Deat Matt Cutts and Google,
I used to love you. I would tell my friends about the “car Google bought”, the mortgage “Adsense was paying for”, and so on. Now you are trying to destroy what you helped create.
In an outright foolish blog post Matt Cutts said, “I’d like to get a few paid link reports anyway because I’m excited about trying some ideas here at Google to augment our existing algorithms.”
In other words, “We need data in order to be able to stop people buying links from anyone but us. Please screw other webmasters by being an un-paid rat, we’d appreciate it.”
Google, if you want my advice, stop fighting against webmasters, because if it weren’t for us, you wouldn’t have anything to offer searchers.
Webmasters don’t put content on the internet anymore because they want to. They write and spend money building sites so they can make money.
We don’t need a puppet giving us little tid bits of not actually useful help in “ranking better“.
But now you want us to stop making money by selling text links for page rank? Matt Cutts said, “Ash, there’s absolutely no problem with selling links for traffic (as opposed to PageRank).” How can I, as a webmaster, know what the intention of other webmasters is going to be? How can you, as a search engine, punish me for selling related text links? After all, I must approve links that are put on my pages. So even if they are paid, they are deemed relevant by me. It’s my site, and my content, leave it alone.
Oh, and on another note Cutts also said, “For example, you could make a paid link go through a redirect where the redirect url is robot’ed out using robots.txt.” Why should I punish people who are buying relevant links on my site by nofollowing them? After all, didn’t you just say there is “absolutely no problem” with selling links for traffic?
They want a link, I think their site is worthy, they offer to give me money, it’s a win-win-win. It’s a win for me, I get paid. It’s a win for them, they get a relevant link. It’s a win for you, you find another relelvant site.
However, punishing paid links is a lose-lose-draw. I lose because people are scared to buy links. Advertisers lose because I won’t go to the trouble of giving them a link without getting paid. You won’t find the relevant site as easy, even though you’ll find it eventually.
I know with as many minor SERP updates, you can easily filter out 99% of spam. You aren’t going to catch that other 1% of spammers this way.
If you are going to alienate me and tell me that what I’m doing, and will continue to do, is against your rules, does that make me a “black hat”? And since you are saying that I’m on the wrong side of the line, what stops me from going all the way over and joining SEOBlackHat (No nofollow)?
If you still think this “Calling All Snitches” post is a good idea, keep it up. You’ve just lost a follower and forced someone to the dark side.
Never again yours,
Brandon Hopkins
There will soon be a Google Witness Protection Program! I heard through the Grapevine that they purchased a small tropical island where they will harbor all the snitches. They will then have a workforce of thousands sipping fruity drinks under palm trees combing the internet for link sellers.
Google owns the internet, and they will soon own the world!
Amen to that! Google did many things that I didn’t like in the past, but this one really pissed me off. Just as the dofollow movement started these days, I would just love a movement supporting a new search engine. If a new startup comes up with something that gives good results I’m switching immediately.
Google started the nofollow movement, made us afraid of mentioning a site with a link because it might hurt us in the rankings if they’re considered “bad neighborhood”, puts half of my pages in the supplemental index, though they are unique content, now punishing those of us that try to promote their website or monetise it? Enough is enough already!
Nice post and I completely agree. I’m sure most “general webmasters” don’t think they’re doing anything wrong by selling a few links to pay bills.
Google is losing it with policies like this.
I’m not quite sure you’re making sense.
1. Has Google said that the *seller* of paid links will be penalized? I don’t think so except indirectly (if selling links for PR, you’ll have a harder time selling if the algorithm gets dialed).
2. Will the buyer be *penalized*? I don’t so either, but rather the link will fail to pass PR. That’s not a penalty, that’s just a decision to withhold a benefit. That’s different.
I do think that there is a difference between a paid link and a natural link. Just today I gave away several unpaid links because it saves me a lot of trouble to give a link to my reader instead of recapitulating what someone else says. That’s the natural link universe and it’s different from the links I have that people pay for.
Doing my taxes I was searching and searching for a question that should be that obscure (do I pay taxes on state disability insurance for temporary disability). The answer is no, but the SERPs are absolutely horrible and it took forever to answer this simple question. Here’s the thing – paid links skew the SERPs toward people who make money on the net and, thus, who pay for links, but that is BAD for users. Ideally, results would be skewed towards answering the question we ask.
Full disclosure
– I’m sick to death of Google frankly
– I sell links
– I don’t make significant income of the web but what I do make is off quality original content that will only benefit as search engines improve at finding real information.
– I am desperately hoping someone will come along and knock Google off its pedestal and come up with search that actually works better.
This was a very strong post, Brandon.
Robin Li (Baidu–China)
Is Baidu a viable alternative? From what I read there Baidu can go toe to toe with Google.
http://www.168.fr/2007/03/23/portrait-de-robin-li/
Tough call. So many building only to sell to the master. Baidu, at the moment seems independent.
Slavery is no fun. Trinkets and baubles and rules and kudos tossed into the maze are not satisfying either.
This was a very strong post.