Money can't buy you link love

by Werner deBruin

“Yes, if you sell links, you should mark them with the nofollow tag. Not doing so can affect your reputation in Google.” - Matt Cutts after a controversial comment where he stated that he did not add a link onto his Blog, because the person did not pay for the link.

Well, interesting… So why would paid links damage your reputation on Google? Before we get into that let’s start of with the definition of a no-follow link:
Some say that it’s an indication to search engines about the relationship you have with the link: “No, I can't vouch for its quality” or “I don't have editorial control over this link”. Either way you’re telling SE’s that you don’t want to associate yourself with the target page.

But why does Google not approve of paid links? Is AdWords not just another form of paid linking? (On this note I have a sneaking suspicion that AdWords does have a part to play in your organic rankings.) Might Google be worried that paid link relationships, where related sites send targeted traffic to each other, could one day erode the mega-profits of paid search advertising?

Anyway, the witch hunt continues - This week Google announced that they want to make use of “Google Vigilantes” (aka the average Joe) to find and report paid links and link brokers.

If using no-follow is the correct way, according to Matt, to distance yourself from paid links and being penalised by Google. Would it be safe to feel that Google will then not penalise these sites, but merely discredit the value of the link?

Seems unlikely to me… What do you think?

2007/04/19 | permalink | comments (0) | trackbacks (0)

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