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How Much Are ‘Link Condoms’?
The paid link controversy got deliciously nasty yesterday at the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose.
Google’s Matt Cutts joined other industry leaders on a panel called “Are Paid Links Evil?”
Google basically wants web sites to avoid passing along PageRank if they sell links. In other words, if a page has a good reputation (an authority site defined by its high PageRank) and you get links from it, your site may benefit because links influence natural search engine rankings. Google may penalize portions of web sites or ban them for allowing other web sites to simply pay for a link to pick up some of that PageRank.
Cutts said that only encourages off-topic and questionanable web sites to litter the search results. When he suggested technical ways web sites can prevent PageRank from being shared with another site (i.e. the “nofollow” tag), he got funny response.
“I shouldn’t have to put a link condom on the damn link,” panelist Greg Boser of WebGuerrilla insisted when he got his turn.
Boser and other panelists like Michael Gray of GrayWolf’s SEOÂ Blog brought up excellent points, including the fact that many paid links are relevant and that web site developers shouldn’t have to go out of their way to adjust code. While some paid links are easy (give me money and I’ll link to you), other paid links require an editorial review before a directory, for example, agrees to add your web site.
Todd Malicoat of Stuntdubl went so far as to tell Cutts that it’s hypocritical of Google to accept money from link brokers who advertise on Google. It’s out of Cutts’s hands, but he pledged to see what he could do about that.
The power and influence of Google seemed to annoy Gray who kept playing up the fact that Google is not the government. “They may buy the government, who knows?” Gray said during the discussion.
I personally have no problem with paid links. Relevancy is everything. I don’t think we should encourage our clients to just get a bunch of links without any sense of where they’re going to appear.
Google seems to be dead serious about this issue and apparently is checking sites that offer paid links and judging them by the nature of the web sites they link to. Google won’t say it, but I imagine there is a bit of safety for legitimate, relevant links. Too many big web sites and those with important information could be senseless victims in this mess when Google created the PageRank tool and admitted links influence search results. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like Google will rule out penalizing web sites that benefit from the links rather than just focus on the ones who offer them.
Panelists just want the market to prevail. If links get expensive, people may back off.
In the end, Google can do what it wants. Until then, I suggest targeting free and paid links that deliver traffic regardless of how they help you rank.
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