Tuesday, June 12, 2007 at 12:25 PM
At Google, we are always working hard to provide searchers with the best possible results. We've found that our spam reporting form is a great way to get your input as we continue to improve our results. Some of you have asked for a way to report paid links as well.Links are an important signal in our PageRank calculations, as they tend to indicate when someone has found a page useful. Links that are purchased are great for advertising and traffic purposes, but aren't useful for PageRank calculations. Buying or selling links to manipulate results and deceive search engines violates our guidelines.
Today, in response to your request, we're providing a paid links reporting form within Webmaster Tools. To use the form, simply log in and provide information on the sites buying and selling links for purposes of search engine manipulation. We'll review each report we get and use this feedback to improve our algorithms and improve our search results. in some cases we may also take individual action on sites.
If you are selling links for advertising purposes, there are many ways you can designate this, including:
- Adding a rel="nofollow" attribute to the href tag
- Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file
36 comments:
Your words "paid links reporting form" should be linked to
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks
Here's some more background information on the issue for webmaster:
http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2007-04-19-n50.html
What about sites that offer link exchanges? Is that considered "paid?"
You said :paid links are spam. I don't want discuss *nofollow* nor a redirect,because I haven't paid links on my sites. But I have enviers.
What happens if some of them say that I have paid links although this is a lie?
Google have open Pandoras Box, (PR)can't handle it and now the market leader needs "Wonk" . Poor very very poor.;)
Do it or not or something else:
but tell us :
how do you protect webmaster behave with hintegrity for defamation.
regards
Monika
"Adding a rel="nofollow" attribute to the href tag"
As I know, there is only a tag, but href is an attribute.
How would Google be able to verify that a link is paid? I have a friend who has a high PR website. He links to my website. To my competitors that looks like a paid link because it's not an affiliate link. But how would Google or the competitor know that it really isn't paid?
I think this solution is going to cause more problems. Unless the rule was only applied to websites that obviously were selling links by having some kind of order form or what not, I could see many people finding themselves not ranking due to a mistake.
Google can not tell which links are paid links and which aren't. What it does it makes a guess. If you have a site that's been online for a while and your have a PR0 and yet some site with a PR7 has a link to your site on its front page. Its going to consider it a paid link. Especially if the site content isn't similar.
Link exhanges or Link Rings aren't considered paid. Most of the time there's only help improve your site with people not with search engines.
Adding NOFOLLOW just means to follow this link. For example, if you have a admin section you proably don't want it to index your admin control section. So this will help you here. Also this is good you have links to other people's site but you don't want to help their site get index from your site. Again this will help you.
sinxation
What about these thousands of Link directories? Exchanging links is fine but paying for a featured link is a violation?
We all know that a inbound link from an unrelated PR7 site doesn't help to come into the SERP's. I'm asking me what is this about?
I'm wondering whats wrong if I try to get some links for a new site and "donate" some money to the webmaster...
And what if i pay for a link from a site which is irrelevant but then also gives me considerable amount of traffic.
Vanessa,
How will Google determine whether its paid or not?
In all honesty it doesn't matter what your links are from and if they are paid or not. Trust me on this. I had a blank webpage on a domain and it went up for a PR6 when google updated it's Pr's. I just got tons of links and it worked. So don't really think paid links and associate links are at all any diffrent in reality. A link is a link it just matters who the link if from.
I own a paid directory. No free links. But I review every submission, and only include sites that I feel add to the quality of the Web.
But your form is going to punish all my customers for paying for a link from my PR5 directory that's been around for over a year. Whereas you won't punish them for getting a free link from a PR0 or PR1 directory that's been around for two months, if they can wait for the directory owner to get through the backlog of several thousand submissions.
Spam sites are easy to spot. Deliberate abuse by paying for links is not. You're going to need some serious humanpower to keep this from degenerating into a way to punish a site's competitors.
I will be adding rel="nofollow" to the advertising links on my site immediately.
I hope to god people don't report paid links. A 100b algorithm and you have to include a reporting tool? All those PHD's and you can't figure this one out? Haha.
"If you are selling links for advertising purposes, there are many ways you can designate this"
You honestly believe it's ok to dictate how other businesses conduct their business?
I know in Florida anyways, it falls under anti-trust, F.S. §542.18 which establishes that "Every contract, combination, or conspiracy in restrain of trade in this state is unlawful." Sounds a helluva lot like "restrain of trade" to me, you guys saying how others can and cannot sell links.
Don't other states have similar laws..?
how about link directory? some of them are paid links, so are they considered as bought links and hence take out from google altogether? I prefer google "not" to take away bought links altogether coz it could mean people who are jealous with another person may accuse the other as well.
Right or Wrong?
If you use a paid-link to get a "higher page rank": That is (and was ever) against the Guidelines in all SE.
If you pay for a link, visitors can click and come to your site: That's normal trafic.
The "rel=nofollow" etc. will help SE to find out why you pay for: Traffic to your Site or "cheating" their algos.
How they will find out?
I would do like this: Number of external links on a Site vs. "natural numbers" in Sites with the same theme, maybe the one outside the top. (You can check it for yourself with "link:" and find the "dangerous" sites).
That said, I believe they have better tools to save SERP quality.
A few people mentioned paid directories. This is a very good point.
Let’s say you have a $300 paid directory submission to Yahoo - will that link suddenly cause problems?
I would imagine not, as I am sure Google would make Yahoo an exception, but there are so many other viable paid directories out there. If Google was to do this it could essentially put many of them out of business...
They may say to the directories, use the nofollow attribute, but I am certain that if any paid directories did this their subscriptions would cease.
Why don't you answer the question Vanessa?
What's about paid directory submission and paid article submission... they are the base for SEO;
What's about paid directory submission and paid article submission... they are the base for SEO I think.
"Why don't you answer the question Vanessa?" - Jack Book
Which question Jack? There's a few here...
-Michael
Oh, btw, I guess she won't be answering the questions either... just heard she left Google.
Vanessa Fox's blog
Farewell Vanessa! Good luck! :D
-Michael
PS - If Zillow uses black hat, will you be switching sides...?
It keeps getting asked, but no-one appears to be answering.
Does a link paid for in a directory count as one of these "paid links" that Google is going to start ignoring in terms of link juice.
Glad I don't make my living from a paid directory if this is the case - you're going to drive them all out of business! Or is that one of the intentions anyway?
It was answered my matt cutts almost 2 months ago, no directories are currently not what they are interested in...
check out matt's blogl
Hello Ms. Fox,
RE: Google Paid Link Guidelines
Google has now created a perfect method for a website to kill off their competitors. Google prohibits paid links so if you want to untake the "perfect murder" and kill off your competitors on Google then create a whole slew of blogs on Google's blogspot and otherplaces and make sure the blogs have lots of text links to your competitors. Then you can even "turn them in" just in case Google does not put them in Google Hell first.
Think this is a made up story? Well this is exactly what is happening in my market. Starting in August my site has enjoyed a huge surge of new links. None of which I placed since I do not buy links for my site nor do I create very many recipricol links. In fact, my incoming links during August have grown about 8,000 percent and more than 98 percent of the links come from blogs that all look like they came from the same source and from blogs that seem to target a number of competitors in the conference calling market place.
I have attached all the sites below for your edification and hope you will at least have the courtesy of getting them off of your blogspot.com site. You really do need to address this issue as an attack on my site as well as an attack on Google and its relevancy. You have created this problem and you need to resolve it. Thank you for your understanding.
http://conference-call-centers.blogspot.com
http://conference-call-plans.blogspot.com
http://conference-call-vendors.blogspot.com
http://conference-call-rates.blogspot.com
http://conference-call-services-now.blogspot.com
http://conference-call.mysite.com/Conference_Call.html
http://conference-call.mysite.com/Conference_Call_Services.html
http://conference-call.mysite.com/Conference_Call_Systems.html
http://conference-call.mysite.com
http://conference-call.mysite.com/Conference_Call_Provider.html
http://conference-call.mysite.com/Conference_Call_Price_Quotes.h...
http://conference-call.mysite.com/Conference_Call_Rates.html
http://conference-call.mysite.com/Conference_Call_Companies.html
http://conference-call.mysite.com/Conference_Call_Plans.html
http://conference-call.mysite.com/Conference_Call_Vendors.html
http://conference-call.mysite.com/Conference_Call_Solution.html
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So this is how https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/siteoverview?pli=1 works so I can't report nothing. Google works rather bad...
Have you noticed that this is the first time that google is dictating webmasters a rule this directly.
I think you should give more attention to proxy hijack sites , sites using google search results a spam and more before paid links.
Whay should we play it with the google way , why should I add nofollow to my outgoing links ???
Thanks
The thing is, I have paid for advertising and wanted the links (you did say get inbound links that are relevant). Now you say I've done a bad thing - I haven't. Make up your mind - you are affecting my results placements and thus my work. By business fluctuates at your whim. Surprise, surprise - my only solution may be to pay you through Adwords. Well as long as you are the ones being paid it seems OK. Enough is enough - do something fair or suffer the inevitable backlash.
All the best Keith
By the way I'm not a Google rep or anything to do with them - its just my user name.
Wow - could have had some fun there !!! LOL
All the best
Keith
I just learned that your site can be penalized if you sell paid links and do not use the "no follow" within the post... I am glad I found this post!
What are your thoughts on the comment luv plugin some bloggers use? Does it disable the "no follow" in the comments area and is this plugin unethical?
I sometimes write paid articles for companies/ products that I feel are relevant, I disclose this in my site wide disclosure policy but I don't want to loose page rank or get reported for doing something wrong..
Does google have a means for reporting individuals and businesses that run multiple domains with websites that are similar, but appear to be different companies?
I'm running into this more and more and these individuals are choking their competitors out of the results.
DTSL Williams, you can use our spam report form to report this type of information to Google. There is an authenticated version in Webmaster Tools, as well as a publicly available form.
It seems that the displayed pr of a site will drop in a punishment as oppose to the site being dropped or punished for the offence in a rankings manner. Certainly seems to have happened with our site. That makes sense to google as we are now they believe less attractive to sites trying to purchase links. however its all a bit silly, it is obviously going to punish 90% of small business people trying to monetize thier sites as oppose to the big spending cheats as it were. Of course you can monetize it with google ads and it doesnt matter of your page rank. I accept the punishment but think it is wrong to drop us from pr5 to pr0 as this will concern the natural quantity of sites that point to us who may now think we are doing something unethical- A warning i believe is justified at least from google if this is the case.
I have links to my site and visa versa. But as i know there is nothing wrong with as it's just people trying to grow their business. Graham - www.logo-n-stitch.co.uk
I think we need to get some clarrification on what is a paid link and what is not. Would you consider the Yahoo Directory a Paid Link?
https://ecom.yahoo.com/dir/reference/cost
I can say that Google is selective. Small blogs were hit really bad and some were even forced out of the results while big blogs where hit mildly.
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