New York-based advertising firm MediaWhiz, never one to worry about gray areas when it comes to advertising, has launched a new product today called InLinks.
It’s fairly straightforward – advertisers who want their sites associated with specific keywords simply buy ads. Links to those sites are then added to publishers sites whenever those words pop up in content. These aren’t ghost links like Kontera and others include in content – they’re full blown links without any notation (like a nofollow) that they are advertisements meant primarily for SEO juice.
Content sites are paid a flat rate per month per ad sold. I’m trying to get more details now from the company, but there is more on this here and here.
Update: Google’s Matt Cutts emails:
Google has been very clear that selling such links that pass PageRank is a violation of our quality guidelines. Other search engines have said similar things. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has also given unambiguous guidance on this subject in the recent PDF at http://www.ftc.gov/os/2008/03/P064101tech.pdf where they said “Consumers who endorse and recommend products on their blogs or other sites for consideration should do so within the boundaries set forth in the FTC Guides Concerning Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising and the FTC’s guidance on word of mouth marketing,” as well as “To date, in response to this concern, the FTC has advised that search engines need to disclose clearly and conspicuously if the ranking or other presentation of search results is a function of paid placement, and, similarly, that consumers who are paid to engage in word-of-mouth marketing must disclose that fact to recipients of their messages.”
Oh, but you say your blog isn’t in the U.S.? Maybe it’s in the UK? Then you’ll be interested in
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2008/uksi_20081277_en_5#pt11 which covers unfair trade practices and specifically mentions “Using editorial content in the media to promote a product where a trader has paid for the promotion without making that clear in the content or by images or sounds clearly identifiable by the consumer (advertorial).”But you’re not in the UK? I believe many of the unfair commercial practices directives apply through Europe, e.g. http://ec.europa.eu/consumers/rights/index_en.htm to prohibit misleading or aggressive marketing.
The reality is that accepting money to link to/promote/market for a product without disclosing that fact is a very high-risk behavior, in my opinion.
This kind of stuff has been going on in the SEO industry for a long time Michael. This is just a mass market play.
I am curious as to whether Inlinks is actually liking all this publicity.
While their name is being thrown around on all the tech blogs on the web, EVERY one of these posts is focusing on the fact that they could be hard for google to detect and NOT on whether they are actually a good service.
This is basically tantamount to daring google to thwart them.
They say any publicity is good publicity. But can the fact that every one of these blog posts seems to end with a cautionary warning against using them, be any good for Inlinks?
Notice Michael said “hard”, not “impossible”.
Lazy link building like this isn’t worth your time or money. People should focus on developing useful content.
Agreed — organic links from creating valuable content are infinitely better in the long-term.
I look at this almost as if it is a virus. Luckily I just got my free antivirus program from http://www.the-...scount-site.com for free. In 30 days I might have to pay or I just download another 30 days worth of protection…
Fuck off spammer.
I though he was being ironic. Maybe not.
I thought he was too, except he used a real website. If he was trying to be funny he should have used something ludicrous and fake.
LMAO…Fuck of Spammer!!
Meh. This won’t last long. How long before somebody at Google covertly signs up and sniffs out all the sites in the network?
If MediaWhiz is smart, advertisers won’t be given an itemized bill with where their links are being placed. There’s a trust factor involved, otherwise you are right, this thing would be gone in a month.
don’t you think google could find the newly created links pretty easily even if this information wasn’t specifically given to them?
I agree with Michael. All Google would need to do is pay for certain terms that are commonly used and link the advertising to page X. Then they could just look for sites linking to page X on those paid for terms and flag them.
In fact Dan, they cant do that
“MEMBERSHIP RESTRICTIONS.
Individuals that are in anyway affiliated with, agents of, working for, or employed by any internet search engine organization may not register to use this site. ”
https://www.inl...faq/agreement/?
@JM Are you joking? I’m sure you’re right and Google with their wealth of resources won’t be able to figure out how to create an alias or non-’internet search engine organization’ name/account….
Even Larry Page can create a fake account, but it would be “Evil” and could lead to some legal troubles.
They’ve given the option for this to featured advertisers of Text Link Ads for over a year now, but as mentioned, this is the first mass market play.
I look at it a different way – Google has provided the platform but also limits the players. I think it’s a good idea to allow some innovation – even here – with paid links and advertising.
And look, at the end of the day, we can use Google’s argument against them … if the new service is helping the searcher – let it be.
Well, I think Google will end up penalizing all the sites which have this running.
I am pretty sure that my blog got penalized because I was running Kontera.
Kontera is javascript-based; meaning not hard-coded. Google wouldn’t have punished you for using them.
Just to agree with Steve, if paid links don’t affect search engine rankings (e.g. don’t pass PageRank), then they don’t violate our search engine quality guidelines. Vaibhav, I’m inclined to think it was posts such as http://web.arch...-options-first/ that would have done it, and that it had nothing to do with Kontera.
Oh excellent, just signed up and laid $500 down for both my competitors bargain! Might drop $100 worth of links on that Matt Cutts blog too, it’s just “puffery”.
IMHO google has lost the page rank battle. I look at successful blogs with a PR1 with growing readership, lots of comments, and lots of traffic, PR is essentially irrelevant if it’s not tied to traffic.
be careful not to confuse toolbar PageRank (TBPR) with PageRank as a factor in Google’s algorithm.
in their algo, they publicly state that PageRank is just one of over 200 signals that they consider when ranking results.
TBPR is primarily used by Google as a lever to manipulate / manage the link selling marketplace. i’ve seen plenty of extremely reputable sites get their TBPR reduced for selling links, yest still maintain rankings and traffic. Search Engine Roundtable was hit, and reported on the outcomes here: http://www.sero...ves/015408.html
There’s still a serious problem with a growing amount of links (esp. on facebook and twitter) being pushed in nofollow or tinyurled form. I haven’t seen any news on how Google is dealing with this.
Google has probably already sent a robot to the past to kill the creator of Media Whiz. By tomorrow this won’t exist.
Here there be tygers
Scott – I just spit out my tea laughing at that comment – thanks!
Unfortunately, Media Whiz has already sent back a slightly inferior robot to thwart the efforts of Google’s robot. Through cunning and luck, Media Whiz Conner will survive to lead resistance when Google becomes self-aware in 2011.
The hand of Google will eventually find and penalize. This might not be for a few weeks or months, but how hard is it for the big G to sign up and have access to a handful of sites. Create good content, create worthly pr and links will come.
Personally, I don’t think InLinks can hide forever. Sooner or later, Google will find a way to detect paid/sold links placed by those who registered for InLinks. They’re pretty smart, that’s why Google is the number one Dot Com company in the World Wide Web.
Just do it the right way, this kind of stuff just allows spam / sites to rank high – Go to http://www.bump...h_optimization/ and start optimizing your site the right way. Put in the time and effort, and the payback is always there. Imagine paying for 1000 links = 10.000 $ … no thanks.
Ok, this is evil and a good idea for advertising. Maybe Google should try a variation for Youtube or its’ other non revenue(profit) producing sites.
Google has been very clear that selling such links that pass PageRank is a violation of our quality guidelines. Other search engines have said similar things. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has also given unambiguous guidance on this subject in the recent PDF at http://www.ftc....P064101tech.pdf where they said “Consumers who endorse and recommend products on their blogs or other sites for consideration should do so within the boundaries set forth in the FTC Guides Concerning Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising and the FTC’s guidance on word of mouth marketing,” as well as “To date, in response to this concern, the FTC has advised that search engines need to disclose clearly and conspicuously if the ranking or other presentation of search results is a function of paid placement, and, similarly, that consumers who are paid to engage in word-of-mouth marketing must disclose that fact to recipients of their
messages.”
Oh, but you say your blog isn’t in the U.S.? Maybe it’s in the UK? Then you’ll be interested in http://www.opsi...81277_en_5#pt11 which covers unfair trade practices and specifically mentions “Using editorial content in the media to promote a product where a trader has paid for the promotion without making that clear in the content or by images or sounds clearly identifiable by the consumer (advertorial).”
But you’re not in the UK? I believe many of the unfair commercial practices directives apply through Europe, e.g. http://ec.europ...ts/index_en.htm to prohibit misleading or aggressive marketing.
The reality is that accepting money to link to/promote/market for a product without disclosing that fact is a very high-risk behavior, in my opinion.
So, paid links to outwit Google are product recommendations or word of mouth marketing to you? Interesting view.
its all easy, at the bottom *All links to external sites hve been paid for”
Whilst I don’t attend SEO conferences, haven’t both Yahoo and Microsoft confirmed (again) that they look on the relevancy and quality of links rather than their paid status, as to whether they count for search results?
They also don’t have user visible manual penalties affecting the reputation and “authority” of a website if a site is selling links.
Also most of the European recent legislation regarding word of mouth marketing is purely directed at business to consumer, rather than business to business.
Interestingly leaving a comment on a blog as a company representitive, without stating that you represent the company on a site that is business to consumer might be an infringement.
If you want to read more about the UK consumer protection act, including how it might affect affiliate marketing, Google’s own CPA ads, blog commenting etc I covered it back in June.
http://andybear...umer-protection
The funny thing is that Google at the same conference (was it SMX?) stated that affiliate links don’t need a nofollow – affiliate links are WOMM in many situations, so surely they should have the same requirements for both human and machine disclosure?
I must admit I am not a huge fan of paid links – I did some paid reviews in the past that my readers found valuable enough to link to, typically 3000 word reviews, but suffered the same fate as people writing junk Oct 2007.
Matt, I would love for you to point to a definitive reference from Yahoo and Microsoft stating that paid links must be nofollow or face massive penalties.
It is actually quite funny – a week ago I was involved in a large product launch, and the number one result for the product name wasn’t the product itself, but an affiliate domain redirecting to the product home page. That link on the Google SERPs didn’t have any disclosure.
“The reality is that accepting money to link to/promote/market for a product without disclosing that fact is a very high-risk behavior, in my opinion.”
It’d be great if we could take the opinion of someone else as reality – like a judge. Has this “unambiguous guidance” delivered by the FTC led to actual penalties as of yet?
Is there any case law?
Mike, much of the “paid link” argument began as argument over “paid posts” and the Washington Post got the FTC’s opinion on such posts: http://www.wash...6121101389.html . The WA Post’s headline was “FTC Moves to Unmask Word-of-Mouth Marketing –
Endorser Must Disclose Link to Seller” and quoted Mary Engle from the FTC:
“The petition to us did raise a question about compliance with the FTC act,” said Mary K. Engle, FTC associate director for advertising practices. “We wanted to make clear . . . if you’re being paid, you should disclose that.”
(The ellipses were in the original article.)
I guess I just find it hard to see this differently than, say, product placement in a television show.
The reason Jack Bauer is holding that Coke can might be clear to Coke and Fox Entertainment, but is it clear to the viewer?
What about in cases where a blogger decides they really like a product and would like to endorse it on their blog? They set out to write a product review, and they figure they may as well sign up for the affiliate program while they’re at it. They aren’t paid to do this post – they’re paid once the link is clicked and someone buys the product.
@Matt Cutts
“The reality is that accepting money to link …without disclosing that fact is a very high-risk behavior”
It is very frustrating to read these statements and often see textbook cases of abuse get ignored by the QA team at Google. My competitors blatantly are buying links from high PR .org and journals. I have reported these sites (both buyer and seller) using Webmaster Tools and Google still fails to take any noticeable action.
Seeing no action on the part of Google makes my job much harder of convincing management to stick to white-hat only SEO techniques.
The trick is that there are literally millions of offenses to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines going on every day. They don’t now, nor will they ever, get to them all.
There’s a risk involves with paid links as an advertiser – the risk of losing the value of that investment. If you’re a paid link publisher, you might lose your PageRank (and what could be a main revenue stream in Google traffic).
If you want to see how many sites still rank with obvious spammy or paid links, try SEOmoz’s Linkscape (www.seomoz.org/linkscape). All I’ve seen in using this tool are link methods that violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines yet go unpenalized.
It seems to me staying under the radar with paid links is still possible and advisable and will be for the foreseeable future.
No one should have a right to say what links you put on your site. How hypocritical of Google – paid links are bad? So what’s AdSense? Paid links – same as Cutts describes TLA and InLinks.
This is another case of Google penalizing paid links to hurt their competitors and help AdSense own the monopoly on paid links.
And if your site isn’t editorial and just straight unbiased news, does it really matter?
omg, your so stupid I won’t even try to explain to you why you are so obviously wrong
Tony,
Paid text links are bad because they unfairly raise search engine placement, as opposed to regular organic growth in SEO. This hurts the very premise of search engines whose main purpose is to deliver results based on proper organic growth, not via shady practices like buying links.
Adsense (or any other contextual advertising platform) has nothing to do with SEO. They don’t raise/lower your search engine standings in any way.
If your argument is that google is cracking on these guys so they can have a monopoly on ad serving, why isn’t Google cracking down on Adbrite and other competitors?
Because they have noting to do with SEO.
So when a company buys online ads to drive traffic, or spends thousands of dollars to great internet buzz which increases links, or pays for press releases, or hires a PR firm for online advertising, or spends money to create widgets or other link bait to promote their brand, that is ok?
All of it contributes to increased brand awareness and links but it also all costs money so does that mean those companies bought link popularity?
The idea that a company isn’t allowed to market their product or service by ANY means is ridiculous. Some people say that it is an unfair SEO advantage. Listen…. THERE IS ALREADY AND UNFAIR ADVANTAGE. There are SEO Experts that work for big companies that have huge budgets dedicated to SEO. They can afford to write more content. They can afford to build more tools to attract more links. They can afford to create media to drive links. They are already “paying” for links, just indirectly. And ALL of that is considered fair game.
These are Google’s stupid rules. It isn’t law. We all play by these rules because big brother Google has us by the balls and floods us with FUD. They are leveraging their power over our businesses and forcing webmasters to comply.
This is a problem with all companies that get this large. Hopefully they don’t have any rough times because I’m sure they will have their hand out for a taxpayer bailout since they are “too big to fail”.
Too extreme? hmmm Think about how many businesses would go under if Google shut down. There are countless people that depend on Adsense or their Organic rankings for their company’s success. Don’t think for one moment that Google does know this and uses this to bend all of us to their will.
Let’s stop the darn hypocrisy already. Google created this mess. They created the algorithm that weighted link popularity and Page Rank so heavily. They created the entire sub-culture of link buying. Now that they can’t control the monster they created, and want us to police ourselves.
Maybe Google should be thinking of better ways to determine search relevancy if all of their PHDs can’t figure it out. They had better get their act together because they’re losing their innovative edge and becoming obsolete. Many people already predict the “next Google” to emerge in the next few years.
“Too extreme? hmmm Think about how many businesses would go under if Google shut down. There are countless people that depend on Adsense or their Organic rankings for their company’s success. Don’t think for one moment that Google does know this and uses this to bend all of us to their will.”
I actually don’t think many businesses would go under if Google shut down because consumers would just use their competitors to search for things on the Internet. People would use Live and Yahoo and companies would advertise there or get traffic from their SERPs instead…. You don’t need adsense; you can use bidvertiser etc. if you MUST have a PPC revenue stream on your site.
@Andy Beard, Yahoo has actually publicly stated that they do not care if a link is paid for if it provides value to the end user. LET ME REPEAT THAT (Joe Biden moment). Yahoo has publicly stated that they do not care if a link is paid for and passes link juice if it provides value to the end user. They said they don’t judge links based on whether or not they are paid for or not paid for, they look at the links and judge them based on whether the link is relevant and helps the end user.
Yahoo is philosophically sound in its approach. Matt, why do you disagree with Yahoo’s philosophy?
Tony,
you are right in that noone has a right to say what links to put on your website.
Just like noone has a right to tell Google how to rank your website in their search results.
Bottomline – try to stay compliant with google’s TOS and optimise the available ad networks to best suit your needs.
Maybe their exit strategy is a Google buyout. The money will be too good. But they will have to get big enough for Google to care. This type of link could massively damage PR… The trick is to create landing pages that are similar in content to the originating pages – it would be hard to say the link is not relevant.
California-based advertising firm Google, never one to worry about gray areas when it comes to advertising, has launched a new product today called google.
Tony K, AdSense doesn’t pass PageRank or affect search engines (and neither does buying advertising from Yahoo, Microsoft, etc.) and the ads are clearly disclosed, so it’s a completely different situation. I agree that as far as Google is concerned, you always have the right to decide what to put on your website. However, Google has the corresponding right to decide how to rank websites in our index.
@Matt Cutts.
I am sorry to say but the Adsense ads are NOT always disclosed (far less CLEARLY). I have seen Adsense ads on blogs which nowhere mentioned the usual ‘Ads by Google’. The only way I knew was by taking the mouse pointer over to them and notice the Google Syndication link in the status bar. And since they are purely text-based, readers can think they were part of the post.
And I just went to the Adwors Terms and Conditions and did a full page search for the following words but couldn’t find anything related to disclosing the Adsense Ads:
Here are the words I searched for:
-FTC
-Federal Trade Commission
-Disclose
-disclos (so that every disclos* would be visible).
Btw, Phillip (Blogoscoped) and Aaron Wall have sometimes mentioned these in their posts too.
Sounds like InLinks is really thinking about their business model and customer networks. However, it’s not going to matter when the technology is algorithmically defeated by Google.
There are lots of shortcuts to get ahead. You can be an insider trader in the stock market, athletes can take performance enhancing drugs, and yes, you can try to game Google. In any situation, a few get away with it, but most get caught and give it all back (and then some). If success is what you want, you’re far better off just taking a long view and earning it the old fashioned way.
Finally, it’s not just Google that doesn’t want you gaming the results. It’s all of their customers, which is most of the users on the web. If your page isn’t naturally up at the top of the rankings, it probably doesn’t deserve to be.
IMO the response from Google was pretty immature. “Don’t do it because a bunch of international regulatory frameworks, while acknowledging that it’s not illegal, suggest it’s not nice.”
Div, there are a whole bunch of reasons not to take money to promote something in your editorial content without adequate disclosure. I wanted to list a few of the other folks saying that, so people wouldn’t just take it as Google being the only company or group saying this.
discloser is easy… footer,
“please note: I needed to get paid for the time it takes to write these blog posts, so being the whore for money I am, I decided to partner with an advertising firm that automaticly links keywords in my text to matching websites. I don’t personally endorse any of the external links on my site…. I just needed the money”
Solved, full discloser…
WTF is wrong with you Matt? Go back to your basement and code a virtual girlfriend in Python. The magazines and newspapers have done this for YEARS as well as TV. Did you think that because the Internet is “new media” that it would be any different? Do you think Google has the right to be the governing body over online morality? Wake the fuck up. Moron.
We live in interesting times.
Impossible to keep up with everything from the search engines…..
I have to agree with the mike with his comment about lazy link building.
It’s far better, more ethical, and not a lot harder to do it yourself, not to mention cheaper.
Spend some time doing it yourself if the way to go in my opinion.
Cheers
I have to agree that creative content that is of interest is the way to go. When we posted a story about John McCain campaign connection to a Texas based domain squatter/pornographer we got bombarded with traffic. It turned into 50 links (for a bit) and it’s continued.
I will say that there seems to be a lot of big companies who do countless 301 re-directs who are spending millions every month on paid search and always seem to stay at the top of the big G. Sometimes that doesn’t seem too fair.
http://www.singlepill.com
Sometimes I have to agree, but your blog would do allot better if you posted more than a couple times a week.
If this system creates relevant links, in a contextual manner that fits the overall idea of the site and creates a link that ends up on a contextually relevant site then I don’t see how from an algorthmic point of view how it could be stopped.
@jeff bently “how long before somebody at Google covertly signs up and sniffs out all the sites in the network?”
If the site passes the algorithmic test, and is editorially sound I think it is wrong of Google to punish site owners through such an arguably un-ethical method.
The basic idea of Google is to provide relevant content in their results: If these links are contextually sound and are EDITORIALLY APPROVED BY THE SITE OWNER, then how does that diminish search quality?
“The basic idea of Google is to provide relevant content in their results: If these links are contextually sound and are EDITORIALLY APPROVED BY THE SITE OWNER, then how does that diminish search quality?”
YOU ARE SO RIGHT!!!!
Another very short lived attempt to sell links that will results in serious collateral damage to the buyers and the sellers while creating a minor inconvenience for Google. While there is definitely still some buying and selling of links going on, the penalties are fairly harsh when you get caught on either side of the equation.
Stop worrying about gaming the system and playing the referee! Start playing the game with some good content, some creative link building strategies and good old fashion networking.
Is it a paid link just because I bought a few rounds at pubcon?
There was a time when every site owner has the right to chouse what to put on his site ( as long as its legal ), and that time has never gone.
So whats the problem with this linking system?
It may not be good for your listings in google, but the Internet is bigger than google.
I think it’s a good idea that can make flow some money.
May be a piece of the pie less for some one else but that’s competition, and competition is what makes the IT world go forward.
You may like it or not, and if you don’t, try to make your self better, not to make the others desist of their ideas.
Salu2:
JM
Hard for Google to detect??
Not really — because they will find you sooner than later and it doesn’t really matter when and they will ban in a heartbeat for good.
Unfortunately, this whole concept is probably geared towards newbies/start ups… It isn’t the best way to get results, but it is a way nonetheless , very risky way at that.
Best,
Mike
http://www.wannadevelop.com/
We all like Google but they’re not God.
Link-buying happens all the time. You’d be very surprised if you found out all the sites you use that have bought a link here and there. And many of them are still getting tons of Google SEO love.
I am saddened to see that Matt Cutts continues to deliberately mislead people regarding the United States government’s stance on links. The United States government clearly and explicitly disclaims all links on its Web sites as endorsements and the circular he refers to in no way associates links with endorsements.
The Federal Trade Commission is talking about ENDORSEMENTS — explicit recommendations, not links.
Whether Google has a hissy fit over people selling links is a totally different and completely irrelevant issue.
Google is not the Web police, nor even the Web Congress. Does does not have the right, the authority, or the moral responsibility to dictate to anyone what they can do with their Web sites.
People who want to sell links are legally, morally, and ethically free to do so. If they want to sell endorsements, they need to disclaim those endorsements, but links are NOT endorsements.
Can I get an AMEN!!
Google is so fundamental to so many businesses, that I believe it is almost becoming too influential. They believe they know best and that is the single biggest problem with Google.
They are not the ethical voice of the web.
The government should split Google into
Goo.com and gle.com
Very well put, Michael.
Even in scholarly papers (from where the concept of link-endorsements seems to have come), a citation may NOT always be an endorsement. Scholars may cite a paper to disagree with that or to prove it wrong.
Here’s the Merriam Webster def. of endorsements which I don’t think fits even citations=endorsements, far less links=endorsements.
-definition-
endorsement: to approve openly ; especially : to express support or approval of publicly and definitely
“Consumers who endorse and recommend products on their blogs or other sites for consideration should do so within the boundaries set forth in the FTC Guides Concerning Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising”
Wow I had no idea the FTC had guidelines for how I am supposed to jump on my blog and rave about stuff I like.
Google should be able to automatically spot and filter InLink participants. Their algorithms look at several criteria including historical linking patterns, topical focus of these links, and unnatural linking networks. Possible steps could be something like:
* Site X adds InLinks
* Outbound link count exceeds historical baseline (red flag)
* Link topic focus becomes increasingly broad/offtopic (red flag)
* Multiple other sites all showing similar shifts in behavior connect back to the same small set of URLS (unnatural link network)
Result = PageRank is filtered out for all linking sites
Google is a black box so some of this is of course speculation, but claims in GOOG patent docs support it.
Marshall Clark
Search Director (Organic/Omnicom)
If MediaWhiz is smart – they would use this as a smoke screen.
Tell Google –
- Look at what they can’t find.
- Let them find it.
- Keep doing the other thing that they really didn’t want google to find.
We are all just looking in the wrong direction.
I don’t want to hear google complain about this too much until they fix all the other ranking problems first which allow crap, blackhat sites to rank high.
Google “seo company” a prime example of junk link gamers playing dirty and winning.
I just googled “seo company” and I’m seeing nothing but relevant results. What are you talking about?
“Google has been very clear that selling such links that pass PageRank is a violation of our quality guidelines”. The way Matt Cutts phrased this imparts more authority to Google than was probably meant. At first glace it caught me off guard too – since the word violation seems to impart a breach of agreement. Surely, the internet does not exist at Google’s pleasure, and you do not enter into any contractual relationship with Google upon putting content online. Granted, if Google chooses to ignore your content because of it’s composition it may very well be the case that nobody will ever find it. It do find it interesting, however, that the company which has littered the internet with contextual text adds would have the gall to be up in arms about this obvious progression of their original idea. If Google wants to play the censorship game, perhaps they should start with the scores of morally questionable material one can easily find by using their search engine. I mean, so long as you want to talk about what is moral rather than what is for all intents and purposes still legal.
Guys, forget about legal/illegal and the distraction about what various governments say. It doesn’t matter if you agree with Matt’s (Google’s) explanation or how much nuance you want to give.
The real bottom line is that Google is the game, the webspam team is the game master and if you don’t like the rules, go play in someone elses dungeon.
Or you can break Google’s rules and (eventually, probably) get caught. Just remember, it is their index, their rules, their decisions. The real crime is that this service is being pedaled to people who don’t know any better. People who believe the hype and think they can get away with it.
I can see your point there Jonah.
But I think at the end of the day, the only people to suffer would be the the link sellers, NOT the link buyers,
How would Google know who paid TLA for the links. So for the buyers, I guess it would just be another discouted link in the end.
Or else, webmaters appearing on #2-#10 in serps can join hands to drive the #1 wikipedia out of the serps. Would benefit all of them.
Any sort of offsite promotion against G’s T&C can be easily manipulated by competitors. In fact, even onsite stuff can be manipulated by competitors. A simple search on Google shows how affiliates are leveraging the authority of a domain:
query –> phentermine site:my.mashable.com
Or we could all rise and up in rebellion and cut down these shackles!
I am curious to see how Inlinks will play out though. Will they survive Google?
Someday google is bound to see behind the smoke screen. And it will do the same it did to Payperpost users. Make the pagerank zero and essentially throw them out of internet. I have 4 sites and a few blogs and most of them get over 50% of traffic from google. So cant risk using anything that google gurus say is not good
Maybe you should worry less about paid links and more about the fact that all the articles on your blog delhidekho.com have been copied (word for word) from other sites, like wikinews
Affan
You are sorely mistaken. Google has taken to penalizing sites that buy links, including a plus 40 or plus 50 penalty that is the traffic equivalent of death. This does create a real possibility of Google Bowling, buying links and pointing them at a competitor. I have no idea how Google will address that can of worms.
The only way it makes sense to buy links is if you are willing to throw away your brand every time you get caught. This may be OK for a site selling pills or engaged in quasi-legal (at best) activity, but it is very, very short sited for anyone who wants a sustainable business model.
Come to think of it, it is a lot like all those companies using accounting tricks to prop up short term results…
Black Hat SEO will soon have its day. Imagine all the waste in search results space, time, and bandwidth that Websites with non-authentic content-keywords association take up.
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I think organic links and a valuable content is all you should worry about. Anything else is just not worth it
Matt Cutts,
What is is your salary? And how many times in a day you fuck your wife???
How is this relevant to the discussion? You think everyone deseerves the same salary? Go live in Cuba, great place.
Matt Cutts is the numero uno spammer. That is why google hired him.
What about affiliate links?
Why would anyone want to buy links when you can get links for free?
Lots of great comments on this post. My question is this: How are you all so sure that Matt Cutts really did leave the comments attributed to him here? Seems like a very bad idea for him to do so as this is not exactly helping Google’s reputation in the blogger/webmaster community!
I like what Truth had to say here. Do No Evil? Yeah, right. Matt, you guys just need to get your brain-bigger-than-a-planet PHDs to figure out how to judge links without considering so much how they got there!!! Why do you want to alienate an entire cottage industry that helped make Google so successful in the first place? I just don’t get Google’s FUD strategy on this topic of “paid links”. It’s so amateurish it’s almost impossible to believe Google is even behind it.
If you really are reading (and responding) to this post Matt, please respond intelligently instead insinuating FTC cares about who links to who on the Internet. The entire premise of the Web is based on linking and you guys have really F’d it all up now. Some people try to buy or sell links that pass PR and others won’t even give links away for fear of being slapped. What a mess you’ve made! It may not be Evil, but it isn’t very smart either. You guys used to be our Knight in shining armor. Now you seem more like the Evil Stepmother to many in your own “content network”.
Trying to game the system usually relies on keeping one’s mouth shut about methods employed in order to attain the desired outcome. This trick is out in the open, and at best there will be zero link-love dished out for these links, or worse, you’ll get penalised. Bye-bye PageRank.
Inlinks as service was offered to some users in TLA network to test it.
Service seems good, but if whole repository of publishers and their websites is opened to any advertiser, google could and will add some bad flag to these sites.
Looks like Inlinks has been punished by Google. Despite 100’s of incoming links itself PR appears to be 0.
Plus searching for “are easy on the eyes. Sell in content ads without the annoying pop up! ” (taken from the homepage) has multple other sites above them…
The links provide though this ads network does not meaning in link buiding.
I have a question for everyone (including Matt Cutts) about this interesting conversation. What if I put a simple disclosure on my blog or website that says that comments may be used to promote products that have not necessarily been reviewed by my site. This is more in response to the dofollow or nofollow that google has been so intent on. It is my understanding that the only reason that google does not like commenting for links is that there is no disclosure. Google could set a uniform disclaimer for all sites that when the spider reads the disclaimer it knows that these comments have been disclosed. To go further what if I allow webmasters to place paid links on my site with a simple disclaimer on my site that states that these ads may be paid for. Would that not meet the FTC’s rules? It seems that google is being somewhat anti-capitalist in their stance on these topics. Maybe I am misunderstanding google’s entire argument so please inform me or let me know if something like this might work.
Ha. This is funny time and time again.
#1 InLinks is a dupe of LinkXL which has a hidden footprint, automation and been around for over 2 years now.
#2 Matt is really reaching for any fruit by bringing in the Federal Trade Commission and their suggestions for consumers. Google needs to revamp their algo and try not to rely so heavily on backlinks for rankings
#3 Google hates that they created a black market with PR. “Opps- we didn’t realize that people would make $ off our engine too, where’s our cut!?” (or do I say “Cutts?”
#4 LinkXL has the ability to add “NoFollow” to any link, therefore as Matt states “provides a legal link that does not pass rank” therefore is not a bad text link.
so is it illegal to make your blog ‘do-follow’?