Google has crossed the line

So far Google was all about reading what normal users could read. If you made your website accessible to all visitors (including visually impaired), you had a perfect site for Google. Every guideline in the Webmaster guidelines has always been focussed on making a good website for users and forgetting about (spamming) search engines.
But now Google wants us to do the complete opposite. If links are extremely relevant to your users, but not contextual enough to search engines, you need to nofollow them or completely remove them to be able to score. Matt Cutts has written a few blog posts on nofollowing paid links.
What will they think of next? From now on you have to make your website for search engines and hope that it is ok for your visitors?!

Matt Cutts (Google’s main spamcop) is back from SES New York and has spoken to too many SEOs. Even with a normal non-spamming website you will need to hire an SEO to check if you’re not possibly breaking any of the “webmaster guidelines”, otherwise Google might ban you from their index.

1. Below in this article: Hidden links Matt says: “As long as we’re talking about links, this seems like a pretty good opportunity to talk about a simple litmus test for paid links and how to tell if a paid link violates search engines’ quality guidelines.”
2. It seems like Matt believes in devaluating the link in stead of the linker in this post.
3. But he also wants us to know how to report paid links on your competitor’s website.

Do you have ads on your website?
Almost 50% of all websites run ads on them and far less than 2% of all webmasters have ever read the Google quality guidelines that so far mention nothing about paid links being bad. But what is the difference between an ad and a paid link? Are all ads bad because you do not nofollow them?

I hope Matt’s article was misinterpreted by many people, because it seems many people disagree in the comments. His wording wasn’t chosen too well and he makes it look like Google will want you to give more information on your intentions. And therefore make part of your code for search engines and not for users. If you don’t, you can face a penalty! Again, I hope they’ve misinterpreted his words, but that is what he’s saying.

Has Google lost the war on spam?
When there is an ever increasing amount of people gaming your algorithm, you are bound to lose from some of them. Google can detect many paid links just by their characteristics. Link buying and exchange programs can be discounted in their calculation and notorious link spammers can be removed from the index. But Google can’t detect algorithmicly when you “in your own way” link to a certain website and get payed for it. And because those payed links have no common characteristic the algorithm can detect them by, there is no way to discount them. This is why Google wants you to tell them if you are getting payed for a link. And if they find a common characteristic in the future and you haven’t told them you got paid (nofollowed the link), they are bound to reduce the trustfactor of your website in their calculations. So they haven’t lost yet, but using threats to get what they want isn’t a sign of strength.

Websites for users or search engines?
Search engines are increasingly telling us: “We have tried, but without your help we cannot order the world’s information the correct way.” “We need the metatags, rel=nofollow, legal cloaking and other information not intended for your normal readers, so please use them but not for evil purposes.”
With Matt’s article Google has taken the next step and he shows this is probably just the beginning. From now on every webmaster needs to know what a search engine can or cannot read and help the engines rank their website for the right content. Is this something good? For SEOs it is ;)

So when is a paid link bad?
If you read Matt’s article and his comments carefully, you will find out that non-obvious ads and paid links, that the algorithm hasn’t detected automatically, are the ones you should mark. Nofollowing every other link that doesn’t help your ranking can even be good for your ranking, but that might raise some red flags.

In a total strategy I will also continue to buy links as long as there is no characteristic that signals “I’m payed”. When there is such a signal, Google should devalue the link and not penalize the linker. Buying relevant links is good for both your visitors and search engines. How else would they know my site is the most important resource on … ;)

Monday, April 16th, 2007 at 12:52 pm | Opinions, Algorithms, Links
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