Paid Links & Google

Posted by Miles Evans

Matt has a must read article up with a Q&A on pretty much everything under the sun including Big Daddy, RK, sitemaps, and more. As Rand mentioned Matt drops a real stinker on this one in particular:

Q: “If one were to offer to sell space on their site (or consider purchasing it on another), would it be a good idea to offer to add a NOFOLLOW tag so to generate the traffic from the advertisement, but not have the appearance of artificial PR manipulation through purchasing of links?�

A: Yes, if you sell links, you should mark them with the nofollow tag. Not doing so can affect your reputation in Google.

Rand points out (rightly so) that a huge portion of the web is built on commercial links:

In order to be ranking competitively in Google in many, many spaces, you need to buy links. Anyone who's done large scale link research in any niche will immediately identify dozens if not hundreds of directories, sites, membership-signups, etc. that provide high quality links (that are editorially given), but the require some type of fee. The Internet is not a commercial free, capitalists-shunned part of the world, and if you want publicity and recognition online, just as offline, you have to be prepared to spend.

So I guess a good question to draw from this statement might be – if Google devalues paid links how can they explain their own dominance in the PPC arena? What about $300 Yahoo directory links? What does constitute a paid link?

Links have been bought, traded, and manufactured since before there was a Google, and although it is not something I myself focus on, I would be liar if I said it was not a part of my monthly ad budget. On some properties I draw 50% of my traffic from relevant contextual links. These links convert very well for me. Then again I am not placing these links for the PR but more for the traffic they bring, but the argument remains the same – what’s wrong with buying links if they are relevant, and not just obvious PR vehicles?

What really hangs in the balance from statement like this one is Google’s reputation with optimizers and webmasters. The more we are forced to change our mark-up to accommodate uncle G, the more scared we become. In fact if there was a realistic alternative I think there would be a reasonable mutiny taking place many months ago.

Don’t get me wrong I read Matt’s blog religiously and we all appreciate the free insider info, but from a business point of view it seems odd Google would allow an employee to make these statements. If I was a Google algorithm engineer I would find a better way to value links and reign in employees who like to openly comment on it.

Posted Mar 31, 2006 at 12:46 AM | Permalink | Trackback URL | Del.icio.us | DIGG!