Comming bad days for link sellers!

[MakePB]

I'm not sure of this is right forum (mod move if it is needed) and couldnt find that someone post it before but this is news for sure that will affect many websites.

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/hidden-links/

As long as we’re talking about links, this seems like a pretty good opportunity to talk about a simple litmus test for paid links and how to tell if a paid link violates search engines’ quality guidelines. If you want to sell a link, you should at least provide machine-readable disclosure for paid links by making your link in a way that doesn’t affect search engines. There’s a ton of ways to do that. For example, you could make a paid link go through a redirect where the redirect url is robot’ed out using robots.txt. You could also use the rel=nofollow attribute. I’ve said as much many times before, but I wanted to give a heads-up because Google is going to be looking at paid links more closely in the future.

The other best practice I’d advise is to provide human readable disclosure that a link/review/article is paid. You could put a badge on your site to disclose that some links, posts, or reviews are paid, but including the disclosure on a per-post level would better. Even something as simple as “This is a paid review” fulfills the human-readable aspect of disclosing a paid article.

Pay link for traffic with "nofollow" attribute will be ok but all pay links without "nofollow" attribute will probably be red flagged.

Bottom line is this:

Google is going to be looking at paid links more closely in the future

btw

It looks to me that many pay directories will be affected in future.

[Kasparoff]

If there is no mentioning that the directory is a paid one. How Google will find that out?

[factoring]

Is this going to include big directories like yahoo.
I want my money back if this is true. LOL.

[MakePB]

Originally Posted by Kasparoff

If there is no mentioning that the directory is a paid one. How Google will find that out?

It is difficult to say because they have started test phase (probably next couple month will not be changed anything) but future will show us much more (after they done with testing).

Originally Posted by factoring

Is this going to include big directories like yahoo.
I want my money back if this is true. LOL.

Not sure.It is news from yesterday from Matt blogs but because selling link has been much more popular and actually has become another way for webmaster monetize their site it is for sure big news.

[Aviva]

FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt).

Those who can't do something write scary posts warning others that they are going to do it. (Those who can do something just go ahead and do it).

[MakePB]

Matt is brain behind all new technologies for Google SE.I do not know of you in your post think about Matt but he probably does not write scary post just to scary people.
I think that all pay directories and site that sell link will be forced in future to set 'nofollow' tags to all links and it will be disaster for all sites (mostly commercial directories) because main purpose of directories for buyer is not traffic but higher PR and it is exactly point of Matt.
Everybody can sell link for traffic but not for increasing PR. It will be interesting to see in future how things will go on but almost nobody like it and nobody is happy with such a news.

[charlesgan]

if they doing that, paid link or natural links... there is no different.

[solidghost]

I had thought that Matt is from the abuse department or something.

[MakePB]

Originally Posted by charlesgan

if they doing that, paid link or natural links... there is no different.

There will be always different but how they gonna to recognize what is paid and what natural links it is difficult to say at this moment.

Originally Posted by solidghost

I had thought that Matt is from the abuse department or something.

Nope. Matt is specializing in search engine optimization issues and all technology behind it.

[linkstraffic]

I feel real angry with such news and will get me mad at Google when it will be actually implemented (I guess it is already in beta)!!

We should all build a search engine and promote it like hell to kick Google and just depend on something we know about and know about its future... a kind of wikipedia engine...
this way we wouldn't work on sucking SEO details, waste our time ...

[linkstraffic]

Originally Posted by linkstraffic

I feel real angry with such news and will get me mad at Google when it will be actually implemented (I guess it is already in beta)!!

We should all build a search engine and promote it like hell to kick Google and just depend on something we know about and know about its future... a kind of wikipedia engine...
this way we wouldn't work on sucking SEO details, waste our time ...

well sorry.. I actually was talking about this:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-to-report-paid-links/

[Aviva]

Originally Posted by MakePB

Everybody can sell link for traffic but not for increasing PR.

But how can you tell the difference?

[MakePB]

Originally Posted by Aviva

But how can you tell the difference?

I'm not sure how it will works in future and of it will works at all but Matt is seriously about it.Check his blog.
It is also not clear of the site will penalized or not, everything is still open but something will be changed soon and it will affect buying/selling link industry for sure.

[peter_d]

MakePB, there's been a lot of commentary about Matts post.

The problem is: define "paid".

Is a favour paid? How about partnership? How about any arrangement that doesn't involve cash changing hands? How could a human, let alone a machine, determine those relationships with any accuracy?

They can't.

You have to ask yourself why Google are announcing it, rather than just doing it. I think you'll find the reason for that is that they'll manage to scare enough people. The price? One post. Alternatively, the cost of doing it for real, computationally, would be excessive.

I think I know who their targets are, and part of the strategy is create uncertainty and doubt amongst the people who potentially deal with those companies.

FUD.

[tdd1984]

Originally Posted by peter_d

MakePB, there's been a lot of commentary about Matts post.

The problem is: define "paid".

Is a favour paid? How about partnership? How about any arrangement that doesn't involve cash changing hands? How could a human, let alone a machine, determine those relationships with any accuracy?

They can't.

You have to ask yourself why Google are announcing it, rather than just doing it. I think you'll find the reason for that is that they'll manage to scare enough people. The price? One post. Alternatively, the cost of doing it for real, computationally, would be excessive.

I think I know who their targets are, and part of the strategy is create uncertainty and doubt amongst the people who potentially deal with those companies.

FUD.

I think I'd have to agree with what you just said

[niceboy]

i dont think google is worried about the cost of technology development. after all, the intention here for google is to be there as a no. 1 SE company by providing quality search results.

if matt writes something, as i heard there is some thing which can be expected in future.

but personally i think, it is very hard for a bot or human to differentiate free or paid link.

nb.

[theseokit]

This is so not gonna happen

[peter_d]

the cost of technology development

It's not just cost in terms of dollars, it's cost in terms of processing and service delivery.

Google good easily weed out spam on a small dataset. On a huge dataset, it's a different ballgame. They need to pick and choose which algos will scale in a cost effective (read time, resource allocation, money etc) manner.

[tdd1984]

Originally Posted by peter_d

It's not just cost in terms of dollars, it's cost in terms of processing and service delivery.

Google good easily weed out spam on a small dataset. On a huge dataset, it's a different ballgame. They need to pick and choose which algos will scale in a cost effective (read time, resource allocation, money etc) manner.

people are aloud to buy links right? From what I read in matt cutts blogs that advertisers are aloud to buy links freely?

[peter_d]

Of course people can buy links Google can't dictate to you what you do with your own site and your own money.

What they can do is choose to treat your site differently if they don't like what you do. However, I don't think the individual webmaster is the target of this initiative. It would be too easy to get your competitors taken out.