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.

This was previously written about by Ted Murphy of Izea, and vehemently defended by Techcrunch, so it is surprising that they have made a significant change in their stance without also making a public statement about it.

I also wrote about this situation in a previous article on paid links and the PageRank update (round 5).

Here is their previous links to sponsors post from back in November 2007

Here is Techcrunch’s most recent post thanking their sponsors in December 2007

Precautionary Or Suggested By Google?

Techcrunch was frequently being highlighted as a site that might be abusing Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, but somehow immune from a penalty, and also had a reputation for being critical of paid links in content (though one of their advertisers is Text Link Ads, and I believe they have also had advertising from sister service ReviewMe)

I can think of 3 reasons Techcrunch have made this change:-

• They have made a unilateral decision that linking to sponsors without nofollow was in some way hypocritical and frowned upon by their readers
• Precautionary based upon analysis of the Google Webmaster Guidelines
• Suggested or advised by Google

The reason Techcrunch has made a change is extremely important, because hundreds, maybe 1000s of bloggers currently link through to their sponsors on a weekly or monthly basis, effectively copying the Techcrunch model, and most do not include nofollow on the links.

I think it is also important to point out that Techcrunch hasn’t made this change retroactively. To have a clean slate they should go through all previous content and add nofollow to all links to sponsors, possibly even in editorial content.

I honestly don’t think it is the first option – Techcrunch after all are still accepting advertising dollars from Text Link Ads who offer various in-post advertising, not just sidebar linking, and unlike Izea (PayPerPost), have given no indication of supporting nofollow on the advertising links they sell.

If Google did contact Techcrunch, shouldn’t they also make an official statement on the webmaster central blog giving advice to all bloggers that this practice is looked on as paid links, and could be subject to a penalty?

This is my follow on from my post yesterday:- Dancing With The Gevil – Defamed By Google?

Fair enough, for those people who have been caught selling links primarily for boosting search engine results.

The funny thing is I have seen so many blogs today that are selling Text Links who have not received a penalty, yet lots of sites that write high quality paid reviews penalized.
I am referring to the PR6+ sites with 10 or more text links in the sidebar that are totally off topic.

As per my previous article, I don’t believe this should cover editorial links that are given during a review that is a form of consultancy. I have always made that clear that that is the purpose of my reviews.

It really does seem I am being penalized based upon the Payment processor and market-place I display most prominently, PayPerPost, though I have seen a few sites that display other Paid Post badges also hit heavily.
The most prominent PayPerPost writers seem to have been hit the hardest.

I Don’t Sell PageRank

Here is the description of the service I offer on my profile on Sponsored Reviews

Blog Search Engine Performance, WordPress, Niche Marketing, Affiliate Marketing Tips and Social Media with Original Opinion and Loads of Attitude

50% of revenue from reviews is donated towards WordPress plugin development adding additional exposure.

I look on reviews as a form of consultancy.

You are paying for my time, not just for link equity or buzz.

My reviews are typically 2000 – 3000 words and I strive to highlight both good features and flaws constructively and offer suggestions for improvements.

My readership is not mass market, but contains many thought leaders and influencers.

I talk about tools and strategies to help with creation of various types of niche websites, social media, social networks, blogging and WordPress. I can easily review a site not just based on content, but also from an SEO perspective.

If you actually follow the link, there is no mention of PageRank anywhere on the page. They do mention link popularity, but the number of links a site has is also a traffic indicator, possibly more accurate than Alexa.

Here is my profile on ReviewMe – you might notice it is quite similar

50% of revenue from reviews is donated towards WordPress plugin development adding additional exposure.

I look on reviews as a form of consultancy, you are paying for my time, not for link equity or buzz.
My reviews are typically 2000 – 3000 words and I strive to highlight both good features and flaws constructively and offer suggestions for improvements.

My readership is not mass market, but contains many thought leaders and influencers.

I talk about tools and strategies to help with creation of various types of niche websites, social media, social networks blogging and WordPress.

I can easily review a site not just based on content, but also from an SEO perspective.

Again, no mention of PageRank, just Alexa, Technorati (which is an indication of links) and RSS subscribers.

Lets take a look at PayPerPost Direct

To find me within the directory, you would have to filter on a price range of $100 – 200, no direct link to the profile

I am considered by many to be an expert on:-

* Blog Search Engine Performance
* Search Engine Optimization
* WordPress
* Niche Marketing
* Affiliate Marketing Tips
* Social Media
* Blogging Community

If you are looking for good, detailed, solid information and are not looking to be spoon fed, you are going to love what I write.

My primary blog is in many ways a community project with the content provoking stimulating discussions.

Average Tack: 5 / 5 Google Page Rank: 5 Alexa Score: 17797

I should really log in and get that PageRank updated, because it currently gives a value different to what is displayed on Google’s toolbar. I don’t think it actually is different in real terms as far as the ranking of my own content, although who knows, I might actually be a PR6 now that has been downgraded, and my readers seem to like my content.

I did use a more sales like appraoch with some HTML that I grabbed from my Blogcatalog profile – with PayPerPost Direct any initial contact is just that, an initial enquiry and they have a built in message system. The first message I send to any enquiry always ensures that they accept a neutral review, as in they have no editorial control, and to ensure they understand that any and all links will be editorial, with my own choice of anchor text. On more than one of the reviews I have even pulled out a keyword research tool to get a good idea of what to use in the post title, and to some extent topics to discuss and link text.

Tack is something that is important, it is based around advertiser feedback

I Reject Reviews – Lots Of Them

ReviewMe 33% (2/6) Accepted
Sponsored Reviews 80% (4/5) Accepted
PayPerPost 37.5% (3/8) Accepted

Total 47.3% (9/19) Accepted

That doesn’t cover all the offers I pass over within the various directories, or the people who have approached me directly. The direct offers I generally ignor totally or refuse politely, depending on product. There is one ebook I still have to take a look at to see if I am going to write a full review. That will be free even though a paid review was offered. Why? It has an affiliate program, if it is any good, I will earn more as an affiliate over the long term.

Editorial Control

Google representatives have stated many times that paid directories are OK, as long as they are not selling PageRank specifically, and there is some editorial control over the process.

I Don’t Sell Advertising

Any advertising you might find on this blog is affiliate marketing, and where I remember, that is blocked and nofollowed.

PageRank = INFLUENCE

It seems as I suggested in my previous article that Google have singled out anyone, or any collective group or company who gives a hint in their promotional material that they are selling links based upon PageRank.
Selling links based upon even a similar term, such as listing the number of links to your site does not seem to currently be a problem, and this might be a slow but manual process.

If you mention PageRank as an indication of how “pretty” you are to advertisers, you are going to be treated like a prostitute.

As I also mentioned in my previous article, PageRank can also be looked on as a measure of influence that can never be assessed just by looking at a pure number of established links, or a traffic rating from Alexa.

Whilst I would love for PayPerPost to move away from displaying PageRank, influence makes a huge difference, but even then they will need additional metrics for traffic, not Alexa, but their own system coming in approximately 1 month.

Adam Lasnik

Adam Lasnik from Google commented on the Sphinn story for Danny’s post.

I totally understand and support tough-but-fair evaluation of our methods, but at the end of day, I’d hope the majority of folks here would agree with our goals of aiming for a more leval playing field on the web as well as a greater surfacing of quality content.

It doesn’t seem like they are trying to level the playing field to me. From my evaluation they have been on one hand quite surgical in which sites to take out, and on the other hand have not paid any attention to the quantity and quality of the content.

Here are 2 quotes from Adam from April when interviewed by Eric Enge

Two, taking a step back, our goal is not to catch one hundred percent of paid links. It’s to try to address the egregious behavior of buying and selling the links that focus on the passing of PageRank. That type of behavior is a lot more readily identifiable then I think people give us credit for.

That’s one of those things where typically you know it when you see it. As I mentioned, our interest isn’t in finding and taking care of a hundred percent of links that may or may not pass PageRank. But, as you point out relevance is definitely important and useful, and if you previously bought or sold a link without Nofollow, this is not the end of the world. We are looking for larger and more significant patterns.

As I pointed out on Sphinn, I have over 1800 pages indexed, and of those over 1500 are showing in the /* supposedly primary index.
That actually compares very well with many PR6 optimized sites, and better than most.

Among those pages are 9 pages from which I linked to clients who hired me to review their service or website. Those reviews typically took between 4 and 10+ hours to perform and write the content, to receive between $35 and $130 in my pocket, pre tax.

Obi Wan would certainly, at this time be saying “Adam, these are not the paid links you are meant to be looking for, move along”

Maybe Google have identified PayPerPost as a bigger long-term threat not only to their search index, but also to their monetization of the web, than what was currently only about links that were easy to identify, such as those in the sidebar.

Rather than trying to tackle the mass of 50,000 PayPerPost bloggers, they are highlighting the most prolific or prominent bloggers using the service. Sure they have also hit the Stanford Daily very hard, but that is just one very visible site.

Shoemoney has been saying “Don’t Make Google Look Stupid”

I honestly don’t think PayPerPost currently are making Google look stupid, but the danger for Google is allowing them to grow.

Some more great discussion on this from Rob and Meg, and thanks to Snoskred for the support – Hmm legal fees paid by Nigeria maybe? ;)

One point raised in the comments of my last post by Tomaz was about the Review My Post links, part of the PayPerPost affiliate program. With close to 400 clicks in the last 10 months, and 3 conversions, it is not ideal, as so few people who click through qualify for PayPerPost. If everyone who filled in the application form was accepted, it would be worth $0.75 per click which isn’t shabby, and hell as far as I care the link can be nofollow – it is just a great way to help someone make some immediate cash – maybe PPP will improve the conversions.
Anyway short term, I am going to remove the button for Review My Posts – that is the only minor concession I am going to make.

I don’t sell PageRank.

Whatever change Google have made in the data held about my site, it doesn’t seem to have prevented any of my content ranking, and unfortunately it is impossible to say what data they are working on to begin with.
They could well be using a dataset from 1 year ago in their experimentation with some new algorithms, or just as easily some data from last week.

The Toolbar PageRank Trap

• Google created PageRank
• Google created a way for people to see PageRank
• Google created a way for webmasters to access PageRank via API

Google seems determined to penalize anyone who mentions PageRank within their advertising as an indication of the value of the advertising or review service provided – essentially they are assuming that a mention of PageRank within such material means that the intention of the site owner is to sell PageRank.

I suppose that this assumption is the same as assuming that if a good looking female consultant, writer, TV presenter or speaker includes their photograph as part of their promotional materials, that the primary service they are providing is related to the sex industry.

Services such as PayPerPost, ReviewMe, Text Link Ads, Text Link Brokers & Sponsored Reviews do include Google PageRank among their listing and value criteria, and I do realize that a higher PageRank does make advertising more attractive to advertisers.
If you hadn’t noticed TV presenters, all things being equal, are often chosen based upon looks and not just intellect, lingual dexterity, and professional reputation.

Google themselves use PageRank within listings as a signal of quality. As an example, here is a page which contains a listing of SEO related blogs which have been selected for quality of content. The Google directory is an exported copy of the DMOZ directory, and inclusion within the SEO sections is highly prized.

PageRank could easily be looked on as an indication of INFLUENCE.

A blog with a higher PageRank might well have a lot less readers, but those readers will be more influential. As an example whilst Vanessa Fox no longer works for Google, and probably has far fewer subscribers that I do, I know she is a lot more influential.

Paid Post Arena Visibility

It is true I am highly visible in the paid posts arena, I have been included in a press release for PayPerPost, they listed me on Wikipedia and I have a prominent profile in their PPP Direct service (Ajax – no PageRank).

They even mentioned me in one of their promotional opportunities about PPP Direct, highlight that I had written a review about it, but there was absolutely no requirement for anyone to link through to me.

Despite the fact that PayPerPost list my PageRank among other metrics within their directory, I strongly believe that I am not “selling links” – I look on what I write as a form of consultancy, actually quite low paid consultancy considering the time I invest in the few site reviews I do accept.
The PayPerPost interface is a little limited in the specification and notification department, as are most enquiry forms for any business. As you would expect, a lot of additional discussion of requirements happens after an initial equiry, and within that discussion I insist that any links I provide will be editorial, with my own choice of anchor text.
That being said, I am SEO aware, I write articles frequently on how to give people useful anchor text, and if I determine I wish to highlight a particular web document, I am going to link to it using the best anchor text that I feel is appropriate.

In the Webmaster guidelines Google themselves state:-

A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you.

I am very comfortable explaining what I do in regards to paid reviews, I believe the content I create is of the highest quality, offers good value to my clients (I don’t like to look on it as advertising, though that is a component), and I also feel that if any of my clients were speaking with their competitors, they should feel quite comfortable pointing out the reviews I have made of their sites to their competitors.

In many ways being open and comfortable explaining what I do could be what has led to what seems to be a penalty in my displayed toolbar pagerank.

Only A Visible Penalty?

From what I can determine, the reduction in toolbar PageRank for this domain is the only thing which has happened.

• My pages are being indexed frequently – in fact my content appears in Google’s index just minutes after it is published, and a large amount of my content is reindexed every few days because it is often being updated.
• Google seems to be crawling everything – I can’t call this “deep crawling” because my site is actually very flat compared to most blogs, with the majority of pages no more than 2 clicks from the home page, and heavily interlinked.
• Whilst Google no longer reports supplemental results pages directly, the difference between a standard “site:andybeard.eu/” search and “site:andybeard.eu/*” search is minimal, indicating that as much as 85% of my pages are in the primary index. I don’t block a fair number of my pages that might be regarded as duplicate content from being indexed. As Google representitives have stated many times supplemental results are mainly due to lack of PageRank being passed to the pages, and not due to duplicate content. It is true that duplicate content pages often have very few links, thus end up as supplemental results, but this is more a by product.
• Most of my content appears to be ranking as well as it has ever ranked, actually in many cases better than many of my peers talking about the same products, publishing content around the same time.

Potential Unusual Factors

There are a number of potential unusual factors in the links I have received to this domain over the last 6 months which might be looked on by Google’s bots as possible things to flag, and I am going to list every single one of them, totally openly.

• The Dofollow List or D List – My site was added to a list of Dofollow bloggers that grew and spread into a blogging meme. I didn’t add myself to the list, and I didn’t spread it in any way. The links I received from it were all very targeted as they were deep links to my list of Dofollow plugins, but without any useful anchor text.
• Technorati Train – I had been exchanging Technorati favorites with my readers for some time, and Maki @ DoshDosh decided to do the same. I linked through from one of my posts to Maki, and Maki added me to a list of blogs that exchange favorites. That list was picked up and turned into another long meme from which I received a number of deep links.
• Indexed Search Results – I have 2 or 3 pages on the site where I pick up an RSS feed of the last 100 links to a post on my blog, or someone else’s, cache the results so it isn’t constantly hitting the server, and output the results. In many ways this is almost identical to what Google provide their blogspot users in the form of “linkbacks” to their posts.
• I have one page that pulls in search results on a specific keyword from Technorati, and again caches the RSS results, and outputs them to the page. The web page in question is very useful, in fact just as informative in many ways as a Mahalo search result – appropriate really because the topic is… Jason Calacanis – I have had some decent links to the page as well, from highly credible sources.
• How do you differentiate between keyword stuffing on every page… and “Web 2.0″ ideas like tag clouds? I have growing tag clouds on the bottom of my single “post” pages – they are useful for users, and give me some SEO benefits for moving juice around, but at some stage, on some very busy posts, it might become a little excessive, and dilute the value of the content.
• Dofollow – removing nofollow from comments in itself has risks for 3 primary reasons
  • Overall juice leakage – I have some pages with close to 200 external links, often to unrelated sites – those same pages might have 500 or more internal links to compensate but it does need to be considered on a busy blog.
  • I encourage people to use pingback or trackback when linking through to one of my posts, and encourage linking to posts rather than to my root domain. Unfortunately that is also a form of reciprocal linking between highly related pages on the web, because one page is invariably discussing the same topic as the other.
  • Linking to low quality domains – I moderate comments and trackbacks quite ruthlessly and apply my comments policy – I am sure some low quality sites slip through, but in general I know the blogs of most of the peole who link to me and who comment
• David Airey was recently having some problems possibly due to some links he sold, or maybe due to the birthday competition and specifying anchor text. I donated a prize to the competition – prize givers were not given any real indication on how the competition was going to be run, although David did ask for us to provide a description of how we wanted to be linked from his page – I am not criticizing David over this, and my rankings for particular terms which people decided to copy and paste have increased – it is a lot like article marketing and author resource boxes – is article marketing with a resource box soon going to give you a Google penalty? I doubt it, which is why I am surprised over Google’s attitude.
• I have one link out there for a large donation I made to a WordPress Plugin author – the link was offered freely after the donation was made, and the place being linked to and the anchor text is totally logical. I seem to remember links for charitable donations, or I suppose other donations are not what Google are meant to be targeting, but if the links look the same as a list of paid links, with a PayPal button underneath, I am sure Googlebot and even a human inspection might misinterpret why a link was given. I will be restarting donations to plugin authors soon – I paused it partially due to it being overshadowed by other WordPress development competitions which were also giving links to sponsors on high ranking domains, and supported by Automattic.
• I have some links from some of my other domains pointing to this site, to relevant content, or to meet legal requirements in the UK
• I have content being syndicated, both with permission and without. It generally contains links to the original article – I don’t hunt down people syndicating my content, and I publish it under GPL, so I can only require some kind of attribution, such as a link anyway.
• I started a meme back in January to boost awareness for MyBlogLog communities of quality blogs – I have seen even Google employees take part in blogging memes that offer some value

Paid Reviews or Consultation or Selling PageRank?

I don’t sell links on any of my domains for a number of reasons, but if I was going to include unrelated links if anything it would be to my own niche sites. To my knowledge I have never clicked on a link labeled “Sponsored Links” though I have clicked on links that were display advertising. If I was to sell display advertising I would have it running through a tracking script.

Here is a full list of the paid reviews I have written on this blog

So I have written 9 reviews, and turned down as many or more, some of which weren’t very relevant, but mainly because I didn’t have time… time for me is the biggest factor, it is what I believe people are paying me for. All links I give in such reviews are editorial

My readers seem to enjoy my paid reviews. I don’t think I have ever had a negative comment, in fact much the opposite many readers have linked to my reviews as an example of how such reviews can add to a blog, and to the web as a whole.

Plea Bargaining

Google have an attitude that if they decide you are guilty of some misdemeanor based upon their guidelines, you get a penalty.

Guilty until proven innocent?

The penalty I seem to have received is a major drop in my visible PageRank, and based upon the ranking of some of the sites I have linked to for certain phrases, may also have affected my ability to pass PagerRank and other ranking factors… globally, not just on a per page or per link basis.

The standard procedure to have some kind of penalty lifted is to fix whatever you have done wrong (in Google’s eyes), and submit a re-inclusion request through their webmaster console.

Unfortunately this isn’t really guilty until proven innocent, it is more like guilty until you repent.

If some slimy snake-oil SEO has discredited your site with various practices that Google doesn’t approve of, you eventually have a chance of re-inclusion, as long as you admit you did something wrong, rectify the problem, and vow never to do it again.

But what happens if you think you have done absolutely nothing wrong?

PayPerPost Is My Payment Processor

I use PayPerPost as my payment processor for the review / consultancy services I provide as an alternative to using PayPal or Google Checkout. They do take a small additional fee, but they also provide a very useful escrow service, and provide me with traffic. PayPerPost are certainly within my top50 referrers every single day and I believe it is targeted traffic.
I receive probably as much traffic daily from PayPerPost as I receive from other services… per month, though I know I am lucky to be a featured blogger, and that other bloggers might not receive as much traffic from the PayPerPost Direct site.

I have had someone show disrespect for my blog for displaying the PayPerPost logo, actually it was someone who used to write for DownloadSquad after I criticized them quite strongly for complaining about splogs, and then linking to the culprit… without using nofollow, just like The Guardian in their recent interview.

What would happen if Google decided in the future that PayPal isn’t a “trusted” payment processor, and is a poor quality signal?

Surely Google can’t give me a penalty for displaying my payment processor on my blog?

Quality Symbol Not Indication Of Ability To Pass Juice

The general public look on the little green bar on the Google Toolbar as a signal of quality, that is what Google tell them.

Here it is in Google’s own words

Wondering whether a new website is worth your time? Use the Toolbar’s PageRankâ„¢ display to tell you how Google assesses the importance of the page you’re viewing.

But a penalty on my visible Toolbar PageRank isn’t what Google are telling their users. Google users think my content is of less value, and has less authority. They don’t understand that Google also apply modifiers to the green bar which may be for reasons other than quality.

My content is still ranking in Google, thus Google still looks on my content as being the same quality.

The Google PageRank currently being displayed to my visitors is a deliberate manufactured lie to my visitors.

It is also a lie to potential advertisers – I don’t sell links, but I do sell my authority, and my hopefully increasing PageRank was a positive signal of quality relative to my increasing status withing Internet marketing and Search Engine Marketing.

Tarred & Feathered By Google

Google are going the route of humiliation as a deterrent to people using services such as PayPerPost, both bloggers writing content, and advertisers (PayperPost advertisers include corporations such as Ford Motor Company)

I am not going to defend the position of “Paid Links” which take 3 seconds to approve. That is an advertising value vs gaming search engines debate, and is not something I am involved in, not even under cover.

I spent over an hour on Skype with a colleague last night, about 3am because I just happened to be at my computer, giving him some reassurance on something SEO related. Before the conversation he asked how to pay me, and my consultancy rate. I don’t do that kind of SEO consultancy, it is not part of my current or even future business model.
I am sure however if I had stated $60 or even $100 per hour, I probably would have ended up with some work with his client just monitoring things. I could probably charge a lot more within more specialist niches where I have more experience.
If I spend 5 hours or more on a review on this blog and get some financial compensation, it doesn’t cover the value of my time, so how the hell can it be looked on as selling links just to game the search engines.

The money is just a token gesture, a way to filter requests so that people think about relevance.

At this time I am not worried about the 15,000 visitors Google send to my blog every month.

Google are attacking my personal brand, my business, and my integrity.

It Is Not Just My Domain

I have checked a number of domains that appear to have had an unusual decrease in Google Toolbar PageRank. I am not going to name them as I don’t believe that is the right approach to take.
Just as I have over the last 6 months, since April, each of those sites has continued receiving quality inbound links, but seems to have been hit with a penalty.

Lets Just Assume This Is A Mistake From Google

If Google had hit my rankings at the same time, then this label they have placed on my site as being of poorer quality might have been justified, but as ranking prominence has remained, it is a false representation of my site’s value.

I don’t think really think Google intended to defame me so I am going to keep cool and see if they fix the problem over the next week or so. Who knows they might even decide to issue a public apology to those they have been misrepresenting to their users.

For previous coverage, please refer to my posts about Google Paid Links, and the highly informative Gevil

Edit – I made a mistake with the Gevil link, it should have been to the .org

IF THERE’S ONE LESSON from TiVo Stop||Watch, it’s that relevancy outweighs creativity in TV commercials–by a lot. The ads on the “least-fast-forwarded” list aren’t funny, they aren’t touching, and they aren’t clever. And they don’t have big budgets. The top three overall in June (the latest month for which data are available) were CORT Furniture, Dominican Republic Tourism, and Hooters Restaurant. Several throw 800-numbers at you at the end.

But all of these ads are well-tailored to their audiences. For example, during prime-time broadcast TV in June, the No.1 least-fast-forwarded campaign was for home-gym brand Bowflex. Bowflex placed prime-time ads exclusively on professional wrestling on the CW Television Network–just the kind of show that might lead a viewer to reevaluate his or her own musculature and check out a home gym. Leaders on the overall least-fast-forwarded list, which included all advertisers that ran at least 20 spots during any time on any channel, were often those that advertised during daytime on cable, where shows have smaller, niche audiences, and it’s easier to deduce viewer interests, according to TiVo.

Of course this is taken almost as natural phenomenon in online advertising these days, because we have all grown accustomed to targeted advertising generating better response.

However online there seems to be a strange turn-around that advertisers are trying to hide the fact that viewers are being sold to, or that somehow there is money involved with a promotion.

Your Local Hardware Store vs Walmart

If you go to your local hardware store to speak to the resident expert for some professional “handy man” advise, you know full well that whatever he recommends (that he sells in his shop) he is making money on. In fact he might well be making as much or more than Walmart per sale, though Walmart probably have cheaper buying prices driving such professional stores out of business.

Small hardware stores haven’t been driven out of business because customers thought they gave poor advice or poor service, they just have a hard time competing on price, and they might not carry as wide a range of stock items in a sense of “one-stop shop for everything”.

Which Toothpaste or Brush?

Dentists / Dental Surgeons are provided with free samples all the time, hell I used to be given them as presents when I was a kid each time I visited a dentist. I think most parents trust the opinion of their kid’s dentist – and continue using the same brands they are given.

Disclosure Online

When you walk into a shop you expect to be sold to, but you don’t know which product the shopkeeper makes the most money on, which brand he has a special deal with, and the same is true in shops big and small.

Displaying some form of disclosure policy is like having a shop sign – once you have some clear disclosure, there is nothing wrong with suggesting products your visitors might benefit from and making something from doing so.

Don’t Be Scared Of Making Money Blogging

• Be genuine with your audience. A sponsored review or paid post isn’t going to break the social trust with your audience.
• Stick within your niche – whilst you can experiment with widening your niche, pay attention to page views both on your blog and in feed readers to give you an indication of interest level in your content.
• The best way to build trust with your audience is to give genuine opinion… to actually have an opinion. Even if some of your audience don’t agree with you, they will respect you for it.

I am not sure I am going to be able to knock him off the top spot, and this very post will probably gain him a few more votes, but I would like to think that one of my older articles could at least be a contender.

If This Content Is So Good, Why Hasn’t It Been Submitted Before?

There are a number of reasons why my old post on WordPress SEO and Dynamic Linking might not have been submitted by anyone in the past, and I think it is important to elaborate.

• The post in question was originally written in June, thus it pre-dates Sphinn – Danny doesn’t mind older content being submitted as long as it adds something of value.
• It was written as a Paid Post – I am sure some people are shuddering already, and others might just have a little gleam in their eyes – after all what better way to emphasise a point about some paid content and links being of high value than to have it highly rated on Sphinn
• Sphinn Might Not Accept a Paid Post – This is one reason I personally didn’t submit it sooner, because I respect the wishes of the admins, as well as the community. I asked Danny in a comment on Sphinn and I have taken his reply to mean that this submission would be acceptable.
• I was unsure of the “current climate” regarding paid links – I think in part SES San Jose has brought even some of the most white hat SEOs to question Google’s stance, and whilst Google’s stance is like a rock against a storm tide, hopefully… eventually… we will have some clarification on some of the more grey areas.
• The article was a load of junk? – no one has given me that reaction so far in the comments, or the other correspondence I have had about the article – the article also generated a lot of consulting enquiries which I turned down or have yet to progress to the next stage
• The content wasn’t original – whilst I reference other people fairly often, it is never without my own opinion, and in this case I think most SEOs think “siloing” is advanced linking structures – this article goes well beyond siloing

Gaming Sphinn?

Of course not…

I am just making my readers aware that I have submitted an article they might have enjoyed or even been tempted themselves to submit to Sphinn, if it wasn’t for the “stigma” of it being a paid post that might damage their reputation in some way.

Want to Make A Statement?

This might be one way of doing it…

Matt Cutts reads Sphinn, at least occasionally.

So do a lot of people who don’t fully understand the arguments frequently raised by SEOs about paid links, and services such as ReviewMe, Sponsored Reviews and PayPerPost

This post in particular I feel highlights something wrong with Google’s arguments and I am quite happy to provide it as an example (many people would be scared to do so)

Won’t Google Discount The Links?

All links within the site review were given editorially. The PPP interface doesn’t really provide for this, but it was negotiated before acceptance and I have documentary proof though it is private communication.

It Looks Like Google Have Already Discounted The Links

Google Backlink check on Emonetized

I should note at this time that the review was a one off “contract” and thus I am not receiving any monetary compensation for the links in this article.

That also proves that Tim’s blog is in the same area of topical authority, it is natural for me to be linking to him, and all the links are relevant.

Tim was honestly giving me a little compensation for the time I spent on a review.

Unfortunately it is impossible to prove whether my links to Tim really pass some Google Juice or not, because Google’s link: command doesn’t provide all the results, and might even skip some of the most relevant.
SEO Round Table highlighted today a few ways to check if links pass value – I have checked a number of my other links to other people and have seen my links credited. My WordPress SEO article has received a fair number of incoming links, and I have linked to it multiple times from pages that received links.

It was also syndicated in full and listed as the feature article on Searchnewz.com (note – I didn’t give a followed link to my syndicated article, although it is syndicated with my blessing)

Using Nofollow To Control Juice?

Matt seems to say that using nofollow to control Google Juice is ok, as long as you don’t orphan content.

Voting

I really don’t want this post submitted, despite the fact it might have evidence (though inconclusive) that Google are discounting some links they probably shouldn’t.

However if you liked my old post “WordPress SEO Masterclass For Competitive Niches” I would appreciate a vote on Sphinn, whether you thought it was great content, or because you want to highlight to Google that some paid content can be great, and the links editorial.

If you think it is junk, tell me so in the comments on that post, and give me some better examples.

Obviously I could just change the permalink to bring it to the front page and give it a little more attention, but I am saving that for a future test on Google’s algorithms

They won’t be taking a cut from sales in any way, and all deals are done directly between advertiser and site owner.

So How Do They Make Money?

The plan is to charge for premium listings in their directories on a monthly basis, and the fees so far proposed are reasonable if they can get traction, though that might require a large marketing budget or a skilled PR job.

Multi-platform

OIOPublisher provide a WordPress plugin, but also a hosted service so that it can be used to sell reviews or links for any kind of blog.

Link Options

Textlinks with the current interface can be purchased for the front page, sitewide or on a contextual basis, selecting a specific page, and the word on that page which should be linked to the advertiser.

Glancing at Features

I haven’t actually installed the plugin yet, so this is just a heads up and overview, but from what I can see posts are selected by post ID and URL – I am not sure how that would work for blogs that don’t provide a post ID though I suppose that is easily displayed.

Ideally there would be an interface that you could have on each page of your blog to specify purchasing a link on that page. Also it seems that contextual links are designed for linking from within existing content only, so there is no way of having a “Related Featured Links” breakout box.

Based on my testing, the WordPress plugin doesn’t seem to add links to RSS feeds, maybe a good thing. I wonder how an interface would work where you could order links to one of your sites for a post that hasn’t been published yet.

The system seems to allow for purchase renewal, but doesn’t have subscription options available.

Purchase control procedures allow you to approve a post, but not publish it until you have been paid – in some way this is a major improvement over other paid post and paid link solutions, because no money is held until such time as the advertiser knows something will be published, although.

The system can be configured to have all links nofollow

Maybe there should be a little more control over this, or some people would want different price points.

Just like the WordPress Bankroll plugin when it was first released, there is currently no support for adding tags to a paid post, but I am sure that can be implemented fairly easily.

I am not sure if paid links also appear on duplicate content pages, I will have to experiment.

The plugin code is GPL, so anything the plugin doesn’t currently do can easily be modified to your own requirements

• If you already own WP Bankroll, depending on your usage, OIOPublisher doesn’t offer many additional features and is missing a few
• Wp Text Ads plugin @ $127 seems like a very raw deal in comparison

At the end of the day, I know which option most people will use, the one that is free and multi-platform. With a large userbase, there is a high chance that an advertiser community will also develop though it will take a while to get larger advertisers on board, and there is very little quality control.

This doesn’t really replace the marketplace provided by PayPerPost, ReviewMe or Sponsored Reviews all of which serve mass markets with their existing client base.

I am also not sure it replaces a service like PPP Direct – WP Bankroll I mentioned in my review of PayPerPost Direct and the 10% surcharge is minor when they eat the costs and provide some level of escrow.

Will plugins like this lead to bloggers being banned from various paid post services? It is possible, because I have noticed a massive trend in charging an inflated amount for reviews just to appear higher in the listings on each service, with no intention of selling paid reviews for that price. I priced things based upon what I wanted to receive for my time.

As far as text links, I think I might be in the minority as I have never signed up for Text Link Ads or similar service, simply because they have an exclusivity clause in their terms and conditions. You couldn’t “play the field” and sell your own links, whilst also selling text link ads.

Text Link Ads do have their Feed advertising program, which possibly pays better and is more flexible than other feed advertising services, but you could always replace them with your own.

OIOPublisher is certainly worth a look.

I noticed that both Review Me and Sponsored Reviews have fixed their subscriber counts, and for those people using SEO For Firefox, you can see that that is now also reporting Bloglines subscribers correctly.

Listing on ReviewMe

This used to show just 2 stars for my subscribers (representing 52 subscribers in Bloglines), quite a significant difference as I currently have 129. It has taken quite a while to get this bug fixed.

I suggest everyone using Review Me logs in and refreshes their statistics.

Listing on Sponsored Reviews
I have only just noticed the update, so maybe this one has been there for some time. The problem previously was the listed number of backlinks, which is based on Yahoo. The number of links reported has been changing a lot the last few months, and I believe Sponsored Reviews did an update at the low point when I had less than 10K links showing.
Though I have seen a high point of 40k+, even the current 30K+ is significantly better.

How you are rated on these pages is important from a landing page perspective, but also makes a huge difference where you appear within the search features on both services.
If you are charging a higher fee, it is important to be able to justify it on first impression, otherwise a potential advertiser isn’t going to look any closer.

Here is a great explanation of supplemental results from Rockyfied

Google Supplemental Results: Google supplemental results take pages on your site that have been indexed and put them into a sub database in Google. Supplemental results do not rank well but rather Google uses its supplemental DB to populate its results when they don’t have enough results to show in a given query. This means pages on your site in Google’s supplemental DB will not help you in the serps.

Something that isn’t often talked about, is that sometimes what Google report as the number of cached pages, and supplemental results isn’t actually correct.

In some cases the numbers reported are totally and utterly wrong.

Case in point, recently this blog was reporting 1 page cached, and 3 in supplemental.

Damn, I must be a real bad boy to have non of my pages in Google’s index… or not.

March 2007 Stats From Google Analytics

So 45% of my traffic in March 2007 came from Google Organic Search, with the whole site listed as not even being cached for some of the time, and for the remainder, most of the pages were showing as being supplemental.

Believe Your Own Stats

With that much search traffic coming in, I wasn’t worried about having some kind of penalty. Some of the terms I was ranking for I was genuinely shocked, and I was out-performing older more established blogs and websites for the same terms, with content published around the same time.

Some supplemental results are however possibly justified, and to be honest, if some of my pages slipped back into supplemental I wouldn’t be surprised.

I should also point out that I don’t get a huge amount of traffic from social news and bookmarking sites, although that is increasing.

Suddenly My Whole Site Is In The Index

Yep, I was shocked, and a little mystified how my whole site was suddenly in Google’s index. Over 4000 pages, and only 3 are supplemental.

Here is a nice screenshot from Aaron Wall’s SEO Extension for Firefox.

Here is a screenshot directly from Google SERPs

How Did I Get All My Pages Indexed &
Pulled Out Of Supplemental Hell?

A few days ago, in response to Matt Cutts providing the ability for webmasters to snitch on their competitors report unethical paid links, I wrote a long post detailing, in my opinion, why Google penalising paid links was not providing a level playing field, and also questioning why everything like this is always announced on Matts blog, with the protection of a disclaimer.

At the end of that post, I mentioned the unthinkable, outrageous notion of submitting my own content as webspam, because I have written paid reviews, and am quite happy to give them to Google to scrutiny.

• By highlighting a website, maybe that also highlighted bugs in how supplemental results were being reported
• It would be difficult using a website that was being reported as almost 100% supplemental for evaluating new algorithms

The interesting thing was that when my site first appeared to be 100% out of supplemental, if you did a search for English pages, only 6 pages were out of supplemental. A couple of days later, the site is out of supplemental for English pages as well.

So if you have a legitimate website, and it is having problems with supplemental results, why not declare a link that earned you a bottle of wine for Christmas, or declare that you have a paid subscription to a business directory, trade association or a paid listing in Yahoo. If you feel really daring, grab yourself a paid review from one of the many services, and write a 2 or 3000 word review full of quality information, but with links to the site in question.

This is my personal blog. The views expressed on these pages are mine alone and not those of my employer.

Disclaimers are strange things…

Matt can basically discuss anything he likes, whether true, false or possibly true in the future, without his parent company being held liable for anti-competitive practices. It would be very interesting to see if that disclaimer would hold up in court, with Matt being head of the Webspam department.
On his unofficial blog he is in the position to cause an awful lot of financial damage to a lot of very well funded startups, and a fair number of massive internet corporations.

Google is in a Monopoly Position

Whilst everyone has a choice about which search engine they use, they have a significant market share of search traffic, and also a significant market share of the website monetization market, recently increased by the acquisition of DoubleClick (there is an agreement in place, but paperwork isn’t finalised)

What is a Paid Link?

We shouldn’t really think about whether a specific link is paid for, but whether there is a monetary benefit in making the link to another site.

Matt Cutts is an employee and probably has a lot of stock options in Google, yet constantly links through to his employer, from which Google benefit.
Microsoft bloggers frequently blog about Microsoft launches, and even have a mailing list set up.
Yahoo employees blog about Yahoo sites.

If you are a large corporation there are a number of ways to get millions of inbound links.

• Have an affiliate program – use clever redirects on the affiliate links – Google and specifically Matt Cutts has never suggested people report sites that contain affiliate links that are not blocked from being crawled by search engines.
• Buy websites with massive link equity – how much is The Internet Movie Database worth to Amazon from an SEO perspective? Shopping.com and Epinions.com were Ebay purchases. When you go to these sites there isn’t a nofollow link in sight.
• Create Widgets – there are tons of widgets that pass on link equity

Once a large corporation has a lot of existing link equity, it is easy for them to pass this on to money generating sites and services.

Companies are allowed to buy links from the Yahoo directory, which is well known to confer a large amount of trust to a domain, and has been propping up Google’s algorithms for years.
Will we soon see Google state that the Yahoo directory should be made nofollow for all paid inclusions? Matt Cutts has previously stated that the Yahoo directory is OK because there is editorial review.

Matt Cutts has been speaking out saying he agrees with Matt Mullenweg on Sponsored Themes.
A company is paying a theme author as a subcontractor to create and maintain a WordPress theme, and there is attribution to the designer, and the company paying for the work.
Maybe it is a charitable contribution and the designer chose to include a link as a thank you.

How many consultants provide links through to the companies they work for?

How many software firms provide links through to their major corporate clients?

If you make a donation to someone, and they decide to give you a link back, is that a paid link?

If you are a consultant, and are paid to analyse a company, but to make the findings known publicly, are you supposed to stick nofollow on all the links?

If you are a VC or Angel investor, should you have to use NoFollow linking through to companies in your investment portfolio?

Are developers working on an open-source project allowed a link back to their sites (cough WordPress), and then use that link equity to dominate search engines on whatever topic they please?

If you are a blog network, or large internet content producer, is it gaming Google to have links to your sister sites, whether there is a direct financial connection or not?
An interesting twist on this is the WPNI Blogroll. They are providing link equity to the members who are then showing adverts – even if the adverts weren’t converting, would you carry them for the links and traffic?

Should a not for profit organisation link through to their paid members with a live link? One of the benefits is always being included in the members directory, and not just for traffic. These are often high quality credible relevant links, and easy to buy.

A large number of WordPress developers have paid links on their personal sites, as do theme and plugin developers.

If you write a blog post, thanking your sponsors, should you use nofollow?

Some people give away prizes for links, or offer some kind of reciprocation. Links have value, and Google invented the value of a followable link, not webmasters.

If you are a expert in a particular field, and someone asks you to write a review of their site, and the type of review you write means that writing that content might take 10 hours of your time to do due diligence, is it wrong to accept some kind of monetary contribution?
In such a situation, why would you be forced to use nofollow on all links to the site being reviewed?
I guarantee I spend a lot more time on a paid review than someone working for Yahoo for their paid directory.

Imagine someone created a commercial Wikipedia, and paid $5 for every link made to it.
You might think that is crazy, but 100,000,000 links with good anchortext would create a website that would rank for almost any term imaginable, and the company would be worth far more than $1bn, and would certainly bring in more than $100,000,000 revenue each year.
There is another evil twist you could add to the mix as well…

Sickened

I have read through the comments on Matts blog from where this is being orchestrated.

Why is it coming from Matt’s blog and not the Google Webmaster blog?

Why the focus on the effect of paid links and reviews for small webmasters rather than on the major corporations?

This is like a witch hunt with a disclaimer attached

Where is the precise definition of a paid link?

Biting The Bullet

I am actually proud of the paid reviews I have written, and I am so confident that they are not webspam, I am going to “bite the bullet”.

I have already submitted The Matt Cutts blog as webspam, because he is frequently linking through to his employer with undisclosed links.

Now I am doing what many would think of as being unthinkable, I am submitting my own content to Google’s Webspam form

Here is what I have just submitted to Google

paidlink

I am submitting my own content, because it is my own strong belief that there is nothing “webspam” related to the paid reviews I write, and am willing to submit them for scrutiny.

http://andybeard.eu/2007/03/sponsored-reviews-now-live-in-depth-review.html
http://andybeard.eu/2006/12/search-engine-glossary.html
http://andybeard.eu/2007/03/volusion-review-and-suggestions.html

I should also note I also give away half my earning from those reviews to WordPress plugin developers.

I would love an official response that I can publish stating whether Google has any problems with the quality of work I have done for my clients, or the fact that I include live followable links in the reviews I write.

Do you think I am going to get an official response?

Do Google employees have the balls to decide whether something is spam, or will they just blame it on their algorithms?