Buying Paid Links = Spamming

[George]

Google now encourages reporting paid links (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-to-report-paid-links/).

From Matt Cutts blog

Google may provide a special form for paid link reports at some point, but in the mean time, here’s a couple of ways that anyone can use to report paid links:
- Sign in to Google’s webmaster console and use the authenticated spam report form, then include the word “paidlink” (all one word) in the text area of the spam report. If you use the authenticated form, you’ll need to sign in with a Google Account, but your report will carry more weight.
- Use the unauthenticated spam report form and make sure to include the word “paidlink” (all one word) in the text area of the spam report.

[Precious]

I'm a little confused on what it means by "paid" links? Any wish to clarify? :) thanks!

[George]

Paid Link - Any link you pay for.

*I was going to insert a smartass comment here but... bleh*

[PGZ]

Google now encourages reporting paid links (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-to-report-paid-links/).

From Matt Cutts blog

This is ONLY for links that are paid for SPECIFICALLY for PR and SEO purposes. Not for traffic paid links.

For this reason I have a link tracker that tracks the hits each link gets on my site. So the link goes through a redirect 1st so it can be counted and then on to the site.

This not only helps the people that pay for the links but also for my site so Google doesnt get stupid on me. The link tracker has been VERY helpful as I can tell people what is working as far as anchor text and what isnt. There are people that have wanted to change the anchor they have and I have told them its the hottest anchor text on the site and to leave it as is. There are times I have emailed people telling them the text they have chosen isnt getting what it should in comparison to others and we together have come up with something new and the link kicks butt with traffic now.

I also posted an article about this somewhere on here but I cant find it.

[PGZ]

Matt Cutts Said,

April 14, 2007 @ 4:41 pm

Ash, there’s absolutely no problem with selling links for traffic (as opposed to PageRank). At http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/hidden-links/ I mention a couple ways to sell links that Google would have no problem with.

Aaron Nimocks, I believe AdBrite constructs their links with JavaScript so that links are being sold for traffic, not to affect search engines. Things like JavaScript, the nofollow attribute (or meta tag), or doing a link through a redirect that is robots.txt’ed out would be techniques to sell links for visitors/traffic, as opposed to trying to influence search engine rankings.

Justice McCay, these spam reports won’t directly cause a site to go down. We’re going to use these external reports to test out some new techniques.

JohnMu, we’re looking to collect data for a new approach or two that we’re exploring, so I’m happy to receive pretty clear-cut reports right now.

Chaaban, nope, definitely not an April Fool’s joke. :) We’ve got a lot of data within Google already, but I wanted to put out a call for external reports to widen the set of data that we can test on.

Andy Beal and Michael VanDeMar, in the old days some people objected to the idea of a spam report form altogether. Over time, the spam report form became less controversial as people grew more comfortable with the idea of reporting problems and giving feedback to a search engine. Google has often used specific keywords in the past to let people report issues via the spam report form.

[NYCBORN]

I guess this forces the rel="nofollow" on links that are paid for?

[minnseoelite]

I guess this forces the rel="nofollow" on links that are paid for?


Not really Google is basically cracking down on sites that sell links for PR. If you ever go to a site and they sell links look at their "advertising page" and if in the text copy they talk about how it will help increase your sites PR buy having a link on their site then don't buy.....Also if you sell links on your site and have copy like that on your link sale page its probably best to remove it and just advertise the traffic benifits.

[NYCBORN]

I thought that they didn't have a problem with Link Sales for traffic. So wouldn't one of the avenues of selling links be to use a rel="nofollow" or to just use a redirect like PGZ uses? Afterall this removes the SEO and PR value on the link which is what they seem to want to crack down on.

[Des]

ncyborn: that is the idea, infact that is exactly what they are saying/doing.

[NYCBORN]

Ok so the real question is how do you get good PR weight and SEO? From what I understand reciprocal links don't give you much value other than traffic. Only way I know of getting a one way link in msr sites is to purchase them.

This whole thing smells fishy to me. They just want to be the only authority of traffic and I'm sure this will increase Adwords sales.

[chimaera]

I guess Yahoo directory will be useless.

And text-link-ads will have to change their stance to make it all about traffic not SE rankings.

ReviewMe will bomb.


And yet, you can PAY for your site to be listed at the top of the rankings - Adwords.


Google is playing the almighty here.

[minnseoelite]

You can still get paid links from directories as they state its for a "review fee". You can also get 1 way links from msrs sites through 3 way link exchanges and chaining (a links to b links to c links to d)

[shimmeringgraphix]

How would they know the link is only being paid for for PR/SEO purposes?

[NYCBORN]

simple. you have a page on your site saying "advertise here" and the outgoing links don't have the nofollow attribute nor does it use a redirect.

[shimmeringgraphix]

Oh, right.. :/

None of my links have the nofollow attribute

[ExSlatkis]

What do you mean by no follow?

[MKInfo]

What do you mean by no follow?

By adding rel="nofollow" to a hyperlink, a page indicates that the destination of that hyperlink SHOULD NOT be afforded any additional weight or ranking by user agents which perform link analysis upon web pages (e.g. search engines).

So better for traffic links but no good if you want PR

[nsmchris]

What kills me is they are the ones who over hyped PR to begin with. SEO is a different matter. This could eventually punish those that run legitimate blogs and directories.

Chris...

[NYCBORN]

They're realizing they are creating a whole new business of text link buying that will compete with adwords. Look at Text Link Ads and other sites like it.

[DesiNet]

This is bull****. Matt is lying as usually.

[chimaera]

Hmm so you could get around this by making your link section a "Site's reviewed and approved by me" type thing.

[minnseoelite]

simple. you have a page on your site saying "advertise here" and the outgoing links don't have the nofollow attribute nor does it use a redirect.

yes but even that is not "concrete evidence" that your selling links for PR. i think G is just going to crack down on those sites that specifically state that its for PR or SEO.

I have seen hundreds of sites that when you go to their "advertise here" page they state right on the page how buying a link on their site will help increase your sites PR and rankings......This is what G is on the lookout for.

[cldnails]

It's not spamming and just because Matt says, doesn't make it in stone. If you actually take the time to read through all the comments you notice that he completely avoids the serious SEO ramifications and troubles this regulation would cause.

He's blowing rainbows up paying customers butts, that's all. I'm not saying they won't continue to make a stink over it, but stick with what your doing until you see side effects yourself, don't base it on what Matt says.

Reporting paid links...pffft, time to go around and start reporting sites that are my competitors. Where does the burden of truth lie unless they look at my bank statements? Lip service, nothing but lip service.

[sk2222]

you can buy links,
you just need to do it in proportion to the natural link you have