Mashable - The Social Media Guide - Latest Comments in Three Clicks to Spam: Google’s Hypocritical Link Selling Policy

Re: Three Clicks to Spam: Google’s Hypocritical Link Selling Policy

sksee82 — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 04:35:06 -0000

This article is already stating the obvious. Honestly, if you were to perform a search would you dig deep enough to go to the third page of your search.

Normally you would probably look at the first page and find what you want. Thats where pagerank comes in. Higher page rank sites would definitely appear at the front page of searches, especially for important keywords.

As for google's integrity, you can raise a thousand questions to them. The fact remains the same, business is business.

As for sites such as CheapAirFareWorld.com, what can I say. There are always and will be individuals out there who wants to make a quick buck or two.

Re: Three Clicks to Spam: Google’s Hypocritical Link Selling Policy

Climate change — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 09:37:17 -0000

Love this site really good info

Thanks

Re: Three Clicks to Spam: Google’s Hypocritical Link Selling Policy

Boris — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 17:19:47 -0000

I have been venting about this for several months... Isn't Google the biggest seller of links in the universe... And making money off all of these referral sites makes me ill... Let's get real folks... The "do no evil" days are over.

Re: Three Clicks to Spam: Google’s Hypocritical Link Selling Policy

Boris — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 17:16:44 -0000

Thanks, Andy, your input is always useful... So none of these sites have lost search ranking... What does that tell us?

Re: Three Clicks to Spam: Google’s Hypocritical Link Selling Policy

Bobby — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:32:11 -0000

Affect, not effect.. in your article 2 typos.

Re: Three Clicks to Spam: Google’s Hypocritical Link Selling Policy

Shane — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 06:41:19 -0000

This recent penalty isn't for selling links, nor is it for linking to bad neighborhoods. Google is penalizing sites for selling links and not marking them as paid links. They've been very clear that paid links should be marked with "nofollow."

As Tom writes below, this is an attempt to stop this particular type of search engine manipulation.

Re: Three Clicks to Spam: Google’s Hypocritical Link Selling Policy

Jason — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 14:46:36 -0000

The webpage you call spam, is not spam. It's a parked domain that someone is trying to monetize by providing sponsored search results on it's pages. BTW, that's a Yahoo! ad feed, not Google. The owner of the domain is doing PPC with AdSense leading you to that page -- it's an arbitrage play.

Who's to say that the Yahoo! sponsored links aren't better than the Google's organic (*very* loosely defined these days) results? The content of "parked" pages is getting better and more relevant every day...

The PPC campaign was the only way to go, because a domain like that naturally doesn't receive type-in traffic... but the conversions on such a play can't be significant.

Re: Three Clicks to Spam: Google’s Hypocritical Link Selling Policy

Tom — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 06:08:36 -0000

Aren't you talking about two separate issues here? I am under the impression that the Google hammer came down on sites that are selling links to influence search engine rankings. I agree with this whole-heartedly - you should not be able to directly buy devices that increase your natural search engine rankings. There should be no device that gives one site an edge over others who publish superior content. And if you do attempt this, you should be penalized.

Now, I agree with you that something needs to be done about the quality of the sites appearing under Google's sponsored results. However, they are clearly labeled "Sponsored Results" and they do not affect those sites' rankings.

Re: Three Clicks to Spam: Google’s Hypocritical Link Selling Policy

me — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 22:12:07 -0000

Ouch. From a 7 to a 4?!?! Wow. I'm shocked at that big drop.

Re: Three Clicks to Spam: Google’s Hypocritical Link Selling Policy

BRIX — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 18:06:05 -0000

Excellent analyzation of the situation.

Re: Three Clicks to Spam: Google’s Hypocritical Link Selling Policy

chaoskaizer — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 15:50:09 -0000

maybe google will turn into profitable junk of worthless seo game by next xmas.

Re: Three Clicks to Spam: Google’s Hypocritical Link Selling Policy

aaron — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 11:09:59 -0000

I'm fine with the policy changes, but it's very true that they should clean up their own backyard before doing this to webmasters. Maybe Matt Cutts or someone from Google will blog a response to this, because it's rampant within their system.

Re: Three Clicks to Spam: Google’s Hypocritical Link Selling Policy

Adam Ostrow — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 10:59:54 -0000

That is pretty much the conclusion I came to in the article, no? The "bad neighborhoods" quote is direct from Google's policy. Just thought I'd share their side ...

Re: Three Clicks to Spam: Google’s Hypocritical Link Selling Policy

Michael VanDeMar — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 10:48:35 -0000

Adam,

Slight correction to your article. These penalties have nothing to do with linking out to "bad neighborhoods". They are about selling links, period. If Google was dishing out these penalties based on who you linked out to, then the problem would eventually self-correct, and would have nothing to do with whether or not the link was paid. As it is, they are trying to kill the whole link buying industry regardless of any other factors.

Re: Three Clicks to Spam: Google’s Hypocritical Link Selling Policy

Ali — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 10:36:53 -0000

My search engine traffic levels have remained the same. I actually feel quite honored to be slapped for this "invisible" reason to lower PageRank along with some of the top blogs and sites on the same day. I sell links to make money, shame on me!

Bottom line, the future is clearly not tied together with Google for a lot of bloggers and websites from here on forth.

Re: Three Clicks to Spam: Google’s Hypocritical Link Selling Policy

Jill — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 10:14:21 -0000

Why be surprised by that? Toolbar PageRank has never been a factor in the algorithm.

Just because they made the PR APPEAR to be lower, doesn't mean real PR has been affected.

Re: Three Clicks to Spam: Google’s Hypocritical Link Selling Policy

Jeremy Luebke — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 10:06:56 -0000

It used to, but not so anymore. The PageRank you see in the toolbar is nothing more than an arbitrary number that has very little effect on rankings. I can rank a PR1 page over a PR6 page any day of the week.

Re: Three Clicks to Spam: Google’s Hypocritical Link Selling Policy

Adam Ostrow — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 09:59:00 -0000

I'm surprised it's not impacting search traffic. If I search for "marketing" in Google, isn't Page Rank a major influence on which pages show up first?

Re: Three Clicks to Spam: Google’s Hypocritical Link Selling Policy

Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 09:54:13 -0000

I knew at one point or another, Google used to change the ranking level and/or the price of the click based upon the quality of the site (which they determined not so much by the quality of the page behind the link but more by how compelling the ad copy is and what sort of clickthru ratio it had).

Perhaps it's time Google made some modifications to their policy!