other site then it's obvious it's not paid. But who knows, they could start penalizing for that too tomorrow.

Between analytics and adsense google has access to far too much data about our sites and how they earn and gain traffic :no:

[john_doe]

That is also true. But so is googles recent crackdown on all this. Also has anyone seen the coop cracked down on? That is the easiest of all to spot.

[Ad disengaged]

natural linking is the way to go. If you have 30+link exchanges it is gonna look fishy.

[Benahue]

Between analytics and adsense google has access to far too much data about our sites and how they earn and gain traffic :no:
That's why I try to avoid using webmaster tools. Don't want google spying on me, which is one of the great benefits google gets by people using analytics etc.