Paid Links Bad in Google's Eyes

Google continues to give a sore thumb about passing Page Rank to paid link and Matt Cutts as requested that webmaster to use the 'nofollow' attribute to the link for them. Matt Cutts work for Google's quality team specializing in search engine optimization issues.

The problem is that paid links have a long history of annoying Google due to the way they can affect organic rankings.

This year has been very large in terms of webmasters using paid links to get Page Rank. Google's crackdown on sites using these links without a 'nofollow' tacked onto them means more websites will see the dreaded reduction in their PageRank as punishment.

Matt wrote about this at the Google Webmaster Central blog and his personal site. A couple of essential points he made will stand out for webmasters:

Q: Is Google trying to tell webmasters how to run their own site?

A: No. We're giving advice to webmasters who want to do well in Google. As I said in this video from my keynote discussion in June 2007, webmasters are welcome to make their sites however they like, but Google in turn reserves the right to protect the quality and relevance of our index. To the best of our knowledge, all the major search engines have adopted similar positions.

Q: Is Google trying to crack down on other forms of advertisements used to drive traffic?

A: No, not at all. Our webmaster guidelines clearly state that you can use links as means to get targeted traffic. In fact, in the presentation I did in August 2007, I specifically called out several examples of non-Google advertising that are completely within our guidelines. We just want disclosure to search engines of paid links so that the paid links won't affect search engines.

Several webmaster's comments on the post within Webmaster central blog, which to a stand to the paid link situation, so some arguments about being penalized without cause. I specific commenter one blog he received the PR 0 hit and he has never bought or sold a link.

Google isn't worried about if someone's site gets notices in the search results or not. The other major search engines also share this same view. To them, paid links skew what searchers see, and not always to the searcher's benefit.

An example that Matt Cutt's gave was on doing a search on the very serious topic of cancer-fighting radiosurgerery and the results bring up useless and misleading information because paid links pass Page Rank..

Basically this is Google's rule use paid links without identifying them and you will get penalized. This cause and effect rule angers webmasters who what to have a high Page Rank in the world's largest search engine.

In turn this is a side effect of Google's attack on unrelated or useless content. One must understand that Google is a business, not a public domain, even if it looks that way to the common user. Google makes the rules for Search Engine Page Rank same as other search engines do, and work with them mean following them, or go to the bottom of list.