This could have been a paid review through ReviewMe, it was ordered a few days ago and I just haven’t had time to write something that warrants being paid for it, but I decided to write something for free.
If any of the Google Spam Team are reading this article, it was not paid for in any way and your bots can’t tell the difference because keyword analysis would pick up the specific words suggesting that there is some kind of disclosure for paid links.
My paid reviews are not cheap, but they are often worth it – people are paying me for my expertise and time, not for the editorial links. (I wonder if I could be placed on the “paid links whitelist”)
Note the $ amount displayed is what I would have received had I accepted this as a paid review.
Keyword Research Gadgets
Aaron from SEO Book provides lots of free SEO tools, and most of them are very useful and well written. In this case if Aaron is smart these tools might also include some affiliate links for the premium versions of some of the tools such as Wordtracker, but all the tools are very useful as a free version anyway. I haven’t checked for affiliate links, but I know hosting these tools does cost money so I hope Aaron makes something on the back end.
This Is What They Look Like On Your Site
As well as being able to include them on your Google desktop / iGoogle, you can also insert them as javascript on your site as a useful tool for your readers. This is much easier than installing Aaron’s scripts on your own site, though he makes those available for free as well.
Note: You will have to click through to see these
Include These On Your Site
Here is some code to include these on your own site, and for those smart people out there, they might notice a difference in the code that I am publishing to what Aaron has published. That hint is worth 1000s of $ to smart internet marketers.
The Keyword Research Tool
<p><script src="http://gmodules.com/ig/ifr?url=http://tools.seobook.com/google-gadgets/keywords.xml&synd=open&w=342&h=495&title=SEOBook+Competitive+%26+Keyword+Research+Tool&border=%23ffffff%7C3px%2C0px+solid+%23999999&output=js"></script><noscript><a href="http://tools.seobook.com/google-gadgets/">Free SEO Tools</a></noscript></p>
The Link Analysis Tool
<p><script src="http://gmodules.com/ig/ifr?url=http://tools.seobook.com/google-gadgets/link-data.xml&synd=open&w=342&h=350&title=SEOBook+Link+%26+Research+Tool&border=%23ffffff%7C3px%2C0px+solid+%23999999&output=js"></script><noscript><a href="http://tools.seobook.com/google-gadgets/">Free SEO Tools</a></noscript></p>
So this could have been a highly relevant paid review for some free tools, but I wrote about it for free.
Then again my last paid review for Aaron he linked to me and I didn’t pay for that and it probably sent me more traffic than I sent him.
This post will no doubt be an interesting test to see if Google assign any link authority to what its broken algorithms for paid links might detect as being a paid post.
20 Comments
What does the part where you say “& How To Confuse The Google Bot” have to do with anything?
I am confuse about that…
Sean a lot of what I write is also to test how Google analyse and test certain content and it openly challenges some of Google’s stance on paid links.
This post was laced with keywords which would suggest this is a paid post, and it is written at a time and about a subject that other people might also be writing paid posts.
It will be interesting to see how Google treat this page in the future.
Some of your image links in the gadgets don’t appear to be working, Andy. Aside from that, Google has said that paying for editorial review, such as Yahoo directory, is acceptable. It’s still all rather hypocritical and self-serving, but they make a distinction between editorial review and paid links.
Michael, if you read my writeup on the presentation at SES San Jose 2007 I did question why Lisa from Bruce Clay when live blogging referred to “PPP”
She confirmed in the comments that Matt Cutts used PPP on his slides.
PPP = PayPerPost
PayPerPost only provide services for editorial reviews at this time, not just paid links, so Google are clearly targetting paid reviews more than just paid links.
If you read Sphinn, there are also multiple stories about paid directories being kicked out of SERPs.
As for the bugs, both gadgets appear perfectly in my browser in both iGoogle and on this page using Firefox 2.0.0.6
Yeah, I know, Andy. You’re arguing against something I didn’t say. Google’s punishment of PPP is the same kind of hypocrisy I’m talking about. Do you think Google will punish botw.org? It’s a paid directory. Oh… but it uses Google Checkout! Well, I guess it’s okay, then! See what I mean? Hypocrites. Google should go after them, but they won’t. I’m on your side about this.
Well, that’s nice for you, isn’t it? >:)>
Google hasn’t said it, Matt Cutts did (and he has a disclaimer), but here is exactly what was said, emphasis mine.
The quality guidelines state
The story in Sphinn hasn’t reached a real conclusion yet (and no input from Matt Cutts)
Affected were:-
Your average mom and pop isn’t going to know the difference between them and “Best of the Web”
I do totally agree that it is hypocritical, and I personally would be more inclined sometime in the future to pay for reviews than buy a link in the Yahoo directory as I think a person doing a personal review is more likely to spend time on it than an intern at Yahoo, and such a review would also most likely send traffic.
Andy with all due respect but the images are not visible and among the 2 paragraphs of the whole post, one of it is to explain that it’s not a paid post.
Kind Regards
Dimis
Dimis
You might have Javascript switched off.
How Google treat this article will be an interesting experiment, and as you have read I didn’t have time to write a lengthy review so declined being paid for it.
The tools are highly relevant to my audience so despite not having time to write about them extensively, I wrote something about them for free.
It gives me an ideal opportunity to do some experimentation that a lot of my audience will appreciate.
If you do take my hint about the source code, the tip in there really is worth a lot of money and links to smart marketers.
well i see the difference in the code, but i don’t get it. does that mean i’m not smart?
Well one method gets you lots of juicy search engine spiderable links with the anchor text of your choice, and the other way doesn’t.
But how would this help anyone but Aaron in this case? Or was this a subtle hint to him that he should add in the noscript code and reap the benefits?
Mark I try to include some value in each post for as many people as possible. The keyword research tools are useful if you don’t have something better already.
The noscript hint is there for the more advanced users, though I have written before I would advise using another domain, or in Aaron’s case he is using a subdomain for his tools.
I am not sure whether Aaron will use this, he might not think he needs the links.
I definitely agree that his tools are greatly useful. I was only referring to the usefulness of the noscript code in my comment. You didn’t outline the usefulness of the ‘noscript’ tag to your readers so I thought you were hinting to Aaron to add it to his script.
I know that you mentioned it in this post, but maybe for the novices out there you could talk more about the noscript tag and its benefits when used properly unless you have a post on this already and I missed it somehow.
As always – Keep up the good work on your GREAT blog!
ah ha! i wasn’t thinking in such simple terms. doh!
It is quite simple but insanely powerful if you have it on 1000s of websites.
There is a reason why a site like Bidvertiser can rank well for both PPC Advertising and Make Money Online – Technorati do something similar as well.
OK, I have two lines of thought on this. (1) Google doesn’t seem to penalize for the stuff it (or Cutts) claims it does – evidence: sites I know that do paid reviews and paid links and continue to get more and more search traffic anyway. (2) A lot of people have been speculating that the PageRank toolbar update delay may be related to a crackdown on paid links – is there any chance the penalties just haven’t kicked in yet?
My guess is that you are trying to confuse the Google spam team with the keyword “paid reviews” that you seem to include a little too often?
And now I have added one more… ;)
So you believe that there is an algorithm checking for this keyword in Google?
The “internet police,” Google does it once again with even more contradictory guidelines.
While massive conflicts of interest abound with Google and its Partners, they continue to hinder legit marketers and webmasters.
…all in the name of, “fighting spam,” it reminds me of all the war crimes and human rights violations committed in the name of “fighting terrorism.”
Here is a thought Google: Fix one of the main driving forces behind spam, ADSENSE !
anyone want to start a site with me called “Google Bashing?”
i see the domain is already registered: http://www.googlebashing.com/
I don’t like the look of them at all. Google has managed to go against its own rules once again. When will this stop. Why doesn’t yahoo do something about this. These things really annoy me because little webmasters like me have absolutely no say at all.
Thanks for the info especially the q&a regarding Matt cutts. Any idea how to expedite geting listed with DMOZ?
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