About Google’s “anti paid link” campaign
So what is google trying to tell us? What happened during the last PR update? Is someone trying to make a point?
So let’s take things from the beginning. Google releases the PR as a way to measure the quality, strength and dynamic of a site. It was a way to separate the good sites from the weak ones so that ads distribution and search engine results presentation could be more effective.
So webmasters started making their sites PR oriented , buying links and promoting like never before. A lot of money was spent on campaigns. And now google says that promotion, or better, paying for promotion is bad. This must be something new to the world. Is google trying to present a “free advertisement campaign system”? Or it just saw that it couldn’t make enough profit of its investment? After all PR was introduced by google. But we, “the bad” webmasters have been trying to raise it on our own, paying money to eachother, and not paying google a dime. So of course this had to be stopped.
What happened during the last PR update? Google introduced a new algo? Google started penalizing paid links? Well nobody knows what exactly happened as nobody can understand why some sites seem to be under google’s favor, while some others are thrown down the cliff. What is going to happen during the next update? Nobody has an idea.
The fact is that the whole webmastering idea, is a little out of control. It has derived off its initial path. For example, what should directories be all about? They should be about sites that gather links, categorize them carefully and present them in a way that a visitor can find something of his interest easily. They should be about giving exposure to submitted sites to the viewer of the site, so that the site could receive some targeted traffic. What is directories all about today? They are all about just links. Some of them don’t even have a decent traffic, and they charge for a link at a site with PR 5,4,3,2 or even 0 when the total traffic is just 10,20 or 30 uniques/day. But I think all these about webmasters and directories are another story I am to talk about to a different article.
I personally don’t think that google will keep this attitude. Marketing is a very important aspect of internet economy, and it can’t be banned just like this. It’s a profitable market, and if google doesn’t approve, I guess everybody will move on and find another way to measure a site’s quality and strength, instead of PR. I don’t think this is what they want to happen. So keep up guys. The power is in our hands.
May 15th, 2007 at 7:23 pm
I think you should have read the thread about Matt Cutts and Directories which was on DP yesterday. Now it is merged with the main thread in Goog sub-forum of DP.
The info about directories and links is –according to Matt Cutts– Directories are fine as long as they keep editorial integrity and they can definitely charge fee for reviews as dir.yahho.com charges.
May 16th, 2007 at 12:12 pm
I think you have missanderstood a few things. Pagerank is about links, and nothing else. Google wanted to know who naturally “votes” web sites by linking, and that “natural” thing made them trying to eliminate paid and sponsored links. This is not a new thing, as it happens for years. It is just the timing of the new update and Matt Cutt’s post that made this buzz around pagerank.
The recent update has implemented more complexed algorithms in order to fight this and the google bombing phenomenon, but in anyway I don’t see why Google is “bad” for this as pagerank belongs to the past (when we talk about SEO)
May 16th, 2007 at 6:35 pm
Payment blogger I think you have misunderstood me. I am not talking about the integrity of the method. I am talking about google being hypocritical about it. From the one hand it brings it into the market, knowing the effect it would have, and from the other hand, it just pulls the rug under the feet of the people who invested on it. Thank you for visiting, and commenting. All comments are appreciated.
May 17th, 2007 at 6:05 am
Google presented the pagerank algorithm back in ‘98 when search engines worked on text search algorithms alone, and that is the reason that made them #1 search engine so fast.
They had to change that algorithm as we the webmasters took advantage of it to spam them. Before a few updates gaining pagerank was really simple with or without money. Now Google is trying to make us understand that SEO is not about links but about relevant links
May 17th, 2007 at 6:15 am
Since this PR became public, and everybody new what effect it had, and still has, it was sure that almost all would try to take advantage of it. So google could just do what it does today, back in 1998, or it could just keep PR as an internal metric system for google to use, and google alone, without making it public. It took them 10 years to notice what was a certainty? This is the hypocritical stance I am talking about. I am not saying that google is trying to do something wrong. And of course what google does now will help the integrity of the results. But don’t tell me they didn’t see it coming. They just let it happen for as long as this was supportive to their interest.
So our opinions are not so different after all, and I understand very well what you are saying and I agree. What I don’t agree with is this happening after 10 years.
Hope I made myself clear.
Thanks again.