Google now penalizes sites that support paid links. I gotta admit this kinda blows me away. A few of my thoughts i had today:
- How does Google know if a link is paid or not? There’s nothing inherently different between a paid link and any other link on a site. i.e. on a blogroll. Paid links can only be determined on a case by case basis.
- If the above is the case then it just wows me to think that Google would be spending man power on stopping paid links but would (seemingly) ignore splogs and other spam websites that are chock-full of Google adsense.
- Paid links would seem to me to be a much smaller issue on the whole than, say, spam comments or trackbacks.
- What about pay-per-post or paid posts? These would seem to line up directly with what Google is taking a stand against.
Overall there’s really nothing anyone can do except bitch about Google. If you don’t like it then you have two options: worry feverishly and take your ads down- or ignore it and not worry about what Google ranks your site.
Unfortunately for many sites the second option really isn’t one. Google has built itself up to such an extent that many sites rely on their Google ranking to produce income. Google has a stranglehold on the search engine market.
I’m no SEO whiz, and never will be one, but I know a little bit about how the system works. I tend to agree with what Adam said, that this is somewhat unfair on Google’s part and it’s an attempt to drive Text-Link-Ads, et al. out of their market.
Of course, this is speculation on my part.
Will I be removing Text Link Ads from this site? Yes. Do I love Google at this point in time? No.