PayPerPost Bloggers Get Slammed By Google

November 16th, 2007 at 9:20 pm

Google is going crazy with slamming companies but I guess some companies just deserve it

November 16th, 2007 at 9:21 pm

So how does Google know who participates? If they are identifiable, it would seem that they are, in fact disclosing their status.

I wouldn’t care whether they disclose or not. A crap blogger is a crap blogger. A good blogger that changes their opinions for pay is shortly a crap blogger. A good blogger getting paid for espousing an opinion that they already hold has zero effect on me.

In other words, PayPerPost does nothing morally wrong, morally ambiguous, or anything else. I don’t particularly care, nor do I believe, that TechCrunch isn’t compensated in some way for posts occasionally. Either TechCrunch has good writing and solid opinions, or it’s crap. The money has zero to do with it.

November 16th, 2007 at 9:30 pm

It’s quite simple. Bring value through your content and people will listen. The audience will grow. Monetization or no-monetization, if content creators spend time and publish quality work, people will notice and the opportunity will present itself. Obviously, if you’re smart enough to come up with great content , you’ll have no trouble milking it for money.

I’m very content with Google’s position on this. PayPerPost is outrageous! The consensus is completely different than earning advertising money.

November 16th, 2007 at 9:39 pm

The page rank is still showing up, PR6., i don’t think they been penalized

Nat
http://www.workersinc.com

November 16th, 2007 at 9:40 pm

OUCH! Cut off at the knees (from Izea post): “We now know from some of our friends inside of Google (thanks “bob”) that they are now looking for phrases such as PPP, PayPerPost,ReviewMe, Payu2blog, etc. in the text of your post. For that reason I would suggest refraining from using any type of this text in the body of your posts, sponsored or not. ”

Also noteworthy from the Izea post, Ted Murphy, “This is Censorship”.

Posties Forum of Horror “My pagerank just dropped to a null”: http://boards.payperpost.com/v.....mp;start=0

I wrote post #7 hoping Google would crush PPP a ways back:(http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/04/23/payperpost-acquires-zookoda/)

“In a perfect world, google would step in, crush PPP, and the last rockstartup episode would be of Ted Murphy admitting that when Jason Calacanis paid him $1000 to write calacanis cast on his forehead he really kept the money to buy new “duds” instead of donating it to the woman that he promised had promised to.”

November 16th, 2007 at 9:48 pm

PayPerPost was a terrible idea from the get-go. Take a bunch of desperate bloggers who have been promised the moon and continually let down, and teach them to whore out their own personal reputation for 20 bucks.

That sounds like exactly what it is. But, then again, that was obvious to anyone with a brain right on the face of it. Sadly, the concept of following a principled path in business and of exercising discernment regarding these “opportunities” seems to be sorely lacking in the MML (making money online) crowed.

It feels very much like the “Amway” of this generation.

November 16th, 2007 at 11:09 pm

@Alex

“What is so wrong about having another blog charge i.e. $10 to discuss another persons blog/business…..”

Nothing is wrong with that; the problem is that PPP is designed as a marketplace for buying links in order to trick Google. This is the reason why every opportunity on PPP requires a link. The system is designed to help webmasters with enough money to manipulate Google’s SERPS. So, I don’t know why people are pissed off that Google is trying to put a stop to it. Why doesn’t PPP use “nofollow” for the links?

November 16th, 2007 at 11:27 pm

Where did Google actually state that they devalued PR on people’s blogs because they were paid by PPP?

I recall a while back someone laying the blame on PPP for their drop in PR, but without ever showing proof that Google did it for that very reason. Since then, this thing has grown legs and is on all the blog-blogs.

November 17th, 2007 at 12:16 am

Google can do whatever they want, the internet is allmost owned by Google.

November 17th, 2007 at 12:21 am

….”he’s calling on Congress to intervene”

Well, OK. That does sounds like a desperation cry, and along the lines of dilutional expectations.

since they took some cash recently may be they should roll the business into another network. Iggy are you reading these posts?:)

November 17th, 2007 at 12:32 am

Google says “Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings.”

Google says “Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank.”

These “blogs” are now being viewed as link farms - and they should be.

I would be very nervous if I was a PPP “advertiser”…because they are the next target. (boy, I hope my competitors bought links through PPP!!!)

November 17th, 2007 at 2:02 am

More PPP coverage on TechCrunch. You rose to Murphy’s link-bait admirably.

November 17th, 2007 at 2:14 am

i agree with #6

November 17th, 2007 at 3:46 am

I was wondering when the hammer was coming down on PPP. I noticed a few PPP-affiliated sites I frequent lost a portion of their PR. This might be the reason.

Boy, all these programs I reviewed for participation are coming apart.

November 17th, 2007 at 5:12 am

@ Kevin Burton

Disclosure Badges are an advertiser requested item - PPP requires at a minimum sitewide disclosure in the sidebar.

Google on the other hand don’t allow you to disclose you earn money from their referral units when you encourage people to sign up for Adsense, or download Firefox with Google toolbar.

Here is an example of a paid post that gained lots of editorial links, was syndicated on top SEO sites with permission, and was on the front page of Sphinn.

http://andybeard.eu/2007/06/wo.....iches.html

That is a good 10 hours work

The advertiser agreed that I could choose my links editorially.

Duncan knows that not just PPP have been hit, because his own blog also took a hit a month ago for text links ads, a frequent sponsor of Techcrunch.

Should I count how many times Techcrunch have linked to Text Link Ads in the content?

As I have written and linked through, I personally have no problems with Techcrunch linking through to their sponsors.

It is true that PPP can warp many metrics and memetrackers, but then every time Techcrunch posts a link, the company gets 20 or more links from splogs, and those splogs now frequently have a higher pagerank than many legitimate bloggers.

If PPP bloggers sold one day of advertising for $5, and then thanked their daily advertiser, would that make it legitimate?

November 17th, 2007 at 5:17 am

@Lisa - it is called a handjob, they are manually evaluating sites.

A white bar signals that some pagerank will generally be assigned soon, when Google has recently exported a database.

It is still in flux, but no one I have read, and I am monitoring this constantly suggests that people who have been selling links or advertising should expect am increase.

Some sites who have never written a paid review with pagerank passing links have also been hit as collateral damage.

It is also possible that sites that may experience just a natural change either up or down from the export might also show white.

November 17th, 2007 at 5:56 am

Sweeeeeet!!! There is justice after all. Google have moved on from “Do No Evil” to “Punish and Destroy the Evil.”

November 17th, 2007 at 6:15 am

add them to the deadpool. This is the right call and the right place for PPP. Whether it’s lavish spending or inappropriate behavior at a company function, this company seems out of control and will fail.

November 17th, 2007 at 7:02 am

To be honest, this has been a long time coming, and when they changed their name… to me… the first thing I thought about is search engines beginning to drop PPP “writers”.

He needs to diversify… and rather quickly, otherwise, I have to agree with Duncan. Time to come up with a now IZEAl

Jon

November 17th, 2007 at 7:22 am

I don’t particularly like PPP, but Google is playing on a very slippery slope now. They constantly fight for protection from lawsuits based on their role as a service provider instead of a content engine. However, if they continue to ‘cherry-pick’ only select sites and bar competitors from appearing in their listings, then they run the serious risk of losing their safe-haven status.

November 17th, 2007 at 7:53 am

Actually I believe Google is under investigation right now for something similar to this. They’ve been sued on more than one occasion for unfair page ranking. Just because blogger does paid advertising doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with that blog. PayPerPost does require disclosure on ever paid post. There have been blogs that did not do paid posting, they simply mentioned the names of PPP, Payu2blog, Review Me, and some of the others and they were smacked with zero’s too. There have been cases where several blogs were host on 1 account and only a few of them had paid posts on them but ever blog on the account was hit with a zero because they were all on the same account.

No one has ever sued Google over page rank. Aren’t they already under investigation for something like this in the Uk. I think I rad an article about that yesterday and its not the first time they’ve been investigated either.

November 17th, 2007 at 8:23 am

@Duncan or Michael
What about your sponsor Textlinkads? What do you predict for them?

November 17th, 2007 at 9:04 am

May as well slam them, only an idiot would do this.

November 17th, 2007 at 9:24 am

@Duncan
I would like to share some of my thoughts on this subject.

1. Competitive Editorial Censorship
My call to write to Google and your congressmen is not about Page Rank, it is about the monopolistic stranglehold the company now has over the worlds of both online advertising and search. You fail to mention in your post the antitrust issues surrounding the company and the current investigation by the EU. Google is growing too powerful. I am all for capitalism and free markets, but Google has become what is arguably a public utility and different standards should apply.

Google is both manually and systematically filtering out editorial (not just sponsored posts) that mention the name PayPerPost, ReviewMe and many of our competitors. An employee of PayPerPost who has never done a sponsored post or accepted a paid link has been hit by this attack because he frequently mentions our name.

Where does it stop Duncan? Should Google have free rein to squash anyone who comes out in support of a competitive product they deem unacceptable?

2. Search Results
Google claims that the stance on sponsored posts and paid links is all about search relevance. Really? Go ahead and type “text link ads” into Google and see what comes up. Not only does TLA, the biggest player in the space not come up on the first page (try page 6), TechCrunch and Matt Cutts come up before TLA! How is that search relevance?

Yet, Google is more than happy to let TLA pay for the top spot in paid search. They have no problem with TLA, as long as they are paying the Google toll at a couple of bucks a click.

If you think this is about search relevance you are mistaken. This is about protecting ad revenue plain and simple. Google is attempting to box out the competition any way they can. It’s all about money.

This is like the post office delivering the mail for Fedex to bike messenger service because Fedex is a threat to revenue.

3. It isn’t just PayPerPost
Google has gone after many bloggers using a variety of sponsored services as well as using nothing at all. It didn’t hit all of our bloggers by any means and isn’t limited to us. Funny how you fail to mention TLA in a negative light on TC. I wonder if that has anything to do with them being a TC sponsor?

4. Page Rank is Useless
PR has nothing to do with the quality or traffic of a site. There are straight up splogs that do nothing other than republish TC content that have a decent PR.

If a blog’s PR drops from 6 to 3 does it mean it has less traffic and influence? No. Conversely if it gains does it mean it has more traffic? No. What the heck does it mean then? Nothing. It means nothing. Page Rank fluctuates inconsistently with no correlation between quality, traffic or anything else.

PR is all based on Google’s self serving black box, which is again designed to protect search advertising revenue. Weighting of links and the associated organic search results must constantly change to force people to buy paid results. If a company could guarantee organic search results they wouldn’t need to pay for sponsored search results.

Unfortunately, advertisers and bloggers have come to rely on PR as a means of general site measurement over time. It has pained me for the last year and a half that we could only offer our advertisers PR and Alexa scores as a means of segmenting blogs for advertising campaigns. Compete is cool, but it doesn’t do very well with the longtail, and don’t even get me started on ComScore. I have wanted to get rid of these measurements from PayPerPost for quite some time and made an announcement at PostieCon before this PR change that we intended to do so.

We have been working for many months on a real measurement solution that would be released in concert with SocialSpark. It had to provide real data, be based on reach and influence and work for the long tail of bloggers that we serve.

The solution we have created is called RealRank. RealRank pulls actual site visitation data and compares that data against other bloggers who are participating in the program. It is not an approximation from toolbars or other ancillary data; it is installed on the blog itself. The system will reside outside of SocialSpark and PayPerPost on a separate site with open APIs and a published explanation of how RealRank is calculated. Any blogger (or site for that matter) can use the service free of charge. We have accelerated the public deployment of this service and hope to have it live to the public in the next three weeks.

Shortly thereafter we will be releasing ROIRank, which calculates return on investment for both sponsored posts and our new blog sponsorships. Together these tools will give advertisers and bloggers accurate site performance information for the first time.

5. It’s not all about links
A common misperception (propagated by TC) is that PPP is some how all about paid links. It isn’t. Not all posts even require a link and some advertisers that do require no-follow tags. It’s about getting the word out, gathering valuable user feedback, engaging in a conversation and driving traffic.

The introduction of SocialSpark underscores this concept further with mandatory, machine verifiable in-post disclosure and no-follow on all required links.

I hope that TC will follow the same path, requiring no-follow links and machine verifiable in-post disclosure.

6. The revolution continues
IZEA has had explosive growth to this point and that growth will continue independent of any decisions made by Google. The PayPerPost marketplace will set yet another record for signups and revenues this month. Pre-sale efforts for SocialSpark indicate that the interest in our new platform will eclipse that of PPP, providing even greater opportunity for the future.

The only pool we are heading for is the new pool one of our posties puts in from the money they have earned. CANNNNONBALLL!

7. How about some balance?
You guys have my cell phone number, my email, my skype and my IM. If you want to start publishing balanced stories feel free to use them.

November 17th, 2007 at 10:14 am

“punishing” ??! with intent? is that what you mean to say? doesn’t bod well for the future, cross google, you will be punished… are you sure that is what you meant?

November 17th, 2007 at 10:19 am

I run a small blog http://www.SoUrban.net and I face a very common problem, how can I make some money through my blog? Adsense is one option, but I haven’t received any money from it yet.

The next option is Pay Per Post. I think the Pay Per Post service is great; the bloggers who misuse it give Pay Per Post a bad name.

In Pay Per Post I select topics that are relevant to me and ones I can write about. I then write a post about the topic and include a disclaimer. None of my posts have been rejected for not being favorable enough. This means that I can write and include my honest opinion with a disclaimer. If you can be honest and include a disclaimer, I don’t see a problem.

Google shouldn’t punish bloggers like me and even if they did, it wouldn’t matter because their option (Adsense) isn’t a viable solution. This will weaken Google because their search results will less comprehensive and relevant.

Greg
http://www.SoUrban.net

November 17th, 2007 at 10:42 am

It’s funny how they never penalize sites that are out to game pagerank, like sites that are just littered with adsense, no relevant content but has a URL that google thinks is most relevant.. wtf? reason why they don’t penalize those sites? pretty obvious ah?

November 17th, 2007 at 11:26 am

Ted is a very smart guy, he knows what he is selling. He has to deny it publicly, because of the ethical questions, but his product is was paid links.

This is a rail road spike through the heart of the PayPerPost business model (and the other link brokers) - not because PPP bloggers are afraid of The Google - because PPP advertisers are afraid of The Google.

Like I said above - I sure do hope our competitors were buying links through PayPerPost - because the “advertisers” will be the next ones to see the penalties…and when it happens, PPP will surely die an ugly death.

November 17th, 2007 at 11:54 am

PayPerPost (or whatever it’s called) won’t have my respect until they force PER POST disclosure. I read most blogs in Google Reader, not on the page. So if there isn’t disclosure PER POST (as in “this post is sponsored by…”) then I can’t know that what I’m reading is an advertisement.

November 17th, 2007 at 1:01 pm

There have been a lot of good comparisons between what PPP is doing and traditional media/the real world. Here’s mine.

I’m left feeling that there is a place for PPP - just like there is a place for those annoying leaflets that get stuck on my windshield when I park my car in a public area. Sure I hate them and wish I could hunt down those responsible but we don’t have the lovely IP fingerprinting of the digital world. So I can’t

At least Google, the people who run the parking lot, are doing something about it. Put up a big fence so they can’t get in. Or kill the pagerank to those people feeding links to advertisers and it hurts the pagerank to the advertisers. What Google has/or hasn’t done (Note: Google has not said they’re doing anything to PPP bloggers) is try to stop unwanted spam.

At the end of the day, PPP is an old school advertising concept - spam people till they buy something - continuing to spam people in a new and annoying way.

Google is trying to make advertising better (at least in my opinion) by making it helpful. Their model is hey, let’s give people relevant services when they’re looking for them and people will pay us.

Not a bad idea if you ask me.

November 17th, 2007 at 1:40 pm

I was a PPP blogger. “Was”, as I just left that company, having my blog slapped with a PR0 (down from a 4).

Every single post had a “this is a sponsored post” text in it, along with a “sponsored post” tag, and a graphic stating the post was sponsored, and a site-wide disclosure policy.

Not every post had a link in it - but the vast majority did. I only posted my actual, honest opinions about the product or service, and only posted about opportunities I thought my readers would enjoy anyway.

So, now I have a PR0 for my effort. I have left the program, and deleted every sponsored post, and every mention of PayPerPost, from my blog. I’m hoping Google forgives me and gives me back my 4.

payperpost.com still has a PR6. Bollocks, I’m out for a walk.

November 17th, 2007 at 1:55 pm

PPP stinks but hats off to Ted for articulating Google’s Achilles heel.

November 17th, 2007 at 2:21 pm

Mark brings up the best point I’ve seen so far.

Folks. Google does not give a hoot whether you are a PayPerPost blogger or TechCrunch. If they find a way to accurately map a “paid for” link to your blog, chances are in the next 6-9 months you are going to get a PR slap.

Before you get upset about this, recognize the fact that the SERP is Google’s ball and they can do whatever they want with it. They are not beholden to help anyone get rich off of the backs of their search pages.

With that in mind, there are only two really -rationale- things for a publisher to do.

1. If you want to play in Google’s playground, follow the rules. If you think it’s a paid link, use nofollow. Simple as that. Do this and Google no longer cares that you exist, let alone get paid to post.

2. If this idea makes you upset, rely on other traffic sources. Don’t tie yourself to Google if you are going to balk every time they adjust their algorithm.

As for the ongoing PPP / TC flame war . . .

November 17th, 2007 at 4:44 pm

Google is cutting off their nose to spite their face.

They are further destroying the . . . (integrity is not quite the right word) perception of integrity that they still had.

If you can not go to Google, do a search and get close to the results you are looking for within a page or two what is the point?

You sure can’t do it in China. Google censors results and sites there.

Now, you can’t do it anywhere else either. Google censors it here now.

I do not trust Rupert Murdock to filter my news, I do not trust Lou Dobbs to shape my opinion on anything either. I sure as hell do not trust a faceless corporation like Google to tell me what has been written subjectively.

Let me figure it out. I am smart enough to identify what is important to me, what has been influenced and weight it relatively speaking (Scoble if you can’t make this distinction then you are a moron. Personally, I think you are not a moron, and that you are just grand standing. and btw they will be requiring disclosure on every article with the new system, unlike all those affiliate links, TLA links etc.)

Personally, I think disclosure is over kill. I do not want to read an article here nor in the WSJ that discloses every single connection the writer, the editor, the paper, the corporation etc has to every item, product, company, politician, and faith based movement. I’m not playing Kevin Bacon’s six degrees of separation game every time I read an article, I’m reading media.

Media is not perfect. News papers these days are terrible. CNN doesn’t even feature new, just the poignant vignette of the week on a loop. Bloggers are not journalists and never will be (some have more talent than so called real journalists). Bloggers add value not by their objective perspective, but by their subjective perspective.

People read TechCrunch in part because Michael Arrington is ’supposed’ to be plugged into silicon valley wankers. His subjective close proximity should give him a view that an objective person at 30,000 feet does not have. People used to read Robert Scoble because he was a subjective Microsoft insider. Now he is just an ex-insider with lots of inside connections. That’s all subjective.

I do not want to view a three dimensional map of every connection Scoble has to every fool at Microsoft (one of my favorite companies) when ever he writes an article. When he worked there and wrote about Microsoft, we did not demand that he post a scanned in image of his latest pay statement or employment contract. We knew that he was providing a subjective perspective, because WE are NOT morons!

Imagine that, people can read things on the internet and not believe everything they read, they can take some analysis with a grain of salt, they can question what they read, and if they really must know, they can go search the internet (through Ask maybe) and find all the relationships that they like to understand why someone would spend sooooo much time writing about ‘AdultFriendFinder.com.’

If Google has spent a fortune hiring the ’smartest’ geeks from MIT, and they are unable to determine a subjective view from an objective view in an algorithm, then that is their problem. Short Google today. If you hire the best and the brightest and the best and the brightest must have every stupid thing spelled out for them, disclaimed, footnoted, popped up with warnings, and trigger a hand that reaches out from under their laptop to give their short hairs a good tug, then maybe they are not the best and the brightest . . .

Or Google is suffering from the worst undocumented case of Group Think ever.

Separately, I think its going to be relatively funny, when Matt Cutts gets called in front of Congress to testify and has to justify every blog post he ever made and every email he ever exchanged inside Google.

I suspect the EU probably won’t be as friendly.

November 17th, 2007 at 5:52 pm

Robert Scoble:

I’ll agree to disagree with you, but would suggest that PPP bloggers or TechCrunch bloggers disclosing or not is the lesser evil compared to Google Censorship.

I might also suggest that it is inherent in the title of all bloggers that bloggers blog subjectively. Even the people that ‘do it because they love it’, ‘do it with a passion’, ‘write what they know.’

They all have a bias.

The value is in their words, not what incented them to write those words.

For What its worth, I do not value product recommendations from anyone.

I’ll do my own investigation before I buy and then suffer or benefit like every one else that has lived with the concept of Caveat Emptor for the last few millenia.

I definitely do not need more noise in the media messages I receive, coming in the form of disclosures and asterisks etc.

For that matter, even if a person were to disclose on their article or on their affiliate badge or on their YouTube video or bumper sticker or whatever, would their disclosure actually be that valuable?

If you do not trust what they write due to the lack of disclosure, then why would you trust their written disclosure?

If say, you have an A list tech blog, and take advertising money from a new start up, and you run their banner in the sidebar and forget to put the nofollow on the link, do you really care as a reader?

What if you mention the advertisers site in a general article later on and again forget to put a nofollow tag on it?

Then again, if you are writing an article about a company that happens to be a sponsor and you provide a link to their website, is the purpose of the article, the keyword on the link and everything else all very accurate.

Shouldn’t this link be followed? Isn’t putting a nofollow tag on it as Google would require, actually compromising the integrity of what the article is about, what the link is for, what the keywords in that link are for?

Should a link get more juice from say a blogger that writes puts a link on the word Microsoft and follows that linked word with the word ’sucks’ and ignore the juice from an A list blogger that just happens to take some advertising money from Microsoft?

What if you are John Kerry and you have been attacked by a bunch of PACs that did not take sponsored money, but went out and wrote a bunch of articles on their own sites and linked to a source article on say ‘Swift Boat’? Is it then wrong for John Kerry to pay for articles that link with a keyword ‘Swift Boat’ and do not use the nofollow tag, because he is trying to defend his reputation in the Google Top 10 for those keywords?

And then if Google does slap the sites that run John Kerry’s sponsored articles, hasn’t Google denied free speech, which per the Supreme Court in regards to politics is linked directly to money?

This nofollow tag concept and the penalties Google is doling out is very flawed and even more dangerous.

Following and the link juice that goes with it should not be binary. As an intelligent person, you do not look at an advertorial or even a sponsored article disclosed in print and say to yourself, this information is completely worthless. No, instead you assign it some value and say, this is something that comes from the advertiser. I need to interpret it within the context of coming from that advertiser and not completely discount it.

Google is not complaining about textual or even image disclosure. They are attempting to categorically ignore and exclude the value of links in a binary fashion and that is censorship.

That is why their actions are more evil than long tail bloggers (or Forbes for that matter) that accept some revenue streams from paid links through TLA or PPP or direct buys).

They are dismissing links that actually do have information value and meaning in favor of other links that have less merit and relate less.

November 17th, 2007 at 6:25 pm

I wonder why the topic of conversation keeps moving to being more about Google being evil than about PPP trying to game the system. Let’s be clear Google is not censoring all search.

At the end of the day, sure Google has the market leading search engine, but that certain doesn’t mean we can’t use 1 of a dozen other search engines out there. It’s not like Google’s search algorithm effects all search on the internet, only their own company’s - and isn’t that what competition is all about? If businesses don’t like it when Google modifies their algorithm, then support the use of a different search engine.

November 17th, 2007 at 7:49 pm

Brettbum: if you are taking money and you don’t disclose that financial renumeration IN THE POST THAT YOU ARE BEING PAID TO DO then it’s evil and we can’t have further discussions. Yes, that’s more evil than what Google is doing. At least to me.

November 17th, 2007 at 8:36 pm

Hey, Duncan…nice UNCOV ripoff with that doctored image (or should I say “FA