Saintly PageRank

[peter_d]

I found it amusing that Muhammad Saleem states:

Not everyone, however, wants to write their way to a naturally high PageRank. On the other side are people who are willing to manipulate their PageRank using frowned-upon techniques such as buying links (or link-based advertisements) from sites that rank higher thank you (to drive traffic as well as increase your PageRank)

....whilst that page the article appears on is running ads for a text link company.

http://www.pronetadvertising.com/art...rank34496.html

Heh heh.

The article restates Google's FUD - links should be based on merit alone.

The reality is that the concept of "merit" is not straightforward. There has long been corruption in academic citation, with colleagues bumping each others papers, and engaging in other non-transparent favours. The situation just gets worse in a murky, anonymous environment like the web, given that there is often a lot more money at stake.

I also don't think it is realistic, or even desirable, for all sites to become publishers. A punter who types "buy viagra online" does not want to be given an article, no matter how profound, on the chemical composition of impotence medication. He just wants to buy the pills.

There is really only one way Google is going to stop people trading on link value. And that is to stop it from influencing rank.

[mothproof]

yes, indeed.

i didn't notice the ad at first, because i was too busy scrutinizing the google mountain.