Google To Penalize Sites That Pay For Links

[dotcomdesigns]

Many of you might have seen some debate about Google asking webmasters to report sites that pay for links to increase their page rank. Debate has been raging since Matt Cutts from Google posted on his blog for people to rat on sites buying links!!

It concerns me as we directory owners are looking to earn an income from selling sponsored or featured listings. I don't expect it to affect our directories and their rankings but this sort of news could put off webmasters upgrading their links in our directories for fear of being labelled as buyers of links!

It seems to be a very grey area and Matt Cutts has had a lot of dirt thrown his way with this announcement. It;s interesting how Google make billions from raising revenue through sellings ads on the site but if we do it we get penalized for it. Anyway things don't look so bad as Google have responded about directories:

In answer to reporting paid links:
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Are you interested in hearing about directories in this report?
A: Nope, I’d be most interested in feedback like the examples that I mentioned above, or things like paid posts that might affect search engines. If you’re still unsure what sort of reports we’d like to get, that’s okay. Fortunately, the vast majority of people sending in reports are on the same wavelength and are sending in solid feedback like the examples above.
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More...
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A: I’ll try to give a few rules of thumb to think about when looking at a directory. When considering submitting to a directory, I’d ask questions like:
- Does the directory reject urls? If every url passes a review, the directory gets closer to just a list of links or a free-for-all link site.
- What is the quality of urls in the directory? Suppose a site rejects 25% of submissions, but the urls that are accepted/listed are still quite low-quality or spammy. That doesn’t speak well to the quality of the directory.
- If there is a fee, what’s the purpose of the fee? For a high-quality directory, the fee is primarily for the time/effort for someone to do a genuine evaluation of a url or site.
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So clearly paid submissions in directories are acceptable but you need to make sure that sites are of decent quality. Tons of links to poor quality sites will look like a FFA spammy directory and could damage your rank on Google.

[robin2]

This is indeed good news and as you say 'Google make billions from raising revenue through sellings ads' so it the only fair conclution to come too.

FFA spammy directory and could damage your rank on Google.

Can I add:
As well as driving away the valued customers that dont want to be associated to a 'FFA spammy directory'

[Shunny]

What's a spammy directory again ? And what's its definition ? And who sets the rules for the definition ? Sounds to me like some sort of social closure to people setting up directories. " Tons of links to spammy sites" ? Sounds unfair to some sites trying to get their foot in the door. What to do ? I don't know.

[dotcomdesigns]

Yeah I've been wondering how Matt Cutts comes out with a statement like

'Does the directory reject urls? If every url passes a review, the directory gets closer to just a list of links or a free-for-all link site.
- What is the quality of urls in the directory? Suppose a site rejects 25% of submissions, but the urls that are accepted/listed are still quite low-quality or spammy. That doesn’t speak well to the quality of the directory.'

How does Google know if I reject websites or not let alone what %. How can they tell if a site reviews every link submission and rejects some.

But I'm now going to be a little stricter and only allow better quality sites to be listed in my directory. It's a concern that's for sure and still nobody knows what the hell Google are saying or implying.

[SkGold]

Obviously Google cannot do it algorithmically (and never will)
So Matt Cutts asked people to report it.
It is when Google asking for help and the way they are doing it.

[Sai_dallas]

Is he the chicken ass of google?

Hate that f**

I spent lot of money buying links for my sites and when I get to see some money this moron came with this idea and now no one is buying links.

I am just F888ed.

Thanks to my son Matt

[bfarrell]

All of this is old news. Google has long stated that buying links for PR is against their policy and is viewed as blackhat manipulations to scam their algorithm. They, Google, have the wish to deliver search results based upon natural/organic results. PR was one of the factors that helped determine that. I say "was" as it has been evident over the last several years now that PR has less and less to do with rankings. They only people I see anymore who care about PR are those selling links based upon PR.

My first site I spent a lot of time to build backlinks for PR. The most recent I built no backlinks. One ranks #1 for its niche, the other, right underneath it about two listings down. Content and relevancy are the keys.

Google does not have a problem with charging for reviews, banners, featured listings and such. That is normal business activities that one would expect. It is the selling of high PR links to falsely tweak their serp's that is the problem. The goal is natural linking because other web sites respect your content and provide back links as a service to their visitors.

Here is their latest campaign to clean up the serps-
http://www.isedb.com/db/articles/1656/

This is particularly good news for many reasons. The MFA's waste time and are misleading. Not to mention it pisses me off to find my own content being scraped for someone else's benefit as if it was their own.

I delete every site I can for doorways, adsense, rss only content, Google search toolbars dressed up to look as their own search engine, free hosted, single page, free articles for content, etc. Some "industries" are fraught with bs sites. Finance, pharmaceuticals, real estate, gambling, etc. If the site cannot stand on its own merits and redirects away, I just delete it out. I know some have slipped by me, lots of creative scammers out there. But I learn more daily and will go back in and delete in mass in the near future.

If gets frustrating when one thinks of the work and effort to create a clean site with real content and you have to compete against manipulated sites. There are lots of ways to legitimately increase your serp's. The only problem is it all takes time and effort. Some niches require a lot of time and effort. I think directories are one of the harder ones. Lots of directories out there.

If you are in this for the long term and build your listings steadily, it will pay off. But it is a known fact that most free directories fizzle out due to the amount of work and time it takes to reach the point to be able to monetize the directory. You see it all the time in the forums for directory owners, no longer free, no linger processing submissions, broken links, etc.

[Shunny]

Should we be using the rel="nofollow" attribute for paid links ?

[SkGold]

Originally Posted by Shunny

Should we be using the rel="nofollow" attribute for paid links ?

Who is going to pay for such links?

[Shunny]

People who just want to advertise their site for the purpose of receiving some traffic and exposure.