Google has been trying to reduce the use of buying and selling links (for PageRank) since the last PR update by manually de-indexing some link broker websites along with dropping PageRank for some sites selling links. Quite a few sites selling those links became very worried and either stopped selling their links or placed the ‘nofollow’ tag on their paid links (which had to be some kind of violation to the link broker sites’ agreement with them).The PR update, which solidified Google’s strong stand against paid links (including the explicit addition to being against Google’s Guidelines), was both manual and cosmetic—at this point in time. Sites that were ranking for a variety of their keywords still continue to rank well and those that did not probably suffered a loss due to some of their paid links being nofollowed.

A few questions that come to mind all around the whole Paid Link spectacle:

• Did Google go into the link brokers’ sites illegally to get who was doing the paid link information or are they now able to truly detect paid links?
• Did Google get most of its information from webmasters submitting paid link reports and if so, can the link brokers sue the webmasters for breach of contract?
• Are paid links now officially black hat SEO? And just what is black hat SEO?
• Does Google need to be regulated by the FCC?
• What’s the difference between buying links and link bait?
• How strong is Google’s search results and are there any long-term flaws?

Firstly, I want to point out that the opinions stated are of my own and not the opinions of anyone or any agency that I work for.

Google Detecting Paid Links?

Google prides itself on its phrase of “Do No Evil” so the likelihood that it had employees going into some link brokers database and illegally using that information (assuming that the information specifically forbade employees working with or for Google on using their site) is small. One reason is that Google knows quite well how easy it could be to get information on the people who are buying the links, but the other reason is that mainly the high risk of getting caught and completely destroying the concept of what Google stands for.

Yes, one could say Google did evil with its agreeing to China’s restrictions, but even then they had a good justification that it is better to have some of Google opening up China on the web than no one at all. It would be extremely difficult for Google to say that they were doing good by breaking laws to protect their product.

More likely they could use the Google Webmaster Tools to manually look at and agree with whether a site was selling links and have people give them the information (with plausible deniability of knowing how they got that information) on who was selling links. This would keep them on safer grounds as it would be harder for link brokers to find out who provided them information in the first place (that is, unless the link brokers did a version of entrapment, but that of course is not legit either).

What that could potentially mean at this point is that algorithmically Google is still unable to automatically detect paid links beyond a few qualifications. I know quite a few people who will often overestimate the ability of computers even in this day and age. It is a common mistake—at the beginning birth of computers people thought that in only 30 years we would have artificial intelligence, yet here we are 50 years later and still struggling with that arena. I’m more in the camp that we are more likely to reach a nexus point of becoming Borg-like by joining computers with ourselves than in actually creating an artificial intelligence. Still, if Google was able to deal with paid links algorithmically, it would have done so already without the need for user generated submissions (they easily could have done internal test cases to see if the algorithm could detect paid links).

Are Paid Links Black Hat SEO?

Well, that now depends on which SEO expert you ask and more importantly, what search engine company you ask as well (EG: Baidu considers all SEO blackhat, which by the way just got listed in the the top 100 on NASDAQ). Sure enough you can find information about whitehat and blackhat SEO over at wikipedia to give you some information:

White hat advice is generally summed up as creating content for users, not for search engines, and then making that content easily accessible to the spiders, rather than attempting to game the algorithm. White hat SEO is in many ways similar to web development that promotes accessibility, although the two are not identical.

Black hat SEO attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines, or involve deception. One black hat technique uses text that is hidden, either as text colored similar to the background, in an invisible div, or positioned off screen. Another method gives a different page depending on whether the page is being requested by a human visitor or a search engine, a technique known as cloaking.

It’s helpful, but not exactly up-to-date or specific enough in my opinion. Life is not black or white, but shades of grey as everybody have their own limits to what they think are acceptable and unacceptable. The boundaries move from time to time and there are certainly cases of purely whitehat and blackhat SEO things. But what to do when even the experts disagree? Would that not then place paid links at this point into a category of Grayhat SEO?

Obviously you have Matt Cutts speaking out against paid links and he explains why:

If you put your user hat back on, I hope you’ll agree that you wouldn’t want a serious medical search for brain tumor treatments to be affected by inaccurate or uninformed posts. In fact, if you stumbled across these entries on the web, you might not know whether someone got paid for writing these posts. In the same way that a regular surfer would want disclosure to know if a post were paid, all the major search engines also want to make sure that paid posts are adequately disclosed to search engines as well. Google’s documentation for webmasters gives examples of how to do that. I believe the vast majority of our users don’t want our organic search results for something as serious as brain tumors to be affected by links in paid posts.

Rand went into some alternative ways of getting links:

Rand finished out by suggesting the need for an above-board, editorially controlled link marketplace, similar in nature to current paid review and blog services, but more transparent and keeping to Mr. Cutts’ oft-quoted permission of editorially reviewed paid links such as the Yahoo! Directory.

Followed by Aaron Wall providing some excellent points about the need to compete within Google:

While on the link buying panel at WebmasterWorld’s Pubcon a few people were pushing that you might need to consider how Google will view your current link buys 5 years down the road, and that they may hurt you then for what you do now. Upon hearing that I said something like “less than 5 years ago I bought spammy links and if I did not I probably wouldn’t be speaking here right now”. That got a cheer from the crowd. Who wants to be worried about what Google thinks or does 5 years from now? That is no way to innovate or take marketshare from current market leaders.

So could a pro-paid link person go sue Google and get some government regulation? At Pubcon, one audience member suggested otherwise:

An audience member named Jason (perhaps Rand can add his last name) countered that Detlev was correct: Google is not the government, or the law, or regulated in any way; they’re just a website and they can run their website however the [h*ll] they choose to. He added that suggestions of FCC regulation and such were ridiculous because the FCC is an American institution and Google is an American company, but it serves and is used by a global community.

Tell that to Microsoft! Maybe one of the reasons why Google has done a broad crack-down (and by broad, I mean a lot of sites out there that are obviously selling links once you know what to look for) is that this would create such an uproar for regulation. Especially when thousands of companies are increasingly relying on the Internet and search, I would not be surprised to eventually see some sort of regulation whether justified or not. Plus, if Google can acquiesce to China on one thing, you can bet they’ll be doing so on many other issues as well.

Think of it in this way, regulation of Microsoft began after it became a monopolistic leader in a few markets, should we really not expect that of Google as it now approaches 60-70% of all search engine searches at a minimum (higher for tech sites)? In fact, one could reasonably state for search engine monopoly that as Google’s control increases, the easier it is to focus solely on it and manipulate the results since one no longer has to worry about other search engines.

What’s the Difference Between Buying Links and Linkbait?

In terms of human social status, buying links is the same as paying someone to be your friend once a month. When someone sees you with a celebrity, you can sure bet your social status has gone up.

In the same way, link bait then is effectively tricking a lot of people to think that something you did was cool (magicians).

Both do not really seem to be an effective way of measuring what should be popular or in other word what should rank well.

What Would Do Well and What Does This Mean for Google?

Essentially, Google is going to be further manipulated by people who are willing to make some side money (easy money really) in order to let others rank well. I personally do not see Google being able to catch all of the ways one can acquire links algorithmically at this point in time. I could even foresee a time where a search for one keyword could elicit search results that are essentially one large company.

Does that make it right? I lean towards no on this, but overall I feel more strongly that Google’s way of ranking pages by link power is fundamentally flawed and bound to fail. The original concept of allowing both big and small companies to compete on the same playing field is a worthwhile goal, but the way Google has gone about allowing this is now catching up with them as larger companies begin to realize how to utilize SEO.

Update:

A great post by John Andrews on the whole subject for more of the whitehat opinion about Google and Paid Links and how Search Strategists should listen to what Google is saying.