Mashable - The Social Media Guide - Latest Comments in Confirmed: Selling Links Will Hurt Your Google Page Rank

Re: Confirmed: Selling Links Will Hurt Your Google Page Rank

Manuel Gallego — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 16:17:53 -0000

Google is not identifing correctly selling sites...

i never sold a link from my site ucables.com, but this summer i put a link to my new girlffriend website about real estate: ibizaloft.com to help her to get some traffic and from october i lost my pagerank from 5 to 0.
i have send some messages to google to reconsider my site, but i have not received any response after 2 months. My traffic decreased 20% and continue decreasing. I have removed this link already from my site.
I think google should try at least to contact with owner before to do this type of action.
Why not decrease rank of payed links from adsense too?
Some years ago, when google was created we love google because, all service that offers was free, and contributed to the original internet spirit to share all, with easy and simple way.
Actually google seems to be corrupted and bad directed for the money.
Sorry my bad english i hope you can understand me.

Happy Xmas!

Re: Confirmed: Selling Links Will Hurt Your Google Page Rank

Clement — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 03:00:13 -0000

The PageRank algorithm used to make sense in the 90s when most websites were designed for purposes of supplying information and information only.These days, when the web has been commercialized and will continue to be, the current PR does not make sense. Google must come up with a better PageRank mechanism which should be in line with the current WWW.

On the other hand, I would like to suggest that Google must be more transparent on PageRank issues.Google services such Adsense, youtube etc have their own blogs.If they put up a PR blog, the WWW will be free from the uncertainties of the recent past.

Re: Confirmed: Selling Links Will Hurt Your Google Page Rank

Adam Ostrow — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:14:25 -0000

According to most commenters Page Rank no longer effects search rankings. However, if inbound links are the primary factor in search rankings, and Google is now discounting the credibility of some of your incoming links, I would think over the long-term it could effect search rankings and traffic. So, that leads me to believe it may effect you if you've bought incoming links, but not if you've sold them.

Re: Confirmed: Selling Links Will Hurt Your Google Page Rank

Charles Wilson — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 23:27:19 -0000

PageRank is property of Google and they can almost do anything they want with it. True enough the web public will be unhappy with their current actions, that is just so much we can do other than to ignore the importance of PageRank from now on.

Point here is that does PageRank correlates to search traffic?

Re: Confirmed: Selling Links Will Hurt Your Google Page Rank

Adam Ostrow — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 16:03:39 -0000

Yup. Was hoping for a bit more comment from them re: competition but doesn't look like they addressed it at all.

Re: Confirmed: Selling Links Will Hurt Your Google Page Rank

Eric Waller — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 15:50:38 -0000

I think this is more than just hypocritical by Google, it may actually be bordering on anti-competitive. They are essentially leveraging their search-market dominance to create artificial barriers to entry for other text-based ad providers. I'm a huge fan of Google, but this doesn't seem right at all.

Re: Confirmed: Selling Links Will Hurt Your Google Page Rank

Adam Hirsch — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 14:18:18 -0000

I'll be honest here, I don't remember most sites ever really displaying their page rank. In addition, I think based on Google's recent decision PageRank will lose credibility with the advertisers that needed convincing through PR .

Re: Confirmed: Selling Links Will Hurt Your Google Page Rank

Ram Shanmugam — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 14:17:34 -0000

PageRank is anyway irrelevant for most of today's new types of Web sites, containing:
* Dynamic URLs
* Dynamically generated pages with heavy Javascript content
* Non-HTML content which does not contain links to other URLs [e.g., most types of video and audio files]

PageRank is an old fashioned "static" notion of popularity, more suited to the old days when a HTML page displayed the same kind of content every day and hung around long enough for other Web sites to link to it. Today, the PageRank concept of a "Page" acquiring "importance" via in-links is questionable when the page itself is dynamically generated or when it's content changes rapidly.

Re: Confirmed: Selling Links Will Hurt Your Google Page Rank

Ali — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 08:29:11 -0000

Their algorithm was built to give more weight to relevant links pointing to sites. But wait don't try to make any money like that, because that's our job. Not yours. You can eat straw can't you?

Anyway, it's a hypocritical stance like you said.

Re: Confirmed: Selling Links Will Hurt Your Google Page Rank

Adam Ostrow — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 08:19:19 -0000

Yup, my thoughts exactly ...

Re: Confirmed: Selling Links Will Hurt Your Google Page Rank

Adam Ostrow — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 08:18:36 -0000

Thanks for the comments. Another reason I think Page Rank is increasingly irrelevant is the rise of other third-party ways to measure a web site's influence. For blogs, there is Technorati, TechMeme leaderboard, and others, while for pretty much any web site there is Alexa, Compete, and Quantcast. While all of these metrics are far from perfect, there are plenty of ways to get a rough idea of a site's credibility.

Re: Confirmed: Selling Links Will Hurt Your Google Page Rank

CountRob — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 08:17:44 -0000

I don't get it.

Adsense is selling links, just through a 3rd party. And that 3rd party gets mad when webmasters cut out the middleman. 90% of the reason why Google is cracking down on link selling is because it's hurting THEIR business.

Re: Confirmed: Selling Links Will Hurt Your Google Page Rank

BRIX — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 08:09:15 -0000

Very bad move on Google's behalf. They're going to lose MANY fans this way. Monetizing is the wave of the future as sites strive to keep it free to end users. We're just going to see more advertising. I feel we should all embrace it too. Commercials have been on radio and television forever. There isn't anything wrong with discovering new things. I just think there should be more regulation on behalf of people who use advertising to monetize their sites so that it appeals to their audience or rather, doesn't offend them (no porn on elmosworld, etc.) Still, that should be up to the webmaster. I agree that it's a good thing to have some company being the umbrella regulating good and bad practice on the web. Simulataniously, when a company gets so big that penalization therefrom starts making people change their practices, expressions of free speech and thought; it's something to consider not supporting. Frankly, I don't care what Google thinks. I care what my readers think. If need be, I'll find another way to get more visitors... maybe a TV Commercial :p