Paid Link Reporting Spurs Furious Debate

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Paid Link Reporting Spurs Furious Debate


Matt Cutts posted a note about Google being in position to handle
paid link report submissions from the Internet community; Michael
Gray complained about the fairness of the request.

A long time part of the ranking of sites for given keywords in
search results includes inbound links. The more links connecting
anchor text to a site, the more that site is seen as authoritative
in the search rankings.

Move up the rankings to the first page of search results at
Google, especially in the top five for a given query, and the
relative traffic for the query should easily outdistance that
from lower ranked search results.

To get that bonus placement, many webmasters over the years
purchased links from other sites in order to gain an advantage.
As the practice grew, even though links are not the sole arbiter
of where a site ranks, Google began looking for ways to weed out
these paid placements.

So when Matt Cutts followed up his chat with Eric Enge by
advising people it would be a good time to drop new paid link
reports on Google, Michael Gray responded with a lengthy complaint
about Google's chasing of paid links.

"Your rules are selectively enforced and you take an aggressive
hard line stance against Internet marketers, while little Mary
A-List gets off scot-free," Gray said of Google and its treatment
of high-profile bloggers who receive valuable offline
considerations in exchange for their coverage of companies.

Gray wants to see Google pursue the so-called A-List of bloggers,
determine whether or not they picked up some kind of benefit in
exchange for favorable blogging, and penalize them the same way
Google penalizes link sellers.

"Why does Google aggressively go after the SEOs and ignore the
PR people? Why do people continue to tolerate Google's double
standards and two-tiered justice?" Gray asked.

One might argue that quality comes into the equation. A link from
a high-profile blogger to someplace of relevance and value means
more to the person who discovers it than a link to a site that
does not provide anything approaching an equally quality
experience.

In either example Gray gave, PR-purchased blog coverage versus a
webmaster to webmaster paid link opportunity, a benefit goes from
one party to the other. The difference is no blogger worth his or
her keyboard would ever admit to being influenced by the largess
given out as part of a PR campaign.

A little equal treatment may be helpful. But Google will need an
army of investigators to dig into even a small selection of high-
profile blogs, in order to figure out if a relationship between a
blogger and a linked site merits action.

We don't see that happening for a reason beyond the obvious. Google
wants to drive out the influence of paid links, but they don't want
to push the A-list of bloggers into simply using other means of
getting the word out about their posts.

Imagine if the best way to figure out what a Gray or a Cutts had
to say was by tracking the topics they cover without using Google
search. Online forums abound when it comes to webmaster topics, of
course. Social media and shared bookmarking sites each offer people
the chance to be a network of like-minded interests.

Drop in participation on a messaging service like Twitter or
FriendFeed, and there's little reason to proactively search when
relevance from either person arrives unbidden. Imagine that
scenario, where for a particular interest, Google just isn't as
important.

Not every niche would draw similar interest; don't look for Google
to fold or for its founders and CEOs to give away their billions
to live as fudge-cooking Trappist monks as search traffic falls
to zero. The seeds to do more without Google exist. It's up to
people who hold views like Gray's to plant and water them.


David A. Utter | Staff Writer