Google and Paid Links

There's been a lot of controversy lately over the issue of paid links. Actually, paid links have always been somewhat controversial but the embers of the flame were given new breath recently when Google engineer, Matt Cutts, the public face of Google for many and the head of the SE's antispam department, announced a couple of things. One, that google was going to be taking a harder look at paid links in the relative near future and, Two, that webmasters could use Google's Spam report to snitch on websites that sell links.

What is Google asking for, in a nutshell? This is what they want. If you sell links, in the form of advertising links or paid reviews, those links should be marked with the "nofollow" attribute. This is a way of telling the search engine that the link is not equivalent to casting a vote in the search engine's algorithmic ranking system, which is heavily dependent on both links and the anchor text used in links. Using the rel=nofollow attribute, according to Google, will allow webmasters to monetize their sites without engaging in manipulation of the search results.

How do webmasters feel about the nofollow issue? Well, there are two sides to the coin.

The first is that nofollow is a good thing because A. it allows webmasters to earn money from advertising links and paid reviews without running the risk of having their ability to pass pagerank (i.e. reputation) being stripped from them (always a possible repercussion) and B. it may potentially remedy the situation that exists in many content niches where larger sites with defined advertising budgets are effectively able to buy their way to the top of the SERPS (search engine result pages)...while smaller sites that cannot afford to engage in link buying may, consequently, suffer (by having these other sites springboard over them).

The second side of the coin regards preserving the ability of webmasters to sell advertising links on their site and make a living from their content and page creation. On this side, many webmasters passionately argue that if nofollow is placed on their outgoing advertising links those links become worthless and unsaleable.

Now, why would this be the case? In other words, why would the addition of nofollow to advertising links (or paid reviews) make those links of lesser value or potentially worthless? Here's why: 99% of the time, advertising links are not purchased for all the wonderful traffic they will deliver. Instead, they are purchased because A. acquiring additional links with B. the right anchor text, C. from sites that have an appreciable amount of pagegrank---(drumroll please)---will D.generally have the effect of elevating the targeted site (the buyer of the advertising links) in the SERPS.

Webmasters who have been in the game long enough are well aware of this reality. And if you gathered 100 webmasters and asked them how much actual traffic they received from their directory submissions (arguably a form of link buying since most directories accept most applications for admission), most, or nearly, all, would explain that they get almost no traffic from the directories they have submitted their sites to. And this would typically include even the best known directories, such as the ODP (the open directory project at www.dmoz.org) and the Yahoo directory.

So, why do they buy their way into directories, or, for that matter, write articles for the purpose of syndication, or engage in reciprocal links? They do it to A. gain page rank, B. gain greater numbers of inbound links, and C. gain links with anchor text relevant to the search results they seek their sites to be visible in.

Google and the webmaster community are aware of this reality, the fact that the ranking system employed by Google is easily subject to manipulation (a good example is the term "miserable failure" which was targeted to a bio page of George Bush). In other words, the sites that appear in the top Google search results may not necessarily be the best sites for their content area (as determined by freely given, organic links that embody Google's ideal of what a link should really be: an intentional vote for a site). Instead, they may simply be those sites that had the ability to purchase more links by any one of a variety of link-buying methods.

And this is the crux of Google's leaning on paid links. Allowing the search engine results to be gamed by those who have advertising budgets is simply not in their (Google's) best interest. Why? Because, ultimately, users would arrive at a point where all top search results were dominated by lesser sites, a situation that might be met by users deciding to take their search activity elsewhere (remember Altavista?).

This supposition, of course, is dependent on accepting the notion that the best sites in any content niche tend to be those sites that people have freely linked to, as opposed to having been paid to link to. But it's a fairly valid concept. And even if users don't, by virtue of organic linking (freely given links that constitute votes), pick the best sites, few would argue that the best sites tend to be those who have risen to the top solely on the virtue of their advertising budgets.

In fact, quite the opposite is likley true as can be seen by the viral, word-of-mouth growth experienced by sites like Drudgereport, Digg, MySpace, YouTube, Ebay, Paypal, Aint it Cool News, and Craigslist. None of these sites rocketed to notoriety via the use of paid advertising, but, rather, become well-known sites on the virtue of word of mouth and freely given links.

And, ideally, of course, this is the way that Google would like all sites to rise (or not rise) in the SERPS. By the strenght of their content. Not the strength of their ad budgets.

The problem for Google, and other search engines, of course, is how to discern freely given links from paid links, because in the case of contextual links (links embedded in articles and blog posts) it can be virtually to tell the difference. A search engine would, in most cases, have to be able to read a webmaster's mind to learn whether or not a link was placed because A. the webmaster felt like linking or B. the webmaster was paid to place the link.

Thus, we see the current advocacy of nofollow by Google in the use of advertising links. And also the suggestion that webmaster's should rat each other out via the Google spam report.

Of course, if everyone followed Google's suggestion that nofollow be applied to paid links, Google would overnight be able to display results that were more natural and organic. Arguably superior.

The flip side to that coin, however, would be that many a webmaster would suddenly be in the position of no longer being able to monetize their websites and writing efforts, because the simple truth is this: in most cases, advertising links do not pay off in the form of more eyeballs (more traffic to the advertiser's site). Their true value, by great contrast, is in their ability to influence Google search results and push sites higher in the SERPS.

The unfortunate reality of the situation that is now emerging between webmasters and the largest search engine in the world is that the interests of webmasters (the ability to make a living from their efforts) are increasingly in opposition to the interests of Google, which seeks to display the best search results possible and, thereby, retain its commanding share of the search audience.

My opinion? Google is entitled to rank pages any way it sees fit, and webmasters have every right to find ways to be compensated for their work. The compatiblity of those aims, however, is, more and more, in question.

The best solution? Google should build a better, more intuitive search engine, one that actually understands the content that is being indexed, as opposed to one that relies entirely on linking behavior, i.e. data that is contributed by webmasters.