Mindy Gofton

Like Me? Follow Me.

Matt Cutts, Google's spam cop and chief PR blogger posted a response yesterday to an article about "sponsored" blog posts. According to Cutts, paid blog posts are fine - as long as they don't pass page rank. Simply put - if someone pays you to review their site/product/service you have to add a rel="nofollow" attribute to any links to their site or Google might penalise you - if they find out.

So, here's the scenario. WidgetWorld is a new e-commerce site in need of exposure and good press. WidgetWorld does a couple of online press releases, submits themselves to a few key directories but still isn't bringing in much traffic.

WidgetWorld needs links to compete with his competitors WidgetKing and WorldOfWidgets and other, older, sites but can't get links unless he's ranking in search engines - unless he goes begging for them. Most webmasters, however, aren't going to take the time to look at his website, much less put up a link for no reason.

So instead he starts emailing bloggers asking them to review his site or his products - except all his emails get ignored. Finally, he thinks he's found a great idea - he asks a couple of bloggers if he can sponsor a post about his site.

One of the bloggers, from WidgetBlog, takes him up on his offer and when the blogger starts looking at WidgetWorld, he finds it's a really great site with good content, a nice range of widgets on offer and at really good prices so he provides a great writeup - wholeheartedly recommending the site - and gets paid as well.

Then the owner of WidgetKing gets annoyed because WidgetWorld is moving up the rankings and taking some of his business, so he reports both WidgetWorld for buying links and WidgetBlog for selling links without using rel="nofollow". Google penalises both sites. WidgetWorld goes bust and WidgetBlog's readership drops massively.

Is this really fair?

Ok, yeah, some paid reviews are ridiculous - the examples Matt Cutts' cites in his post are particularly nefarious. But on the whole, if I, as a blogger, choose to review a site and get remunerated for it and I recommend that site to others because I think it's a good site - why should I be penalised? Why are good bloggers and legitimate businesses who are just trying to market their sites effectively being punished for the actions of a bunch of spammers?

If Google's algorithm is really that good, why can't it tell that a site that does a post on colonic irrigation one day, debt relief the next and brain surgery the day after is probably a splog whereas a blog that writes solely about widgets - and sometimes reviews widget-based shops or products - is a legitimate site?

And, where does Google draw the line? Is it ok for gadget bloggers to receive free products to review but not ok for for a gadget shop to sponsor a gadget blog and get the occasional plug? Michael Gray makes a very convincing argument that any form of "freebie" is, essentially, payment so pretty much every review on the internet should not pass link weight.

While Google has a right to decide which sites appear in its index, it needs to stop dictating how the economy of the web should work in order to cover up a flaw in their own algorithm. By doing so they are affecting the ability of small businesses to compete effectively and of webmasters to decide which websites they believe are worth a "vote."

Tags: Google, Linkbuilding, Small Business

Discussion

Posted by Michael Martinez on Mar 3rd, 2009
When Matt Cutts speaks, people listen. It's just a shame that Matt Cutts doesn't practice what he preaches.

Matt Cutts doesn't disclose a lot of information when he tells people they need to follow Google's guidelines.

Paid links predate Google -- they are a normal part of the Web economy and there is nothing wrong with them. Paid links help many Web sites promote themselves and paid links help many Web sites earn income.

There is no legal requirement (under U.S. law) to disclose through the use of "rel='nofollow'" or any special notice that a link was paid for. Under U.S. government policy links are NOT ENDORSEMENTS, so unless a paid post actually offers an endorsement there is no legal reason for anyone to include a statement of disclosure about a paid link.

Google has argued for years that links are votes -- but Google no longer allows all links to pass value. Many Web sites where people can place their own links now routinely implement "rel='nofollow'" on user-generated content. While this makes sense for comments in blogs and forums, it doesn't make sense for user account pages. Nonetheless, because of Google's bullying, a lot of social media sites have capitulated for fear of being delisted by Google.

The good news for Webmasters is that Google is not the only search engine. Hundreds of millions of people use other search engines every month. There is plenty of traffic flowing from those other search engines and people don't have to worry about Google burying them on the Internet.

Google, on the other hand, needs to start disclosing relevant information to its users, including:

1) That its Webmaster guidelines are designed to enhance Google's profitability
2) That its Supplemental Index exist
3) That Supplemental Index listings are shown AFTER main index listings
4) That Google is artificially promoting less relevant content to the top of its search results
5) That most links don't pass value in Google's index
6) That Google has been waging a propaganda campaign to shore up the artificial importance of PageRank
7) That the Math Union published a study showing that citation-based ranking systems like PageRank do not provide acceptable quality measurement
8) That when Google penalizes major "brand" sites those penalties are quietly lifted regardless of whether the brand sites honor Google guidelines

These types of disclosures will help Google level the playing field. Google has been unfairly leveraging its name and visibility to bully and trick people into believing that they need to disclose paid links through use of "rel='nofollow'".
Posted by Adrian Berry on Mar 4th, 2009
"When Matt Cutts speaks, people listen. It's just a shame that Matt Cutts doesn't practice what he preaches."

Absolutely true Michael - remember the rush to "page sculpt" that happened after Matt's post? The majority of people I know who went down this route have pretty much wasted their time trying to push PR to specific web pages with little or no result.

Personally I take what Matt says with a pinch of salt - after all Google (quite sensibly) doesn't give away even half of its secrets to me and you.
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