Comments on: Is selling links a crime?

By: Matt Cutts - The Enforcer

Matt Cutts - The Enforcer — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 16:43:54 +0000

[...] 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? [...]

By: Michele

Michele — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 20:55:47 +0000

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.

By: Melanie Prough

Melanie Prough — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 14:45:03 +0000

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

By: Tim Nash

Tim Nash — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 14:17:16 +0000

So, agree or not, business minded webmasters will try to conform….At least on the surface =-)

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?

By: Tim Nash

Tim Nash — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 14:03:57 +0000

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

By: admin

admin — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 13:59:26 +0000

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.