4 ms·

Last I checked, Google owned Doubleclick, and they are in the ad business and want to get more page views and clicks on ads. So, it's kind of hypocritical of a

Last I checked, Google owned Doubleclick, and they are in the ad business and want to get more page views and clicks on ads. So, it's kind of hypocritical of a Google engineer to say something like this. And what's wrong with link exchanges, anyway? Let's say I do Model Railroading, and I want some traffic. So, I join a "web ring" of other model railroader websites. Now my page rank goes down? Screw you, Google! This also seems like a Blackhatter's dream. Got competition with your ad campaigns? Fine, just report your competition to the linkspam link and boost your rankings.

prawn 17y ago
If you're linking to sites as an 'editorial decision' (i.e., you vouch for or approve of the content on that site), then you're fine. Otherwise, and if it's a paid link, you are supposed to nofollow it. One of my issues with this is that on one of my sites, I have paid links that I vouch for. They're people I know providing services I've actually used and if my Google Account got pulled up by a rogue complainant or competitor, I'd be really pissed off. The help docs on these sorts of things are pretty ambiguous though. One frustration I have is that they routinely discuss getting 'editorial' backlinks from bloggers, but for small businesses this can be exceptionally hard. If you're a tiler, for example, you might (if you're really proactive) have a four page site with some examples of work, testimonials, contact info and a list of services. None of your customers/testimonials are going to be blogging types. Most of your suppliers aren't going to link to you because they've barely got on top of their own web issues. But you'll get beaten in the rankings by a blogger or general content-producer who knows about SEO. Why isn't paying to advertise on those sites and getting some link juice (without the link being nofollowed) an option?
- ericd 17y ago
  >Why isn't paying to advertise on those sites and getting some link juice (without the link being nofollowed) an option? Because that breaks the assumptions of their algorithms - that people link to what is interesting without any conflict of interest. If webmasters were allowed to pay to increase their pagerank, then rankings become about who can pay for the most/best backlinks, rather than what is most interesting to users on a given subject. The short answer: Google doesn't want their SERPs to be overrun by spam.
  - prawn 17y ago
    But the end result of that tiling example (and I have a lot of smaller clients that are in that sort of position) is that the blog spam and MFA sites dominate, while the small players with a legitimate, physical business struggle to get attention. Who links to tilers because they're interesting?

prawn 17y ago

If you're linking to sites as an 'editorial decision' (i.e., you vouch for or approve of the content on that site), then you're fine. Otherwise, and if it's a paid link, you are supposed to nofollow it. One of my issues with this is that on one of my sites, I have paid links that I vouch for. They're people I know providing services I've actually used and if my Google Account got pulled up by a rogue complainant or competitor, I'd be really pissed off. The help docs on these sorts of things are pretty ambiguous though. One frustration I have is that they routinely discuss getting 'editorial' backlinks from bloggers, but for small businesses this can be exceptionally hard. If you're a tiler, for example, you might (if you're really proactive) have a four page site with some examples of work, testimonials, contact info and a list of services. None of your customers/testimonials are going to be blogging types. Most of your suppliers aren't going to link to you because they've barely got on top of their own web issues. But you'll get beaten in the rankings by a blogger or general content-producer who knows about SEO. Why isn't paying to advertise on those sites and getting some link juice (without the link being nofollowed) an option?

ericd 17y ago
>Why isn't paying to advertise on those sites and getting some link juice (without the link being nofollowed) an option? Because that breaks the assumptions of their algorithms - that people link to what is interesting without any conflict of interest. If webmasters were allowed to pay to increase their pagerank, then rankings become about who can pay for the most/best backlinks, rather than what is most interesting to users on a given subject. The short answer: Google doesn't want their SERPs to be overrun by spam.
- prawn 17y ago
  But the end result of that tiling example (and I have a lot of smaller clients that are in that sort of position) is that the blog spam and MFA sites dominate, while the small players with a legitimate, physical business struggle to get attention. Who links to tilers because they're interesting?