Is selling links a crime?
Author: Tim NashYou visited a few times and I would appreciate your thoughts on this post, why not comment?
Lies, damn lies and Google
I think now is appropriate time to wade in on the are paid links spam debate the big boys have been fighting it out to the point that blows were very nearly struck, to be honest both side have well thought out and constructive arguments. I won’t go to heavily into the debate but will include some great web links where you can get a good idea of what is going on. Instead I was to draw you to 2 issues I feel need to be raised that seemed to have been forgotten.
Google is a company
Google is not a state, country or a charity Google is a money making company being listed in Google is not your right and you have no legal control over making them list your site. Therefore we can debate till we are blue in the face but the Google Search engine is controlled by a company that ultimately has to make money to survive, one of its main revenue streams sits on the right hand side of your screen every time you do a Google search. Google bosses must have by now realised the problem, if people can pay SEO companies to buy good links and optimise sites to get to the number 1 spot in the search engines then it will provide a far better return on investment then short term Adword campaigns it is therefore in their interest to see this becoming harder and more expensive to do.
Google has a problem it cannot alienate customers or competitors to much and therefore has made or rather left concessions in its policies.
What is editorial control
Why is it ok to buy links from Yahoo directory but not my site? Because according to Google, Yahoo directory shows editorial control, they filter out inappropriate sites that don’t fit a criteria and therefore are not motivated by money. Lets look at that again…
Yahoo directory is:
- A human edited directory
- Who takes only paid submissions
- Pays its editors
Now I’m sure the Yahoo editors do a great job but what makes them have any less or more editorial control then myself. Lets take this blog for example, their is no way I’m going to allow a Viagra company advertise here or any company except those relevant to the site. I have full editorial control and are perfectly capable of saying no I also know what I think is the sort of sites our readers would be interested in. In our community friends slot at the minute is Wordtracker they are a great company and yes the link is an affiliate one but that doesn’t make them any less of a great company. If Google wants to delist a site they have every right to do so but to delist it because of paid links is like they are saying the site owner was incapable of making editorial control, now I’m not a lawyer but thats got to be close to slander?
I am not a terrorist
In the UK we have anti movie copying ads on all DVD’s they go something like this….
DVD Piracy is wrong, its a crime, by making, selling or buying a pirated DVD you are helping terrorism
That was a bit of a leap, I copy a DVD for a friend I’m helping terrorism? Google uses the same techniques as that ad it has managed to blur the lines between what it doesn’t want you to do and the Law. Interestingly I hear a lot of people referring to Blackhat techniques as illegal and while many probably are being a black hat SEO doesn’t mean you break the law merely that you break Google webmaster guidelines.
Is it safe to buy links
2 things have become obvious through out this, one Google can’t detect paid links easily and with many Webmasters wising up to simple things like using the word sponsors it will become harder, hence they are trying to get people to rat out such links, two Google is a huge PR machine and ultimately it plans to eliminate paid links not algorithmically but through propaganda. Ultimately my advice remains the same, never buy for PR always buy for targeted traffic in your subject area with good anchor text alternatively look for button ads like the one to the right of this post, great links carry weight almost impossible to detect as paid for these might not be as useful as anchored text links but they have the potential to get your brand to 1000s of visitors.
Light reading
- SEOMoz - Matt Cutt on paid links
- WPW Video with Rand and Graywolf over paid links
- Graywolf presentation at SES
- SEOMoz coverage of Paid links session at SES
- Two quick ones from Andy Beard Slippery slope for Google | Paid Links vital for relevancy
- Last but not least Mr Cutts own words on how to report a paid link
One last thing
We still looking for community friends if your site, company or product would be of interest to our readers let us know we would love to welcome new friends to the site, though Pharmaceutical companies need not apply 
Andy Beard
2007-08-31 12:01:23
Thanks for the links, though one of them seems to be pointing to the article on SEOmoz
Tim Nash
2007-08-31 12:45:47
Well spotted
I have fixed the link now.
Mike - Twenty Steps
2007-08-31 12:48:58
A man after my own heart, Tim! I love the graphic, by the way. I’m sure that with a little bit of Photoshop love that you could have a couple of uniformed Matt Cutts’ in there
Tim Nash
2007-08-31 13:03:28
hmmm the thought had crossed my mind, but I think this gets the point across nicely.
The Article Writer » Dazzling Summer Daze Link Share
2007-08-31 15:08:08
[...] like Tim Nash’s photo work on, “Is Selling Links A Crime?” Tim demonstrates with humor just how silly the whole link selling argument is — are [...]
Michele
2007-08-31 16:07:04
The thing I find so interesting about this entire debate is the lack of vision on Google’s part. It should have been fairly obvious that the PR system was set up in such a way that would lead to it becoming a commodity.
Now that it has and someone other than Google has figured out how to make money selling that commodity Google’s crying foul.
The problem with your assumption that webmasters will not put links on their sites to non-relevant and spammy sites just hasn’t been proven out. Too many site owners are willing to sell links to anyone as long as they fork over the green.
I remember when there was talk on Cutt’s blog about penalizing sites that link to non-relevant sites. I saw it as a positive and long overdue change. But, before his blog post was even over, it became apparent even that would not be so easy to do. One of his examples of non-related sites was a real estate agent having a link to a mortgage site. Gee, so maybe if you work for Google you don’t have to worry about getting a mortgage; but for the rest of us peons house buying and mortgages typically go hand in hand.
Tim Nash
2007-08-31 16:13:36
I think the problem is even worse for example lets take a wholesale suppliers website what is an irrelevant link, the one to the clients sites or the one from the company he supplies?
Is a link to your supplier irrelevant even if it is your stationary supplier?
Now their are clearly irrelevant links (often inappropriate to) a link on a children’s story site to a beer company for example. But even this is not entirely implausible maybe the page on the end is to an alcohol awareness campaign for example.
This is the reason why Google cannot algorithmically get rid of paid links or even discount irrelevant ones it can have a good try but wholesale algorithmic penalties won’t actually help and ultimately would make the engine less usable and more susceptible to spam.
Paid Links debate « The Venture Skills Blog
2007-09-08 13:14:06
[...] you to two posts the first is a Guest Post I did for SEO Cog on paid Links and the second a Payment blogger post on the same [...]
Melanie Prough
2007-09-08 15:44:43
Well done Tim, I agree, and have stated so myself….Google has no “responsibility” to list our sites. It’s really just that simple. Maybe we can make enough noise, and they will adjust the current direction they are taking…But I think they are pretty hell bent on achieving this goal within their index. So, agree or not, business minded webmasters will try to conform….At least on the surface =-)
–Melanie
admin
from Webdigity webmaster forums2007-09-08 15:59:26
With this issue there is one question that comes to my mind. Google has the right to remove any site from their index, and it is good to do it when it is for spammers, but what would happen if google was removing a site that is a non government organization or a political site?
My point is that there should be rules for search engines and some kind of control from governments to ensure that google or any search engine is not playing with the public.
I guess this is a problem for the digital age related to the human rights.
Tim Nash
2007-09-08 16:03:57
Google is a company and is liable to the rules of where its based, I guess if they delisted a political campaign because of and could be proved to have done so for political reasons they would legally be responsible?
That said I don’t know enough about US law to know if a law would have been broken. What more worrying is the trend all the engines have of bowing down to countries such as china demanding sites not be shown to Chinese citizens
Tim Nash
2007-09-08 16:17:16
This I think is where Google has sort of cut its nose of to spite its face, by firing of shots and making public penalties they have made paid links into a huge issue. Now viagra companies and joes aerials have been thrown in the same boat, will this stop paid links I don’t think so, will it stop public trades of paid links over time almost certainly.
So then how is Google going to find those spam links now?
Melanie Prough
2007-09-08 16:45:03
Well US law can be quite porous…For example I was a restaurant manager in Ohio for 20+ years. Ohio is an “at will” employment state…Thus neither the employee or the employer have any implied rights for employment continuation, unless there happens to be a legally binding agreement in force. So, if I fired an employee for being of an cultural background I didn’t like…as long as I never told anyone, and they could not prove it…My action would be supported under the law. The only matter for litigation is the issue of un-employment consideration.
Google is a not public Domain, and they can (at their own publicity risk) make changes and set standards how they wish.
No different than say, a local hospital here, that is now doing pregnancy tests on 12 year olds in the emergency room. Yes, a publicity nightmare…But clearly their right to determine their own policies and procedures.
I think there does need to be some type of conformity regulations and guidelines for search engines….But Google seems to make the rules, not so much follow them.
–Melanie
Michele
2007-09-08 22:55:47
I just resent the whole idea that one business (Google) thinks that by their nature as a listing service they have the right to dictate to other business owners how they conduct their business. I’ve never heard the phone company telling businesses, “Oh we’re not going to list you because we think you shouldn’t have that billboard over on Main Street and we don’t like that you give out brochures for mortgage companies in your Real Estate office.”
My goodness, let’s look at the ramifications if we removed every site that sells advertising in the form of paid links from the SERPs. With a little thought, that would mean any site with Adsense, all newspapers, all magazines, and all radio and TV stations would have to be removed from Google’s results. And that’s just the obvious ones - I doubt it would take long to make a much bigger list. If one thinks about it, there really wouldn’t be all that much left. (Well my writing business site would be left, but I doubt I would have all that much business.)
While it’s true that Google can do what they want as a privately owned company, I think we as business owners need to consider carefully before jumping just because Google says so.
Matt Cutts - The Enforcer
2007-09-11 18:43:54
[...] I’ve spoken a couple of times over the last few weeks about the paid links debate that has been raging ever since the SES San Jose showdown between Google’s Matt Cutts and Graywolf’s Michael Gray. I’m not going to go over old ground again but follow up an article written by Tim Nash entitled Is selling links a crime? [...]