Your recent decision to invoke a manual penalty on the download page for Google Chrome will have lasting ramifications for the whole of online marketing, whether display advertising, affiliate marketing, and other performance marketing such as CPA models, making many such business models unworkable.

Policing every piece of content produced by marketing partners (affiliates etc) on the offchance that they inadvertantly linked directly to the traffic or buzz benifitiary without using a nofollow or otherwise blocking the direct link is commercially untenable.

In the following video I have outlined what has led to this unreasonable decision being made, and elaborated a little on some of the commercial implications not just for competitors in the online advertising space, but even for Google services such as Google Publisher Network, Google Affiliate Network & Doubleclick.

Here is a 720p 1280×720 mp4 of the above video (looking forward to supporting this in a player real soon now)

Sincerely

Andy Beard

Here is a specific example

This is an Amazon widget

Wow it is promoting a really cool Google phone!

Here is another iframe creative

Here is a text only link

T-Mobile G2 with Google Android Phone (T-Mobile)

So far I haven’t broken Google’s new interpretation of the webmaster guidelines

I love Amazon

Oops… sorry Amazon that wasn’t an affiliate link, but an editorial link… Google will now feel that they have to remove the Amazon home page from the search engine results and Amazon won’t sell 20M Kindle Fires this year… Just 19.8M – or maybe 21M if they replace the Amazon home page with the Kindle Fire product page. (yes I realise they are very similar)

Whilst pureists might argue that this wasn’t a video CPA advert but an affiliate link, a huge amount of the sites that Google filtered this year as poor quality thin affiliates were using Amazon and other affiliate networks for monetization. The purpose quite often for the content was to drive traffic to the ads in small quantities.
At scale the revenue from 1000s of websites earning just a few dollars a month above the hosting and domain costs add up.

Another comparrison is Google’s own Adsense program and the vast numbers of poor quality sites that have arisen because of it. The good often (in search visibility) outweigh the junk MFA (made for adsense) sites, but it really is a chicken & egg situation. The webmasters target specific topics and even optimize content not just for SEO, but to pull up the highest paying and possibly even specific advertising creatives for products, maybe even video content, and they get paid for clicks on that content.
If I write a blog about Android phones and included an Adsense advert at the bottom of each post, allowed video and display ads, the situation wouldn’t be vastly different to some junk content followed by a video embed of a Google commercial I was being paid for on a CPA basis.

People in the past made complete websites dedicated to the promotion of Google pack, their Adsense program etc, and even offered incentives such as training in online marketing, or included the Adsense registration links as part of the course material… of course without disclosure as that wasn’t allowed.

Google… Please Reinstate Chrome

Here are the links referenced in the video

Matt’s post on Google+
Aaron’s's post Sponsored By Google that started this huge mess.
Danny’s post on all the thin content
Unruly Media is clearly CPA (grats on $25M funding guys)
Wikipedia on CPA (will Wikipedia be the only independent content site soon?)
Wikipedia on Online Marketing advertising models
Andrew Girdwood proving Google has used this form of CPA before
Danny with Google’s statement throwing their agency and Unruly under a bus
Google’s staement and effect (from Danny) – Statement saying this was a violation of their guidelines, possibly from someone who hasn’t read them recently.
My post on Google pack and word of mouth marketing
Google’s policy statement for their Google pack CPA campaign No mention of not giving editorial links etc
The CPA video embed (the iframe contents) – I am not going to drag an individual blogger who may have given a quite nice editorial link to Google Chrome through the coals
The Unruly Media terms of service which have now been enhanced – the nofollow statement is a new bullet point – it shouldn’t be needed as payment is not for the content of the blog post, or links, but based on CPA actions with the video.
Webmaster help forums on Affiliate links Google repeatedly avoids answering questions regarding the use of nofollow with affiliate links and other forms of display advertising.
How to report paid links and selling links that pass pagerank

Disclosure: I work for an online video & affiliate marketing startup called uQast but I am posting this on my personal blog and the words and opions expressed here are my own and my volition and not of my employer (does that remind anyone of Matt’s disclaimer?) – I have been involved in affiliate marketing for 7 years and the issues discussed here have been a topic of this blog since I started publishing it in 2005.

Small update: just added a download link for the MP4 version in HD 720p

Then the way Google worded this might be of interest.

We designed security into the extensions system from day 1 but we’re always looking for more ways to protect users. So, today, we are introducing two significant changes in the Google Chrome Extensions Gallery: a developer signup fee and a domain verification system.

The developer signup fee is a one-time payment of $5. It is intended to create better safeguards against fraudulent extensions in the gallery and limit the activity of malicious developer accounts. Starting today, this fee will be required to publish extensions, themes and soon apps in the gallery. We are waiving the fee for developers who already registered with the gallery (specifically before 11am PST today), so that they can continue to update their extensions and publish new items without paying the fee.

This isn’t something I would directly advocate, though I have strongly thought about providing a way for content/announcements to be submitted in the past, and I think it would be wise to have some barrier of entry/trust for those submissions, along with thorough editorial control.

I doubt whether the Google site passes any link juice to Chrome plugin authors but I bet they get tons of links in other ways. I think I would avoid PageRank passing links though I know a number of sites that charge for press release submissions, and many sites have community submissions that do pass PageRank.

Firstly I like linking to people who link to me, whether on the post they first wrote, or on the syndicated copy that now appears on SEOmoz, even when the name referenced is “Andy Beal”.

Google is going to have a hard time deciding which is duplicate content, and will probably pick the SEOmoz article because it is the domain with the most authority.

If you syndicate articles or blog posts, make sure they link back to the original version, whichever you consider original. I am not going to help Google, as I have linked to both.

Android vs Blackberry Smartphones

I probably know as much about smartphones as Matt Cutts does about… poodles (he is a cat lover)

I have a SIMM card with a 7 mbps connection, but purely as a backup or for when I am travelling around Poland and am somewhere I can’t get good wifi. The SIMM works in one of my wife’s cast off mobile phones in an emergency.

As detailed in the linked posts, Google gave away lots of Android mobile phones to developers. That is something I am very familiar with – I used to work in the games industry and among other things handled relationships with all the PC Manufacturers. AMD, Intel, Creative Labs, Nvidia, Matrox,  etc etc.

Even though NDAs have now expired (I think the longest was Intel’s at 5 years) I am not going to go into specific details but here are the challenges.

• Developers had to create custom code to support specific features – this could take days, weeks even months.
• The testing teams would have to text code in a matrix, combining various processors with graphics and sound cards
• The support teams would have to create documentation for each possible platform and potential conflicts

In those days we were working with multiple standards, processors had lots of proprietary 3D functions, graphics cards not only had different features, but also different graphics libraries to access them, 3DFX, OpenGL and DirectX, and even sound cards had different features and sound libraries.

Some might look on it as a lot of back scratching, but it was a symbiotic relationship – it probably still is.

Developers had early access to hardware, sometimes months, even a whole year in advance. Different terms were subject to negotiation, status etc.

In exchange there were lots of cross-marketing possibilities, certainly linking happened, but also branding on boxes, adverts, possible lucrative OEM deals etc.

Whilst this might seem to favor the larger development studios, and it did in some ways, ultimately small development studios, if they got on board could certainly gain a “leg up” from the hardware guys, and this is something I was very active to encourage.

Thus Google giving away a few hundred, even a few 1000 mobile phones is barely a grain of sand compared to what is given out behind the scenes.

Google I/O Was Press

From what I can see, there were tons of press representitives at Google I/O, they received tons of coverage from notable tech blogs.

Press have always received free samples of hardware, or at least most have, though many publications have rules about keeping the “gear”, auction it off for charity, give it away as prizes etc.

In doing so that can help them remain impartial because they are not keeping the item.

Paid Links

The paid links saga of 2007 didn’t really clear anything up and effectively swept issues under the table, with the untouchables remaining untouchable. Michael Gray is forced to nofollow advertiser links.

Payola or Blogola, whatever you wish to call it still exists, and is practiced by Google.

Affect on Search Results?

When Matt Cutts defends Google’s actions because Google doesn’t need links, that isn’t quite the whole truth.

It is quite true that Google doesn’t need to rank for “search engine” in Google

Here in Poland, a search for “Android” which used to be a very generic term, the first 4 results point to sites about Google’s Android operating system.

But Google doesn’t rank for Mobile Phone, and even their partner, HTC who made both the G1 and G2 handsets only rank 3rd for smartphone, using US Geolocation and personalized search off (not that I search for this topic… ever), with Blackberry in 2nd.
Actually that was yesterday, looks like HTC now rank 2nd, and Blackberry has been pushed down the results.

Here are the current results for various terms:-

Smartphone

http://www.google.com/search?q=smartphone&pws=0&gl=US

Smartphones

http://www.google.com/search?q=smartphones&pws=0&gl=US

Smart Phone

http://www.google.com/search?q=smart+phone&pws=0&gl=US

Smart Phones

http://www.google.com/search?q=smart+phones&pws=0&gl=US

HTC Cloaking

Just try accessing this link which is the one that appears in search results – certainly from Poland I end up on different pages, based upon IP.

http://www.htc.com/ (I nofollowed the link – I am not going to link to a Blackhat site that is cloaking)

It is cloaking – users see different pages compared to search engines, though I am sure their SEO team hate the flash.

I see an English language snippet, and land on their Polish language site /pl/

The only way to see the root domain is in the Google cache.

With Google buying them links all over the blogosphere, they don’t need to worry, they don’t even need to buy PPC advertising, unlike Blackberry.

In a battle where HTC have only 180K links and Blackberry have 300K+, visitor data suggests Blackberry is still killing HTC, and other factors, the notion that Google’s partner doesn’t need more links is harder to excuse.

Btw Blackberry sell Smartphones -and don’t cloak their Smartphone website

Palm also sell Smartphones, but aren’t going to get links such as Smartphone or Smartphones unless they fix their funny redirects as well.

Then of course there is the IPhone – it would make a great TV gadget using Boxee, but all the plans in Poland offer at most 5GB of data – not interested. At least when I seach for Apple or Iphone in Google, I get given a link in the search results which is the page I end up on (in Polish). When I search with US geolocation, I get the US result for Iphone, which I click on and get the appropriate landing page.

p.s. Google no longer remembering my search preferences such as &pws=0&gl=US in both Firefox and Chrome is annoying me severely, and almost seems to be a deliberate change in implimentation.

p.p.s. This post does not contain any links for which I have received financial compensation. I haven’t received any compensation for this post from HTC (for the SEO review), Palm and Blackberry (for the nice rich anchor text) – if any of them decide to send me a free phone that won’t influence me to write about them again, and the test period due to infrequent usage might last a few years… but I am a “software developer” and “technology blogger”.
SEOmoz, Michael Gray and Fantomaster have linked to me and tweeted about my posts from time to time.

p.p.p.s Disclaimer:- I don’t class myself as an SEO consultant, this post is my personal opinion, and Google is the final decision maker over whether their commercial partner (HTC) is cloaking or not, and defines what is or isn’t a paid link. Maybe a expert on search engine cloaking could offer some advice.

Update

Just so we are totally clear over what is or isn’t allowed under the Google Webmaster guidelines, here is what Google stated in their official blogpost on the webmaster blog.

Geolocation: Serving targeted/different content to users based on their location. As a webmaster, you may be able to determine a user’s location from preferences you’ve stored in their cookie, information pertaining to their login, or their IP address. For example, if your site is about baseball, you may use geolocation techniques to highlight the Yankees to your users in New York.

The key is to treat Googlebot as you would a typical user from a similar location, IP range, etc. (i.e. don’t treat Googlebot as if it came from its own separate country—that’s cloaking).

Here is the video they also included:-

The only way I could get to the page Googlebot sees was looking at a cache on Google

UK Smartphone SERPS

Lots of SEOs seem to think brands have been pushed to the front of the SERPs, but that certainly doesn’t seem to be the case in the UK with the #1 manufacterer of Smartphones pushed to the 4th page of the SERPs potentially because they use “legitimate” SEO practices (there are a few things that need to be cleared up, hope their SEO team are working on it)

IP delivery can have significant benefits – if a UK user is forced to visit the UK site, even when clicking through from a US search result, the default link they will use will be to the page for the UK.

It is something that can be done without breaking Google’s webmaster guidelines.

Update 2

More from Michael on Google Being Biased, plus a followup from Lisa on Google Profiling SEOs As Criminals

Silly me, I should have also linked to Rae’s Blackberry News site

Seems both of them overlooked HTC’s cloaking

With SmartPhones now being looked on as a necessity (at least in the US among Tech bloggers) there is obviously a huge competitive market, thus any search spam should be heavily monitored by Google.

As Techcrunch now has 2 million readers, many of them corporate, you would think they would be a little more careful publishing statements that are false, misleading or could seriously damage not just a single company, but a whole growing business sector, even if they clearly hate it. Opinion is one thing – stating facts that are wrong is in a totally different territory Here is an excerpt for the recent fluff piece for Brian Solis on Techcrunch

Seems simple enough, except two things are going to prevent this from effectively promoting the sponsoring brand over time — 1) disclosures read like warning signs; 2) Google is downgrading any blog or site that actively publishes paid content.

Sarah Lacey’s recent piece was fluff as well

Google has no stated problem with paid or sponsored reviews – with Google it has always been about machine readable disclosure of paid links i.e. use some way to block the links from counting such as rel=”nofollow”, javascript, block with redirect + robots.txt etc

I stated that Brian’s article was a fluff piece, because it is very easy to research, but here are a few choice articles.

Matt Cutts Interviewed By Eric Enge

More on Matts own blog

Paid posts should not affect search engines

Two search tidbits

Official Google Statements

Information about buying and selling links that pass PageRank

Google Webmaster Guidelines

Why Fluff Piece?

You would expect Brian to have mentioned something relating to nofollow or PageRank passing links

Techcrunch Make No Mention of Nofollow or PageRank Within Their Article

Paid Links From Techcrunch

Techcrunch for as long as I can remember have sold PageRank passing links as part of their advertising packages.

It isn’t something that is mentioned within their advertising material, but being a Techcrunch sponsor of one kind or another has its benefits, and Techcrunch despite repeatedly being nudged about it whenever they mention paid reviews, has never addressed the problem.

This is search spam

Our friends at the LeWeb conference, in Paris on December 9th and 10th, are going to be giving away one ticket to the TechCrunch reader who leaves the best comment about why they want to go (and includes a contact e-mail address). We are also excited that LeWeb’s organizers are offering TechCrunch readers a <a href="http://www.lewebparis.com/techcrunch.html">20% discount </a> Thank You LeWeb

Without our sponsors TechCrunch would not be possible. Accordingly, we want to thank the following sponsors for their support.

<a href="http://www.clarion.com/us/en/top.html">Clarion</a> is a leading manufacturer of car audio and video systems, marine audio products, navigation systems, and other multimedia products.

<a href="http://www.rackSpace.com/">RackSpace</a> a provider of managed hosting solutions

<a href="http://www.mediatemple.net/">MediaTemple</a> TechCrunch’s exclusive hosting provider, and a worldwide leader in managed hosting solutions across all major platforms

<a href="http://www.ebuddy.com/">eBuddy</a> a web and mobile instant messaging client with over 18 million users.

<a href="http://www.ironscale.com/">IronScale</a> the world’s first fully automated dedicated managed hosting solution

<a href="http://www.perflect.com/">Perflect</a> the makers of PSD2HTML and other solutions to turn design documents into W3C compliant XHTML

<a href="http://www.seesmic.com/">Seesmic</a> the video micro-blogging service that powers video commenting on TechCrunch

<a href="http://www.conduit.com/">Conduit</a>, the makers of the <a href="http://techcrunch.conduit.com/">Crunchbar</a>, and other toolbars

<a href="http://www.ServePath.com/">ServePath</a> the maker of GoGrid, the world’s first multi-server control panel that allows you to deploy cloud server networks in minutes

<a href="http://www.mpronto.com/">MailPronto</a> a hosted e-mail solutions provider

TechCrunch also is happy to announce two new sponsorship opportunities. First, <a href="http://www.crunchgear.com">CrunchGear</a> is publishing a <a href="http://www.crunchgear.com/tag/300-2008/">Holiday Gear Guide</a>, which is the perfect way for your company to reach people as they research their purchases this holiday season. Second, we are now offering a full banner (468×60) on TechCrunch’s RSS feed, which has over 1.2 million subscribers. If you are interested in either of these opportunities, please e-mail <a href="mailto:dan@techcrunch.com">Dan Kimerling</a>

It makes Google look stupid

How many of these articles (Techcrunch Search) thanking sponsors use nofollowed links?

Just Advertorials?

Techcrunch coverage always concentrates on paid reviews being advertorials or purchasing opinion, thus I would like to highlight 2 of my own paid reviews which totally fly-in-the-face of that theory.

WordPress SEO Masterclass – whilst this post needs to be revamped, as many of the topics discussed have now been borrowed, or expressed inaccurately by others, it still stands as one of the most in-depth tutorials on WordPress SEO.
It has been linked to by SEO experts, syndicated, and stood the test of time for 2 years… yet it was a paid review, written as a form of consultation.

Volusion Review & Suggestions – The suggestion by Brian Solis is that paid reviews are somehow biased – in reality, paid reviews can be anything but biased, or even less biased, because a reviewer with any integrity will ensure that their review is thorough and accurate, because it will be heavily scrutinized.
In many ways that is to the detriment of the site asking to be reviewed, if their are any holes a detailed review might uncover.

Fluff reviews are in my experience are frequently caused by:-

1. Blogger receiving a press release
2. Blogger spending 30 minutes glancing at a site
3. Rewriting the press release with a few screenshots to make it look pretty
4. Offering a flimsy opinion that they can easily reverse if put on the spot

Time = money – to write detailed reviews that have real opinion and give valuable feedback from an expert, often there needs to be some level of payola.

p.s. Brain did you and Techcrunch really pay $750 for the Forrester report?
p.p.s. Does Techcrunch pay for Comscore? (I have always wondered why they predominantly quote Comscore in posts)
p.p.p.s The nofollowed home link on Techcrunch is funny

Despite the headline, this article hasn’t been primarily SEOed to rank for either Brian Solis or Techcrunch (e.g. the title is spelt wrong, first link priority, optimized meta title etc)

Update

One of the biggest problems Google faces in its battle against paid links and PageRank passing links in sponsored reviews, paid posts, or whatever methods people come up with to gain an advantage in search engine rankings is knowledge and public awareness.

The feedback I have received from Brian Solis certainly suggests he was unaware of the intricacies of the paid link situation, both the technical aspects, and the specific statements from Google.

Michael Arrington, Techcrunch editor also left a comment looking for clarification which I am including below as a reference point.

I am going to address each paragraph in turn as a separate section of this update.

just twittered this as i think it’s a debate worth having. I wish you were a little less emotional about it but your arguments are interesting.

If Google isn’t downgrading sites with paid content I didn’t know about it. Am looking into that now. IMO they should be.

On the links on TechCrunch, you make a pretty aggressive statement “Techcrunch for as long as I can remember have sold PageRank passing links as part of their advertising packages.” Please show me evidence of that.

Having a link in an ad to MediaTemple, or whoever, that links to MediaTemple, isn’t a search scam. It’s just linking to an advertiser. Now if the keyword was “hosting” or something like that I’d agree that it would be inappropriate. But its just a site name being linked to a site name. A search for Media Temple on Google that shows Media Temple’s site is a good thing, and I don’t think our ads are designed to create any deception there.

If i’m missing something please let me know. Would be happy to continue the conversation. I’m at editor at techcrunch, please email me if you follow up here so I can come back.

I really want to have a constructive conversation on this issue.

Emotional?

just twittered this as i think it’s a debate worth having. I wish you were a little less emotional about it but your arguments are interesting.

How emotional are people about the current financial crisis and losing their jobs, and ability to put food on the table?

Whilst I haven’t written any form of sponsored review for probably close to 18 months, that doesn’t mean I have abbandoned the option – I have a lot less time available to blog, and more refined goals partially enabled by the clearing up of a number of issues around the treatment of paid links, and more specifically affiliate links.

That being said, hundreds of thousands rely in part on the income they can make writing paid reviews. If inaccurate coverage of Google’s treatment of paid links is left without challenge, that could be harmful to their income.

If job losses in the Tech sector or auto industry are something people get emotional about, you can bet a reduction in income, either part or full time, is something people will get emotional about.

However in this post I am effectively just a mouthpiece for those whose voices would otherwise remain unheard.

Downgrading  Sites?

If Google isn’t downgrading sites with paid content I didn’t know about it. Am looking into that now. IMO they should be.

Google have “downgraded” sites for paid reviews purely due to PageRank passing links. Most believe the downgrading is purely cosmetic (reduction in the toolbar pagerank displayed).

I have data which strongly suggests that Google can target both whole sites and individual pages, preventing them passing on PageRank both internally and externally.

That in itself may not reduce site traffic significantly, but it can certainly unbalance efforts to control PageRank flow and indexing within a large site.

I have no data to suggest that companies buying paid reviews have seen massive downgrades in their rankings – it is hard to isolate the data if they are also undertaking other marketing efforts.

Google has mainly penalized those selling PageRank passing links in one way or another, though even 18 months after they had the first major clampdown (Oct 2007), they are still not amazingly good at detecting paid links – even with the human element of the penalty process I have seen claims of false positives, and I am sure the process is labour intensive.

Techcrunch Selling Links

On the links on TechCrunch, you make a pretty aggressive statement “Techcrunch for as long as I can remember have sold PageRank passing links as part of their advertising packages.” Please show me evidence of that.

Firstly that isn’t the statement I made, as there were words which followed.

Techcrunch for as long as I can remember have sold PageRank passing links as part of their advertising packages.

It isn’t something that is mentioned within their advertising material, but being a Techcrunch sponsor of one kind or another has its benefits, and Techcrunch despite repeatedly being nudged about it whenever they mention paid reviews, has never addressed the problem.

I need to clarify that statement as I am sure someone will try to pick holes in it.

In December 2007 for at least one post, Techcrunch did nofollow links when thanking sponsors. It was such a notable event that I blogged about it and I am pretty sure I was the first to blog about it.

It was also mentioned by Michael Gray, and both posts were linked to from the Search Engine Land 2007 Roundup on Paid Links

The Search Engine Land Roundup is a good birds-eye-view, and notable because it was written by ex-Googler Vanessa Fox – whilst she had been out of Google for a while, I am sure she still had a good measure of the “pulse”.

Whilst it is possible that Michael Arrington didn’t read any of the above, or the 10s, possibly 100s of blog comments that mentioned it on the Techcrunch blog, repeatedly, every time he attacked paid blogging services in one way or another, that is just plausable deniability.

To get some idea of how many advertisers think, you only need to read a few blog posts about buying links, and how to do it under the radar. The fact that it is under the radar doesn’t mean it isn’t buying links.

Linkfluence: How to Buy Links With Maximum Juice and Minimum Risk

How to: Buy Links Without Being Called a Spammer

8 Ways to Buy Links Without “Buying Links”

What percentage of a purchase decision, or just some purchase decisions revolves around the added benefit of links from “sponsor thanks” posts, increased chance of editorial mention (possibly just due to increased brand awareness) is impossible to quantify, but it would certainly be part of the thought process for some brands.

It would probably be exactly the same though process as people contemplating paid blog reviews with a look to gain not just increased awareness, maybe a little traffic, but also a bit of long lasting link juice.

No Anchor Text

Having a link in an ad to MediaTemple, or whoever, that links to MediaTemple, isn’t a search scam. It’s just linking to an advertiser. Now if the keyword was “hosting” or something like that I’d agree that it would be inappropriate. But its just a site name being linked to a site name. A search for Media Temple on Google that shows Media Temple’s site is a good thing, and I don’t think our ads are designed to create any deception there.

This has to be a little geeky, but the short answer – anchor text is just one of hundreds of factors

Even links without any anchor text at all have value

Here is a link to the old “Ranking Factors”  compiled 2 years ago and due for an update

http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors

Some SEOs would state that the proximity of words to that URL would have an effect, that the keywords in the URL have an effect, and none would argue that that link passes PageRank, various authority traits, temporal traits etc.

The link has real value.

Here is a link that possibly doesn’t have value. It is an affiliate link to Stompernet’s excellent SEO Training Course which you can get for $1, in the hope that you also remain a subscriber to their Net Effect magazine which is full of great cutting edge training.

https://stompernet.infusionsoft.com/go/S2SL/SN347

It is obviously an affiliate link, it passes through a 3rd party tracking link, it does a 302 redirect rather than 301 (not always a factor) – most of the time I “nofollow” affiliate links when I remember, though Google have stated at conferences that they don’t have a requirement to do so.

Best Practice

• In content – Use tracking links such as those provided by OpenX – the links get blocked by robots.txt, but you should always still nofollow them, or you create hanging/dangling pages
• Sidebar Advertings - Use tracking links such as those provided by OpenX – the links get blocked by robots.txt, but you should always still nofollow them, or you create hanging/dangling pages – if you are using javascript, this isn’t an issue

• The advice is exactly the same for both scenarios
• Advertisiers get traffic stats
• You get valuable business intelligence from the click tracking which has value in itself, but also for content choices.
• No problems from Google, or criticism from the blogosphere

Read Write Web currently do a pretty good job of this after I nudged them about it, and refined the system when they started using OpenX links within the content, though a few links to content still slip through, which should possibly be nofollowed.

There are big problems still within the whole paid link debate

• Unequal treatment – some blogs seem to be above the “Google law”
• Grey areas – there still isn’t an official statement I can point to from Google about Affiliate links being ok, and there are “clean” affiliate links with the tracking on the back end. What counts as paid PageRank passing links is never exactly specified, they can’t cover every form of payola.

I am quite confident if PPP bloggers had included a banner in their sidebar for every website they wrote about, even for just 1 week, Google would have still slammed them.

It will be quite time consuming going through 100s of posts adding nofollows to historical advertisers who received a link – I did publish a WordPress plugin that could have handled it, along with complete disclosure and even more advertiser exposure, all fully automatic, but I abandoned the project over a year ago – no matter what the FTC say, nothing will be done to police best practice, and bloggers are not interested in best practice.
I spent $3000 hiring a programmer to create a plugin that no one wanted.

Bonus Tips

Techcrunch have been attacking Last.fm over data sharing, but in many ways bloggers are worse.

• Subscribe to comments doesn’t comply with Can Spam
• Data sharing with 3rd party services across borders, including email address and IP (comment spam plugins)
• How many bloggers have a privacy policy? It is actually a requirement for Google, but should also cover tracking, comment spam, advertisers etc.
• Content ownership of comments?

There are all kinds of things that in many ways are much bigger issues than whatever the FTC has to say on WOMM

Update 2 – False Information Spreads By Copying Techcrunch

This is just unreal, or the negative side of extremely bad information spread virally.

Businessweek just published an article on paid reviews, quite well researched, but they stole a sub-headline from Brian Solis’ Techcrunch piece.

“Google Downgrades Paid Blog Entries”

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/may2009/tc20090518_532031.htm

Yes that is a nofollowed link to a very bad article, I really should nofollow the Techcrunch links as well, but Michael did take the time to comment and learn, and hopefully will write some kind of followup.

The best way to guest post on my blog is just to write a great comment.

Wide Circles ( http://www.widecircles.com/ nofollowed link for good reason) have a number of offerings.

• Forum sigs – this for me is a grey area, I know many forums that allow affiliate links in sigs, and there is a market for forum sig links on some of the large webmaster forums, though they don’t offer much traffic or juice benefit. I suppose they are good for sites that can’t get better links.
• Comment spam – this takes the form of a social signature (again a nofollow link), leaving a link underneath a name when leaving a comment. They do stress that commenters
  should check the rules for each site before spamming them.
• Wiki spam – they add links to pages or create new pages – some SEOs are going to thing “great – cool service”

They also list general comments, guestbooks, polls and classified ads

You will find blogs that will allow a link to be left under a name, especially when a link field is not provided. The problem is that these fields are specifically intended to link back to a person’s own site and where they are not present a link drop as part of a sig though accepted, would still be expected to link to something related to the person leaving the comment.

This helps other readers find out who they are, what might influence their perspective, and might even be looked on as a method of indirect disclosure, as long as there is an easy to find disclosure statement for anyone clicking through.

Evidence For The Prosecution

Exhibit A

This comment was posted on a post about Blogrush

wide circles or widecircles is really great service http://www.wide circles.ca

Exhibit B

To add insult to injury, this was posted on my post slamming the practice of comment spam as part of internet marketing mentoring programs

wide circles or widecircles is really a great service indeed http://www.wide circles.com

Note: I added a space in the urls above to ensure even on splogs they get no link credit

Both comments came from the same person using the following IP
(IP: 68.145.66.81 , S0106001839263935.cg.shawcable.net)

Maybe I should contact Shaw Communications Inc. about abuse, though I am not sure ISPs look on comment spam as seriously as email spam. It did get sent to my email address however, and if I was using subscribe to comments, it might have gone to 50+ email subscribers.

The legal issues around blog comment spam can start getting nasty.

They also make fun claims such as

This single signature with the link can attract many users who are intrested to find out about the service or product being offered and it will also help with search engine optimization strategy and rankings, since every comment made by our publisher is esentially different.

…complete with their spelling errors.

Anyone using the comment spam service is lining themselves up for a reputation management disaster, because just like I am making this blog post about Wide Circles, other people don’t like being spammed either.

It was just a couple of weeks ago that I headed off a rather delicate situation with the mentoring programs comment spam. Shawn, one of my regular readers and a SEO in Scotland was getting sick of comment spam coming from these so called “internships” and was quite prepared to go on the warpath..

I advised caution, because other than the mentorship programs, the people involved are actually quite legitimate marketers, and contacted a mutual friend to see if things could be handled more diplomatically. The jury is out on that still.

Another thing to be cautious about, these are paid links, even the forum links, and Google are always on the lookout for link buying, especially on obvious web destinations such as popular webmaster forums.

This isn’t the only incident today. I had another one where I caught a SEO linkbuilding for a client – I just contacted his boss – link building through comments is extremely risky both for the client and service provider.

It is especially risky on SEO blogs, and many dofollow bloggers are very well aware of all the tricks – they know their regular readers.

I have argued in the past that paid blog comments can be legitimate, but it is under very specific circumstances, that Wide Circles just does not meet.

Judith at SEO Chicks was looking at the new UK Unfair Trading Regulations

Here is a link to the official guidance (PDF).

What follows are my own notes whilst reading through the document, which I thought some readers might find useful, though you should read it in full if you trade from the UK (maybe 400+ subscribers)

6 BANNED PRACTICES (SCHEDULE 1)

(7) Falsely stating that a product will only be available for a very limited
time, or that it will only be available on particular terms for a very limited
time, in order to elicit an immediate decision and deprive consumers of
sufficient opportunity or time to make an informed choice.

A trader falsely tells a consumer that prices for new houses will be
increased in 7 days time, in order to pressurise him into making an
immediate decision to buy.

That hits 50% or more of long page sales letters and many Product Launch Formula tactics such as closing the doors then reopening just a few days later after a “recount” of total sold.

How about those “slightly damaged” copies offers for physical products?

(10) Presenting rights given to consumers in law as a distinctive feature
of the trader’s offer.
A stationer sells pens. He advertises on the following basis: ‘Pens for
sale. If they don’t work I’ll give you your money back or replace them.
You won’t find this offer elsewhere’. If the pen is faulty at the time of
purchase the consumer would be entitled to a refund, repair or
replacement under contract law. The trader’s emphasis on the unique
nature of his offer to refund or replace would breach the CPRs.

Careful when wording guarantees either as a merchant or affiliate

(11) Using editorial content in the media to promote a product where a
trader has paid for the promotion without making that clear in the
content or by images or sounds clearly identifiable by the consumer
(advertorial).
A magazine is paid by a holiday company for an advertising feature on
their luxury Red Sea diving school. The magazine does not make it clear
that this is a paid-for feature – for example by clearly labelling it
‘Advertising Feature’ or ‘Advertorial’. This would breach the CPRs.

It looks like disclosure in the content is becoming law for things like paid posts and reviews on blogs.

It could be argued that this also applies to affiliate links.

(14) Establishing, operating or promoting a pyramid promotional scheme
where a consumer gives consideration for the opportunity to receive
compensation that is derived primarily from the introduction of other
consumers into the scheme rather than from the sale or consumption of
products.
A trader operates a holiday club which offers consumers, on payment of
a membership fee, the opportunity of earning large amounts of money by
recruiting new members to the club. The other benefits of club
membership are negligible compared to the potential rewards of earning
commission for

Pyramids, but this might also affect products sold as resale rights, especially if that is the only option, or closed affiliate programs.

(20) Describing a product as ‘gratis’, ‘free’, ‘without charge’ or similar if
the consumer has to pay anything other than the unavoidable cost of
responding to the commercial practice and collecting or paying for
delivery of the item.
A trader advertises a ‘free’ gift. He then tells consumers that in order to
receive their ‘free’ gift they need to pay an extra fee. This would breach
the CPRs.

Careful how you word those bonuses, not only in your reviews or emails, but especially email headlines and Adwords.

(22) Falsely claiming or creating the impression that the trader is not
acting for purposes relating to his trade, business, craft or profession, or
falsely representing oneself as a consumer.
A second-hand car dealership puts a used car on a nearby road and
displays a handwritten advertisement reading ‘One careful owner. Good
family run-around. £2000 or nearest offer. Call Jack on 01234 56789′.
The sign gives the impression that the seller is not selling as a trader,
and hence this would breach the CPRs.

Are you really just the average Joe making a fortune, or do you have an army of staff or outsources doing everything.

(30) Explicitly informing a consumer that if he does not buy the product
or service, the trader’s job or livelihood will be in jeopardy.

If your house burns down, be careful how you word a firesale.

7 MISLEADING PRACTICES (REGULATIONS 5 AND 6)
7.1 The CPRs prohibit misleading actions and misleading omissions (as
detailed in regulations 5 and 6),16 which cause or are likely to cause the
average consumer to take a different decision.
7.2 A practice can mislead by action or omission or both. These prohibitions
aim to ensure that consumers get from traders, in a clear and timely
fashion, the information they need to make informed decisions relating
to products. In addition, in some commercial practices (referred to as
‘invitations to purchase’) certain specific information must be given to
consumers, unless apparent from the context.

7.6 These are actions that mislead by:
• containing false information OR deceiving or being likely to deceive
the average consumer (even if the information they contain is
factually correct),17
and
• the false information, or deception, relates to one or more pieces of
information in a (wide-ranging) list (see below),
and
• the average consumer takes, or is likely to take, a different decision
as a result.

Which crappy traffic stats package are you using to inflate numbers?

Comments on the following are in bold inline:-

7.7 The list of information mentioned above includes the main factors
consumers are likely to take into account in making decisions relating to
products, for example the main characteristics of the product and the
price or the way it is calculated. The full list follows:

(a) the existence or nature of the product
You really are just a simple guy, and not a marketer trying to sell his ebook written on Elance.
(b) the main characteristics of the product
The whole truth, not the convenient truth
(c) the extent of the trader’s commitments
(d) the motives for the commercial practice
Does this afect loss-leaders, upsell, downsell process?
(e) the nature of the sales process
(f) any statement or symbol relating to direct or indirect sponsorship or
approval of the trader or the product
Testimonials
(g) the price or the manner in which the price is calculated
Include +VAT (Geotarget) on sales pages for Clickbank?
(h) the existence of a specific price advantage

Are you split testing your pricing? This might affect you

(i) the need for a service, part, replacement or repair
(j) the nature, attributes and rights of the trader or his agent
(k) the consumer’s rights or the risks he may face.

The ‘main characteristics of the product’ include:

(a) availability of the product

Thinking of using scarcity?
(b) benefits of the product
Get 1,000,000 subscribers overnight
(c) risks of the product
Did we forget to tell them about Google bans?
(d) execution of the product
(e) composition of the product
(f) accessories of the product
(g) after-sale customer assistance concerning the product
(h) the handling of complaints about the product
(i) the method and date of manufacture of the product
(j) the method and date of provision of the product
(k) delivery of the product
(l) fitness for purpose of the product
(m) usage of the product
(n) quantity of the product
(o) specification of the product
(p) geographical or commercial origin of the product
(q) results to be expected from use of the product
(r) results and material features of tests or checks carried out on the
product.

You need real proof…

The ‘nature, attributes and rights of the trader or his agent’ include:

(a) identity
(b) assets
(c) qualifications
(d) status
(e) approval
(f) affiliations or connections

Here is that disclosure thing again

(g) ownership of industrial, commercial or intellectual property rights
(h) awards and distinctions.

Misleading Omissions (regulation 6)
Giving insufficient information about the product
7.12 Practices may also mislead by failing to give consumers the information
they need to make an informed choice (in relation to a product). This
occurs when practices:
• omit or hide material information, or provide it in an unclear,
unintelligible, ambiguous or untimely manner,
and
• the average consumer takes, or is likely to take, a different decision
as a result
7.13 A misleading omission can also occur where a trader fails to identify the
commercial intent of a practice, if it is not already apparent from the
context. The presence of a price, or of a statement making it clear that
the practice is commercial (for example: ‘this is an advertisement’), are
examples of how commercial intent could be made clear.
OFT931 35
7.14 When deciding whether a practice misleads by omission, the courts will
take account of the context.18

Commercial intent = more disclosure

7.33 Information that is deemed to be material in invitations to purchase is set
out in regulation 6(4), which is summarised below:
• the main characteristics of the product – for example, what it is and
what it does – to the extent appropriate to the medium used by the
invitation to purchase and the product
• the identity of the trader, such as his trading name, and the identity
of any other trader on whose behalf the trader is acting
• the geographical address of the trader or traders

The geographical address has been required since December 2006 (si3429)

The document goes on to cover such things as

• Professional Diligence
• Material Distortion
• Compliance and Enforcement covering
• education, advice and guidance
• established means
• codes of conduct
• civil enforcement
• criminal enforcement

This document covers business or “trader” to consumer regulations, and specific that this does not cover business to business transactions where the product is intended for ultimate business use. If a product is sold to wholesale, then on to a consumer, a lot of this still applies.

I have no idea how this applies to foreign traders doing business with the UK, or where they have a satellite office in the UK or Europe.

I am not a lawyer, and note that the linked document is only guidance and not the full version.
I may very well be reading into this more than the law intended, but this seems to compliment SI3429 which has been largely ignored by many online businesses, and I assume isn’t enforced effectively for this to be the case over a year since publication.
So far I have only spent a couple of hours on the 88 page document and this blog post (speed reading the key information I need). You should read the document in full to extract the information you need.

I know Tim Nash knows a few lawyers who specialise in this kind of thing.

Update

Tim has just published an overview of which legal notices you might be expected to publish on your site. It is aimed at people in the UK and possibly Europe and many such regulations are universal.
Remember, I am not a lawyer, and nor is Tim

Update 2

It took a couple of weeks, but there now seems to be some mainstream online media attention to these new regulations.

Adage points out that this came into force across Europe in January though only goes into some of the most mainstream forms of WOMM.

Paid Content (UK) also focuses on the more corporate sector

Peter Parks has condensed things down to lots of bullet points.

Over on Daily Blog Tips, 10 Essential Legal Points For Bloggers covers other legal matters. I think Tims post is beter on legal paperwork, but it does cover a few other angles. It was written by lawyer Steve Imparl so has some level of credibility, I am going to have to delve into his blog archives to see if there is some more meaty content.

I had this feeling that PR5 was “Google Probation” as my link growth has been continuing and my Google Directory listing suggested PR6.

All paid reviews on this blog are blocked with robots.txt and I declare that is the case in my disclosure policy.

Thus we need to look at other potential problems (note these are potential problems, but nothing I can really change)

Linking To People Who Advertise

Some regular readers decided to purchase advertising – advertising links unlike many blogs are nofollow. I mentioned this to Google within my reinclusion request as an undefined grey area, and many blogs accept paid advertising from Google themselves, but don’t nofollow Google.
I don’t have a separate advertising department, but I am going to try my best to keep advertising separate from content. Many of the people advertising are among my most dedicated readers, and I am sure in part they are advertising with me to “give something back”. It is much appreciated.

I actually have another advertiser to link to in a post following this one – it is going to be totally natural for me to link to them, it is editorial and news I would be covering whether they advertise with me or not.

I am currently assuming this is not an issue…

Blogcatalog

I do some minor consulting with them, but additional coverage on this blog is not part of the deal.

Blogging social networks have been part of my core content for 15 months.

15 posts regarding Blogcatalog
47 posts regarding MyBlogLog

If you look at raw numbers, I have given Blogcatalog less coverage than their biggest competitor.

It is important however to look at the timelines, as a large number of the MyBlogLog posts were from before Blogcatalog was on the scene, and were during some quite turbulent times.

I basically give both of them coverage whenever they introduce something interesting – it doesn’t include every announcement

I don’t think I am really at liberty to disclose the exact financial relationship with Blogcatalog.

I am certainly not being paid to write reviews in much the same way Matt Cutts isn’t paid for writing about Google on his blog.

Then of course Jason Calacanis just loves linking through to Mahalo where he is a major shareholder.

Google are certainly in the wrong if they think my coverage of Blogcatalog is in some way against their current webmaster guidelines. I have pushed hard for clarification on the shareholder linking and paid links connection, but Google has never provided any feedback.

PayPerPost, Sponsored Reviews and ReviewMe

I have never been paid to write anything about Izea / PayPerPost – seriously

Izea have recently purchased advertising to promote RealRank – they have similar advertising on other tech blogs

I wrote an initial review about Sponsored Reviews that was paid, but that review is blocked by robots.txt

None of my coverage about ReviewMe, and sister services TextLinkAds, AuctionAds etc has ever been paid for.

As far as I am concerned I have a clean sheet here

Affiliate Links?

I have been a little lazy with those but that isn’t against Google’s webmaster guidelines

Dofollow

I am extremely rigorous in moderating my comments – this shouldn’t be an issue

Hub Pages Hublove

I certainly wasn’t paid to link through to Hubpages and take part as a judge.

Previous declarations

As previously explained, I have never placed an emphasis on selling PageRank and my reviews certainly consume a huge amount of time.

Webmaster Tools

I have just double checked in webmaster tools – my paid reviews are certainly blocked by robots.txt and I kept close control of them.

Even though they are blocked, they are ranking extremely well, as expected – in fact if anything the ranking has improved.

Signal For Future Penalty

I value the ~400 visitors Google sends me every day on this site, but unless they rewrite the webmaster guidelines… again, there is nothing I am to my knowledge doing wrong.

Ah well, at least some of my meandering thought process whilst writing this post has resulted in some new niche site ideas… stay tuned.

Update

That was pretty quick – showing PR5 again on most servers.
I did wait a few days prior to this post to see if there was some kind of update fluctuation as per my previous post regarding the updates. The items I highlighted still remain in the grey area, such as the dividing line between “Thanking your sponsors” (known to be a violation, and “editorial coverage” which probably isn’t.

So while you are attacking affiliate marketing, please ensure you have first of all cleared up all the problems in the paid links debate, such as what seems to be a company, where you are on the board of directors, buying links.

It is widely discussed that buying links in WordPress themes is something that might be a signal of web spam, and the same should be true for buying links in WordPress plugins and gaining millions of links.

Of all the default options within the original Sociable plugin, quite honestly the ThisNext button appearing by default is the least obvious choice, thus most likely to have been paid for.

When approached about making the links nofollow, the developer refused – he seemed to think all those links to forms were a deserved vote.

I took action, encouraging people to add nofollow initially, and then releasing a modified version of the sociable plugin.

That version is relatively unknown – only downloaded 1700 or so times, I am sure the original has been downloaded upwards of 100,000 times.

Recently Joost decided to take over development of Sociable and create a new “official” version

I did make sure that the default options were changed.

Not As Bad As It Used To Be

Fortunately this situation isn’t as bad as it used to be, otherwise I honestly wouldn’t raise it in so open a manner.

ThisNext now has someone on board or was made aware of this issue and has made a specific point to block the URL from search engines

Disallow: /pick/new/submit/

That may not be the case of the other default inclusions

But it is deceptive to users – those are purchased links, and there is no form of disclosure on the page that they are paid advertising.

For a long time those pages were not blocked

Deja Vu

These are really old conversations but highly relevant to the current

There have been extensive discussions regarding the differences in disclosure in various blogging scenarios including with Gordon Gould of ThisNext after the interview between Jason and Ted from Izea (formerly PayPerPost)

Clickbank have required disclosure for more than a year now, though they leave it to the FTC to decide what level of disclosure is required.

Google still prevent disclosure of their referral units.

I have been writing about affiliate disclosure for some time

When Jason asks “Should Google, Yahoo, Mahalo, etc. ban affiliate links? (or “Will the FTC ban undisclosed affiliate links for us all?”)” his first port of call should be companies where he has a say in what they do, then his friends at Google.

Jason should also look into other forms of payola, and his own linking practice

For full coverage of Jason’s presentation at Affiliate Summit read

Sam’s blow by blow live blogging
Reaction to JC on ReveNews
Scott Jangro’s take – he agrees with a lot of Jason’s sentiment
Kieron also agrees with a lot that was said, and looks for long term value.

Linda has a full roundup of all posts, along with a player so you can listen to a recording on Webmaster radio

Zac was under fire over his big checks and responds

Finally Tris has probably the clearest takeaways from the Jason Calacanis keynote at Affiliate Summit

Maybe more coverage on techmeme, but currently most of the above posts have all the links covered.

Update

I found Joel Comm’s views extremely interesting (p.s. Joel – if you had linked to a few more people I would have found your post quicker)

Good overview on Winning The Web

Finally Dan Rua with quite a scathing look at Jason Calacanis’ linking practice, with #1 rankings for Mahalo content being driven purely with links from the Jason Calacanis weblog.

Disclosure: I am an affiliate marketer, I also get classed as an SEO by many – this is a topic I am extremely biased about and have commercial interests in. I have been involved in the disclosure debate for affiliate marketing for over a year.

I am not going to call this a perfect example of a reconsideration request, but I decided that it was better to be 100% honest about my thought process for both now and in the future, because whilst I am now blocking paid reviews with robots.txt, there are so many things still not specified within the webmaster guidelines that it is a potential minefield, especially for someone who has previously been the target of a manual penalty.

Here is exactly what I sent to the Google webmaster team.

I honestly still believe I didn’t break the spirit of the webmaster guidelines, the webmaster guidelines as most frequently described by Google employees on official duties in regards to paid links and reviews, and even the “letter of the law”.

I have a very high rejection rate on paid reviews, approaching 80% – that shows editorial discretion far beyond many if not all paid directories.
Content was always highly targeted to my audience

I retained editorial control of links – in all my blogging I give good search engine friendly links that are descriptive of the target – such practice is effectively law in the UK and Europe, though who is responsible for regulation isn’t certain.

Almost a year ago, when Google first made it possible to report a site for paid links, I reported myself with a request for clarification – at that time how my reviews were regarded by Google was not clearly specified, in many ways it still isn’t.

Adam Lasnik previously suggested multiple times that sites which were predominately high quality content were not your target for penalties – paid reviews content currently represents less than 3% of my original content – just 9 reviews

I strive to provide an example of paid review content that is benefiting readers in general, and has a reason to be indexed and counted as editorial content.
The compensation I receive is more a token gesture, like a box of chocolates to say thanks, as the time I spend on them means I would earn more flipping burgers in McDs – how could that class as paid links? It doesn’t even cover my time.

Penalties have not been handed out evenly, I know Googlers read blogs that have written paid reviews where the links were not blocked in any way, and have even commented on the specific reviews. Those sites remain unpunished.

Googlers continually promote Google services from their private blogs, and certainly gain financial compensation from increased stock prices. Just today Matt wrote the following post without a specific disclaimer that he is a Google employee.
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/adding-new-features-to-google/
Surely such posts should have a nofollow to Google – it has purely promotional (though helpful) intent.

All that being said, I had no intention to break the Google guidelines, and if what is required for the Google Toolbar to truthfully depict the authority of my website is for my editorial links in paid reviews to be blocked from Google in some way, I am going to comply.

All permalinks to my paid reviews are now blocked using robots.txt – I have checked that this is the case within webmaster tools

Where excerpts of my articles appear on duplicate content pages, all links are nofollowed, such as on tags pages http://andybeard.eu/tag/volusion_review

Ultimately the Google search results will be poorer quality, because a good paid review is a better result than an article based upon a press release, or a SEO optimized press release itself. I would argue that the links are of higher value as well.

There are still going to be cases where what I write will be within the grey area not defined by your webmaster guidelines.

I earn money from Google through Adsense – should I nofollow every link to Google and Google services now?

I have paid advertisers, many are purchased by my regular readers or services I frequently write about in an editorial manner. Do I now need to nofollow every past current and future link to them because I have accepted a small amount of money for display advertising?

Do I need to nofollow affiliate links? I can’t see an automatic way that Google can tell the difference between an affiliate link, and a paid link that has a tracking parameter.
It is somewhat strange that Google has provided help for merchants in cleaning up search results with affiliate links using redirects, and thus gaining an SEO benefit from them. Affiliate links very frequently are not editorial endorsements.

My content gets syndicated often on authority sites such as Webpronews and Searchnewz, and many lesser sites – I trust that if they choose to publish my syndicated content as an editorial decision, that the fact that content was originally a paid review is no longer a problem.

Best regards

Andy Beard

Before filing it I checked that the changes I previously made had taken effect and the pages were actually blocked.

I also made changes to my disclosure policy to make sure that it was 100% clear to anyone from Google performing a manual inspection that all links in paid reviews from my domain will not affect search results.

This was important based on the discussion regarding Donna’s reconsideration request.

Something For The Naysayers

There were people who for some reason thought that blocking my paid reviews using robots.txt would for some reason be extremely harmful to my search traffic.
It is true that a document that can’t be indexed cannot rank for long-tail phrases within it, but pages blocked with robots.txt can still rank in Google.

That is just a snapshot of a SERP, it is certainly bouncing around a little and the position is changing daily.

That being said, that page was previously ranking 12th, and whilst it isn’t a high traffic term, it is quite competitive with lots of theme and plugin authors also attracting lots of links.
I haven’t done as much as I could do to promote the page because it is a paid review.

In addition I have flattened my internal linking structure over the last week – frequent detractors obviously wouldn’t look on that as a major search ranking factor.

I am lowering the red flag

Carry on reading to find out why this isn’t the same as raising a white flag, and is far from surrendering to Google on paid reviews.

Robots.txt

I have spent a long time deciding on a course of action, and have decided that blocking my content using Robots.txt is ultimately better for me, and better for people hiring my services.

It also happens to be worse for Google than currently, but that is the beauty of this strategy.

It might be harder to rank, pages blocked using robots.txt still gather PageRank, and can appear in the index, though they would be looked on as dangling pages.

Ultimately links can always be redirected to a followup review which refers to the first, and that followup isn’t a paid review.

It is a little naughty, some people will sometimes receive editorial links within reviews and receive a trackback, but I don’t know of any spam plugin that checks robots.txt , plus the links will still be valuable in other search engines.

Google’s Achilles Heel With Paid Reviews

The only domain for which a client is paying for a review from is this one. When my content appears on other sites, there is a totally different editorial process, and links can in no way be looked on as paid links.

Content syndication is extensive:-

1. Social Bookmarking

Sites such as BloggingZoom encourage more than just a single line of description and rewritten titles on submissions, and not only deliver traffic from their existing user base, but also search traffic.

2. Hub Pages

Many content sites allow you to use syndicated content in the form of article feeds, and content is even picked up by larger sites such as Topix.

3. Authorized Syndication

You can arrange or organise for your content to be selectively syndicated on authority sites such as Andy Beard on WebProNews and even my WordPress SEO reviews published on SearchNewz.

Whilst I haven’t made it clear recently, I publish all my content under GPL, in fact I am switching to the GFDL with an invarient clause requiring a live hyperlink back to the original without nofollow – I prefer GFDL over creative commons because of this flexibility (for me) to be highly specific.

In future I am going to be actively encouraging syndication

4. Unauthorized Syndication

This is technically the same, but as long as people scraping my content are linking back to me, preferably with a followed link, it is great. I am not even worried about some light spinning of the content, as long as they state that the content has been modified and is only based on my original.

5. Indexed Search Results & Aggregators

This is the likes of Technorati, and feed readers that are indexed – I have no intention of blocking reviews from RSS feeds.

6. Multimedia

I use a lot of pictures and screenshots for my reviews, but this is going to increase – in addition I will also be creating podcasts and screencasts which will be widely distributed in their own right.

Hooray for Universal search!

No Nofollow = Editorial Backlinks

By not using nofollow in my reviews, it is most likely that syndicated copies of my reviews will provide backlinks not just for me, but also for my clients. The backlinks are editorial in many cases, someone has chosen to syndicate my content.

Unfortunately Google use backlinks to attribute content to an original source, but it is a whole lot harder if they can’t index the original. It will be interesting which site syndicating my work will rank highly, or how many.

Linking to Syndicated Content

This is something I haven’t decided on yet, but just like I can link through to my various social profiles, I do have the option to link through to my content on other domains after it has been syndicated.

Worse for Google

My content will still be in the index, filtered through an extra layer of editorial control, but there is going to be a whole lot more of it.

Google have made it clear that they are only worried about the existence of links, and not the time it takes to create content, expertise, and whether links within reviews were specified or given in an editorial capacity.

I honestly don’t like junk reviews written purely for SEO purposes, but as Google seem determined to impose the letter of the law rather than the spirit, throwing the baby out with the bath water, whilst I will comply to the letter of the law, I can’t see a reason why I shouldn’t sidestep the charging bull.

Nofollow is not the answer to Google’s troubles

Update

There seems to be some misunderstandings, and I need to clear them up.

1. The blocking hasn’t happened yet – it is the next thing on the todo list
2. I intend to get more search traffic from Google taking this action, not less.

Update 2

Robots.txt has now been modified

The list is quite short, but now I have a strategy in place, I will be writing a lot more paid reviews

Whilst this might be looked on as insignificant, some of those pages rank quite well for very useful terms, and are probably worth 2000+ visitors per month.

Update 3

Whilst the changes in robots.txt were quite straight forward, before making any reinclusion or reconsideration request, I thought it important to check the robots.txt within the Google webmaster console.

First of all I waited for it to be refreshed by Googlebot, which seems to happen approximately once every 24 hours.

There is an option to just copy and paste that refreshed data by hand, but waiting for it to be fetched is conclusive.

Next I entered in the URLs which need to be blocked by the robots.txt file, and checked them.

In theory Googlebot will now be blocked from crawling the “offending” pages, and I will be able to ask for reconsideration.

Photo credits
Lowering the Flag (modified)
Matador (modified)