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Would your advertisers be fine with you adding nofollow? If so, do that and you're fine. If they aren't fine with nofollow you should realize that the other stu

by jonknee 12y ago

Would your advertisers be fine with you adding nofollow? If so, do that and you're fine. If they aren't fine with nofollow you should realize that the other stuff is window dressing and you're really selling pretty links (which means watch out, Google is looking to penalize you). Real companies selling real products to real people get in trouble for scuzzy SEO all the time. JC Penny comes to mind. Or RapGenius (though they aren't even selling anything!). It's the techniques used that are the issue, not what is being promoted.

toddh 12y ago
Shouldn't we be talking content and not form? Let's say a reader of mine is searching for a job and my site has a new great job at Apple. Apple advertises on my site because it attracts a certain kind of person. Shouldn't that person be shown my ad because it's both timely and highly relevant? That the job is on my site is a valuable signal. I don't use an ad service, I place every single ad and I have done so since the start. I check every single link. I check every single ad. I personally talk with every single advertiser. It's not hard for me to imagine an algorithm that does similar sorts of calculations. Oh, this link goes to apple. I've heard of them before. It's for a job. Scalability Engineer seems to be a valid occupation. Looks OK to me. You are saying all such signals have no value and should be filtered by nofollow? In actuality I've not given nofollow much thought. I guess I may now. I've lived by the idea of creating quality content, being honest, and doing a good job, thinking Google will figure it out. That unfortunately doesn't seem to be the case. The irony in this age of targeting and personalization valuable signals are being lost.
- jonknee 12y ago
  Yes, none of that is problematic. You should just make sure you're not indiscriminately linking to third parties who pay for the privilege. In your case nofollow would be very simple and would prevent any damage. Quality content is awesome and I'm sure your site is great, but Google's thought process here is that your site's reputation should only be handed on to sites that earn it organically (e.g. not through their buying it). It's really for your own benefit, with the way PageRank works your outgoing links are votes that are as powerful as your page's reputation is good. If you link to bad sites your page's reputation takes a hit and thus your PageRank goes down. If I pay you to vouch for me (e.g. link to me) that only means that I have money. If you vouch for me without any money that's a much better signal that I have quality content.

by jonknee 12y ago

toddh 12y ago

Shouldn't we be talking content and not form? Let's say a reader of mine is searching for a job and my site has a new great job at Apple. Apple advertises on my site because it attracts a certain kind of person. Shouldn't that person be shown my ad because it's both timely and highly relevant? That the job is on my site is a valuable signal. I don't use an ad service, I place every single ad and I have done so since the start. I check every single link. I check every single ad. I personally talk with every single advertiser. It's not hard for me to imagine an algorithm that does similar sorts of calculations. Oh, this link goes to apple. I've heard of them before. It's for a job. Scalability Engineer seems to be a valid occupation. Looks OK to me. You are saying all such signals have no value and should be filtered by nofollow? In actuality I've not given nofollow much thought. I guess I may now. I've lived by the idea of creating quality content, being honest, and doing a good job, thinking Google will figure it out. That unfortunately doesn't seem to be the case. The irony in this age of targeting and personalization valuable signals are being lost.

jonknee 12y ago
Yes, none of that is problematic. You should just make sure you're not indiscriminately linking to third parties who pay for the privilege. In your case nofollow would be very simple and would prevent any damage. Quality content is awesome and I'm sure your site is great, but Google's thought process here is that your site's reputation should only be handed on to sites that earn it organically (e.g. not through their buying it). It's really for your own benefit, with the way PageRank works your outgoing links are votes that are as powerful as your page's reputation is good. If you link to bad sites your page's reputation takes a hit and thus your PageRank goes down. If I pay you to vouch for me (e.g. link to me) that only means that I have money. If you vouch for me without any money that's a much better signal that I have quality content.