Ted Murphy rightly questions Google quite openly to explain why PPP bloggers are being punished for not using nofollow on links, yet many prominent bloggers post quite blatant pagerank passing links to their advertisers every chance they get.

Not only do they mention their advertisers in “Thanks To Our Advertisers” posts, but they also name drop them every chance they get as a form of disclosure.

As an example, almost every time PayPerPost was discussed on Techcrunch , either Text Link Ads or their ReviewMe service was also mentioned but rarely other services such as Sponsored Reviews who haven’t got the same advertising budget.

Buying advertising seems to generate a lot of goodwill.

If Techcrunch regard them as advertising, what reason would they have to not include a nofollow on the links? Advertising has very little if no editorial value.

I get a penalty because I sometimes spend 10 HOURS writing a review of a company for a measly $130, but then I also get other revenue, it is more additional compensation and a discount on what I could charge for consulting for having it public, much like you can get building work cheaper if it can be a show home.

All these advertisers have done is paid Techcrunch money.

The juice Techcrunch passes might be worth 100+ paid posts.

Why Such A Strong Reaction?

So today Duncan trys to defend Techcrunch stating that the links are disclosed and they are not distorting the trust with advertorial content.

That means Techcrunch are selling pagerank

It doesn’t take any time to post a list of 8 links to advertisers. Google’s issue is with PageRank passing links. It is nothing to do with disclosure.

Wouldn’t they like to see Google make a statement of exactly why “thanking your sponsors” kind of advertising links are OK, and PPP links are not?

No, because if Google closely examined Techcrunch in the same light as paid reviews, they would probably find that these “thanking the advertisers” links are distorting their rankings more than paid reviews from D list bloggers.

Techmeme – It Seems Techcrunch Have To Link To You To Be News

The news is actually 2 days old already, and Techmeme have only picked it up because Techcrunch linked to them.

This story was news 2 days ago. My post which included a link to PayPerPost has already been linked to by both Search Engine Land and Search Engine Round Table, two of the highest authorities on these kinds of issues, but it seems Techcrunch determines whether a story is newsworthy if it is related to search engine marketing.

There seems to be a core group of “news breakers” and if they don’t link to a story, it isn’t relevant to Techmeme.

The problem is that anything related to Google is technology news, and their primary focus is their search engine and things that have an effect on it.

It seems Techmeme place a very small weighting on search marketing blogs, despite them having more historical knowledge of Google than many of the tech bloggers, and thus can provide more detail and historical context.

I suppose I should be grateful to Techmeme for linking through to a syndicated copy of my original article on WebProNews, posted a day later than the original.

(note I don’t link through to legitimately syndicated copies of my articles because of duplicate content but I am grateful for all the articles they pick up)

This Isn’t A Pop At Techcrunch

This is really Google’s fault for their unclear guidelines that even has experts scratching their heads. I have had many renowned watchers of the search marketing space state that they don’t regard the few paid reviews I write as any kind of search engine spam, and that they have value. I have had them syndicated, linked to and achieve some success on social media sites such as Sphinn.

Want an example of a paid review? How about my WordPress SEO Masterclass

That is about as close to the line of search engine spam as I have gone, and that gets me a -1 or -2 penalty on my PageRank.

Duncan, seriously Techcrunch should be in the PPP camp on this one, as Techcrunch have been a supporter of Text Link Ads (or supported by) for some time.

Andrew Ooi has compiled a short list of Malaysian sites, many were as much as a PR5 previously, and currently show a PageRank of zero (a white bar)

Examples include:-

Colleen’s Simple Kind of Life and 5xmom

The numbers seem to be stable across multiple data centers

There doesn’t seen to be any change in prominent Search Marketing sites such as Search Engine Round Table and Search Engine Journal, and other popular bloggers such as Emom and Yaro still seem to have their degraded but still “head above water” rankings.

Meanwhile Matt Cutts is playing around with $200 PCs and the negative views of the blogosphere regarding Google.

Meaning Of PageRank Unchanged

Google have had more than a month to change the description of PageRank on their website.

I haven’t seen any change to Search Engine Rankings and there is still no way to request reconsideration without admitting guilt.

The Webmaster Help Center also doesn’t give an option to report that you think Google is making a mistake in their manual evaluation.

How do I request reconsideration of my site?

If your site has previously violated our webmaster guidelines, and you’ve made changes to it so that it now meets our guidelines, you can ask Google to reconsider your site for inclusion in the index.

In addition, if you recently purchased a domain that you think may have violated our guidelines before you owned it, you can use the reconsideration request form to let us know that you recently acquired the site and that it now adheres to the guidelines.

To request reconsideration of your site:

1. Sign in to Google webmaster tools. The webmaster tools Dashboard opens.
2. Under Tools, click Request reconsideration and follow the steps.

Google do now call this reconsideration, not just reinclusion, and Matt notes that you can still be in the index even though you have a penalty, which he updated November 4th 2007

I did find something cool though which I hadn’t seen before, maybe I missed it being reported, or didn’t pay much notice.

I am still being crawled frequently and there are some interesting spikes. It is a pity that the graph doesn’t line up with the scale.

From January people using PayPerPost will be able to use SocialSpark.

SocialSpark Alpha screenshots do still have PageRank listed, and that will likely be removed totally unless Google change their stance.

I still don’t sell PageRank, but traffic hasn’t changed, if anything it has increased as I write more content that people want to read and link to, and it even brings in some search traffic.

Google is making huge mistakes with these updates. I know many people receiving penalties sell links, and I am not trying to defend them.

When you get someone like regular reader Rob, a real expert in SEO, who based on the links he receives should be a comfortable PR4, or possibly a PR5, currently a PR0, because he wrote one paid review using nofollow on the links.

Then you get affiliate marketers like Vlad who may have written a couple of high quality reviews, and sold some advertising.
At the same time he also is an affiliate with some affiliate services which offer SEO friendly “clean links” for their merchants.
For a website owner they are still links from which they will be making money, though the money from affiliate marketing is variable – the links still affect search engines, as do many other affiliate links which feature 301 redirects.

Now whilst Aaron’s issues might be appeased as a result of the recent interchange with Matt, that is really just the tip of the iceberg. Aaron hasn’t been lynched.

To finish I am just going to steal the words of Michael VanDeMar which he posted as a comment on Matt’s Reporting On Paid Links post.

Honestly, Matt… and if your legal team won’t let you answer this, then I understand, but if you are allowed to answer then I (and I’m sure others) would really, really like to know… as the G algo stands now, exactly how much off balance would you say it is due to the insidious act of buying and selling text link ads? How many man hours have you spent combating this crime against humanity, and at what cost? And is it seriously skewing the results that much, that all the efforts spent on it were, and continue to be, justified? Is the algo that fragile?

The other main reason that I disagree with this idea is that you think (or appear to be implying, anyways) that Paid Link === No Human Review. This not the case 9 times out of 10. You should know that.

Update – Official Statement From Izea (PayPerPost)

An official statement finally from Izea (PayPerPost) on their blog regarding Google PageRank Updates.

We now know from some of our friends inside of Google (thanks “bob”) that they are now looking for phrases such as PPP, PayPerPost,ReviewMe, Payu2blog, etc. in the text of your post. For that reason I would suggest refraining from using any type of this text in the body of your posts, sponsored or not. When you disclose thank the sponsor, not PPP.

I would like to thank Ted (CEO of Izea) for having the courage to say something about this in public, something it seems Google so far have not managed to do, and rarely do so on an official company blog.

Lisa Stewart of Bigfoot Web Marketing also has an excellent writeup of the decision process on the PayPerPost boards that ultimately led to Ted Murphy making a statement.

As I wrote in my initial preview of SocialSpark, there will be new metrics for gauging the authority and influence of a blog, to help determine advertising spend, not only based upon traffic and demographics, but also on past performance with CPM and CPC data also being made available.

With SocialSpark, any required links will be nofollow, though there is an option for editorial links without a nofollow.

All the negotiation about a particular campaign will be 100% transparent, thus there will be an audit trail to prove that an advertiser didn’t require specific linking, and that audit trail will be open for public, or search engine approval.

There will be full disclosure within each post, with a link though to that 100% transparent audit trail, far exceeding any stipulations or recommendation from either the FTC or WOMMA.

Advertisers will no longer be able to require a positive tone, everything will be neutral, bloggers can write what they want, but that may affect click-through rates and return on investment.

Based upon this, everything seems at least on the surface to be everything a search engine would want to see and encourage.

This Isn’t Going To Work

At least not without some cooperation from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask.

Other than the 100% transparency, a lot of this has really been available using the PayPerPost Direct system introduced by Izea 6 months ago.

Whilst on the surface the form for PayPerPost Direct suggests that advertisers were able to make specific requests for the tone, and specify linking, PayPerPost direct also provided a negotiation interface.

In many ways you can look on the initial order process as being purely suggestions, and the real final negotiated terms were often vastly different to any initial enquiry.

That was certainly the case for every review I wrote, yet I still received a PageRank penalty

In some cases I even finished the negotiation process, but just didn’t have time for a full review, so declined or gave a quick link for free.

But I have still received a penalty to my Google Toolbar PageRank, either -1 or possibly -2

A totally open system, with absolute disclosure and a full audit trail is the ideal scenario for internet users, and the search engines really have to make a choice, embrace the openness, or everything IS GOING TO GO UNDERGROUND.

PageRank Is STILL In The Equation

You will notice on the following exclusive screenshots that PageRank is still being displayed on the new interface, and Ted tells me that a final decision as to whether Alexa and PageRank will remain is still to be made.

If it does remain, I would hope they are looked at as the least important statistic, those used to find new publishers who haven’t been using the SocialRank code on their site for long enough to generate reliable statistics.

Difficult Choices

Both search engines and bloggers have difficult choices to make in the coming months.

The PayPerPost MarketPlace represents 11,000+ Advertisers and 85,000+ Bloggers, and I am sure that is set to increase.

It is noticeable that only a fraction of even PayPerPost bloggers have actually received some kind of penalty, and those are typically ones who were prominent in the PayPerPost Direct marketplace.

The funny or sad thing is that there has been a lot of collateral damage. As an example take Rob’s situation. To my knowledge he has never written a review for PayPerPost, yet is listed in the marketplace, mainly just to check out the system.
As far as I can see, and I have been reading his blog since he had just 3 subscribers, he also doesn’t sell links, hell he doesn’t even link to his own niche sites from his blog.

Rob’s PageRank took a -2 penalty purely from association

Thousands Of Sites Remain Unpunished

There are plenty of sites that are selling PageRank pasing 125×125 advertising spots that have slipped under the radar, yet sites such as SERoundTable and Search Engine Journal have been quite obviously targeted.

I know sites where Matt Cutts is a frequent visitor, and has even read paid reviews which have not had a penalty to their Google Toolbar PageRank applied.
The reviews were not “under the radar” but written by an authority in the topic being discussed.

There are many very prominent sites who every week, or every month blatantly thank their sponsors in what amounts to a post just full of PageRank passing links with no other content.
At one time these pages contained at least an introductory paragraph for each one, but often you will just see 8 or 10 links with no other content.

Time For An Olive Branch

Isn’t it easier for search engines to encourage good practice that is accountable, than to punish sites indiscriminately or based on some level of personal bias.
Without doubt there is bias and double standards in penalties that so far have been applied, and this is not a purely automatic process.

To finish here are a couple more exclusive screenshots to wet your appetite, featuring some of the statistics available in the new interface, and what appears to be a search result.

What Is Social Spark?

• Advertiser Social Network
• Advertisers Interact With Bloggers – build up a network of media outlets for their niche
• Highest Standards in Word of Mouth Marketing – PayPerPost have up until now been responding to market forces and allowing the market to define itself. They are now going to be taking a proactive roll to lead the industry.
• Unique Blog Welcomeâ„¢ Sponsorhip – this is an amazing idea using overlays to present a blog sponsorship greeting to a visitor, and then the advert minimizes in a corner of the display. This is a much more visible method. From what I have seen this is a lot like the various types of corner advertising, but visitors will have already been greeted with a message.
  (this would also be a cool aleternative to popups & interstitials for any kind of marketing message) This option doesn’t take up any screen real estate.
• Accountable Analytics – current methods for advertisers to present the viability of advertising on a particular blog basically… suck – you name it
  • PageRank is worthless – you can have a site with a PageRank of 7 and almost no traffic, and at the same time have a PR3 blog that gets thousands of visitors a day.
  • Alexa & Compete are easily gamed and are highly biased in many verticals such as web design, SEO and technology, and the sites people in those industries frequent.
  • Quantcast would be useful… but very few sites include Quantcast code on their sites, even those who are marketing aware.

  Advertisers will be able to compare CPM and CPC advertising spends across their whole advertising spend and have full access to demographic data.
  The aim is to provide advertisers and bloggers with as much relevant statistical information as they can.

• Open Platform – Izea will have their own API that will be available to the public, but will also leverage Google’s recently announced OpenSocial API
• Feedback – Advertisers can leave feedback on Bloggers, and Bloggers can leave feedback on Advertisers – everything is open…. transparent
• Integration with RSSBrief
• All data is searchable – this helps Advertisers find suitable bloggers to promote their brand
• Real Rank based upon Real unique visitors and page views (with widgets available to display on your blog)

Here is what a blogger profile will look like

Colleen and and the amazingly fast Jim have already got posts up before me.

Colleen loves the idea of realistic stats not based upon PageRank and Alexa.

Jim is expecting the existing PayPerPost service to die off

Sponsored Posts in Social Spark

• Dynamic pricing for all blogs to maximise the return on investment for an advertiser
• In post requirement for disclosure badges
• Return on investment by tracking clicks within the interface on information links
• Advertisers can pay for additional opportunity exposure in the marketplace
• Bloggers can book advertising for a whole week and reach out to advertisers on opportunities they are qualified to take.
• Review exchanges
• Two Types of Links
  • Required Links = Nofollow
  • Suggested Links = Does not have to be Nofollow

Blog Sponsorship

• Sponsorship is per day
• Medium Rectangle or video

Here is a very rough screenshot of the blog sponsorship configuration page, the advert appears much nicer on an actual page, but isn’t the fancy kind of fly in advert I expected.
I didn’t see it flash animated coming in, or how it hides exactly.

What wasn’t specified is how they handle tracking within RSS but the sneaky side of RSSBrief is what I was expecting.
All blogs crawled by RSSBrief and can be approached by advertisers, and have been crawled already.

This system is in Alpha… moving into a closed beta, full launch in January 2008 – hopefully I will be able to do some testing and be allowed to write more in the coming months, but I will need to bend Ted’s arm… a lot.

For those asking, I didn’t catch any direct reaction to PageRank other than it isn’t exactly very reliable or truthful about whether a site being looked at is good or bad.
Lets face it, we all know PR8 sites that actually suck and are almost all duplicate content, and PR2 sites that are 100% original content.

Update

The technology “A List” have titled their own announcements with typically controversial titles, though what they have written is surprisingly neutral.

Mashable with PayPerPost Launches Social Network for Shills comments:-

The bigger question here, at least to me, is will IZEA start to receive a bit of positive press from the “A-Listers” that have made a living out of deriding them and calling the system evil?

Michael Arrington’s titled “PayPerPost’s Latest Gimmick – SocialSpark” is neutral other than the last line:-

There’s absolutely nothing distasteful about it as an idea. But to the extent it furthers the pollution of the blogosphere by encouraging more paid shilling, it makes us all worse off.

But the best line is from Michael Arrington in the comments

Zizi – no, there are legitimate reasons for bloggers to work for PPP. Writing paid posts isn’t something I would do, but with proper disclosure it certainly doesn’t cross the line (in my opinion). It’s the edge cases that create the train wrecks.

Now considering Michael Arrington, from the stage of the 2007 Mesh conference called Ted “The Most Evil Person In The Room”, I look on the above as quite a significant change of heart.

Are we likely to see Techcrunch running transparent statistics from SocialSpark in the future?

Update

Ted Murphy has posted a few more details of SocialSpark on the Izea blog.

I love his concluding remark:-

All required links in SocialSpark sponsored posts will carry the no-follow tag (or something more appropriate) because… well, I guess the most advanced search algorithms in the world need our help.

Ted has some interesting observations about why this new community won’t encourage advertisers to buy directly (though maybe some advertising they will buy direct).
He also emphasises that Socialspark will be the first service to provide an auditable trail of disclosure for the advertiser, and have a totally open database that anyone interested can see.