It's an interesting conundrum. We've been hearing this for a long time and I'm just not sure how they're going to evaluate paid links vs. natural links in a fair way. I have several clients who have "reported" their competitors to Google already. It's full-on guerrilla-link-warfare!
Mihai
· 2 years ago
that's crazy. there's no way to evaluate in a fair way. This will only make webmasters hide the paid links better. Right now they are all in once place. We should expect to see paid links hidden in text. Actually we'll just guess, because they will not be disclosed.
shopautodotca seocontest
· 2 years ago
Google should concentrate on comment spam and forget about paid links the are going to make a lot of webmaster angry and they may replace their adsense ads with yahoo network ads
Tim
· 2 years ago
You are correct. I don't think google is thinking throught he end game on this. Right now, many webmasters and bloggers have disclosure policies on-site and in-post for paid links and reviews. If google ever tweaks their algorithm to penalize these sites, paid links won't go away - they'll just be undisclosed. I know I can work paid links into my content seamlessly right now, but I just prefer to be transparent and honest.
Your point about relevancy is key. It's not as though there are a bunch of ads for life insurance websites that are using anchor text that applies to florida orange juice - they use anchor text for life insurance to improve their SERPs for those phrases. If people want to report others, report them for irrelevant linking practices.
Mihai
· 2 years ago
I agree about the fact that people should report irrelevant links. It would be a lot easier to determine irrelevant links for a bot, and the results would be fair. Actually this could be done even without the need for people to report. How hard it would be to determine if link anchor and the content of the page where the link is or even the content of more pages on the site, is similar to the page or site where the link is pointing? Maybe this would be too costly for google....
Arstan
· 2 years ago
Google instead of penalizing the sites for paid links, must consider giving those links less ranking and give more to normal links.
This way, the advertisers are happy, they still get their PR links and the bloggers are happy to hold on to link selling incomes.
Mihai
· 2 years ago
No, that's not good, it's almost the same thing with what they are doing now.
Mihai
· 2 years ago
I don't think concentrating would help in any way. What could they do? start a service like akismet ? Google will make webmasters angry but I don't think they will switch to yahoo ads or at least not because of this policy.
All Comments
Your point about relevancy is key. It's not as though there are a bunch of ads for life insurance websites that are using anchor text that applies to florida orange juice - they use anchor text for life insurance to improve their SERPs for those phrases. If people want to report others, report them for irrelevant linking practices.
How hard it would be to determine if link anchor and the content of the page where the link is or even the content of more pages on the site, is similar to the page or site where the link is pointing? Maybe this would be too costly for google....
This way, the advertisers are happy, they still get their PR links and the bloggers are happy to hold on to link selling incomes.