As you probably know, Google isn’t a fan of people paying for links that pass PageRank. It’s considered to be a manipulation of search results and a violation of Google’s quality guidelines, which are the focus of Google’s Penguin update. It’s interesting that there seem to be exceptions to the rule, such as a directory like Best Of The Web, which has users pay for their sites to be considered for links. Update: BOTW has gotten back to us since this article was published. Please see BOTW President Greg Hartnett’s comments toward the end of the article. Perhaps more interesting is that some similar directory sites, which aren’t necessarily in clear violation of Google guidelines seem to be getting penalized, or at the very least drawing the ire of unhappy webmasters looking to get their link profiles cleaned up after receiving messages from Google. Should a directory in which you have to pay to get a listing be treated like other sites that offer paid links? Let us know what you think in the comments. Google recently launched a PageRank update, and many directory sites saw their PR plummet. Best Of The Web, meanwhile, has managed to maintain 4s, 5s and 6s. At at a time when flustered webmasters are looking to eliminate lower-end links, the topic of directory links on the web seems more relevant than it’s been for quite some time. Webmasters Are Angry Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable ran a very interesting story about Google being “the cause of lawsuits over links to web sites.” “Can you imagine writing a story, linking that story to other relevant web sites and then years later being hit with a lawsuit over linking to a web site?” he asks. The gist is that webmasters who have been receiving those messages from Google about unnatural links are threatening to sue sites that are linking to them. “Some webmasters are taking extreme measures and threatening to sue publishers and webmasters who are linking to them,” he reports. I don’t know how often this is actually happening, but I can’t say it’s much of a surprise. If any such lawsuit is successful, then we have a problem. I don’t know about the legal threats, but I do know a lot of directories are getting angry emails from webmasters who have links coming from them. Google has taken issue with directories in the past – sort of. Here’s what the company told us in 2007: There’s no “outright penalty” for being a directory, but we do value, as I’m sure you’ve heard, “unique, compelling content.” Directories can run into the problem of not containing original information. There do seem to be some directories that have historically received a bit more respect from Google. This includes Best Of The Web, which as I said, charges users for possible inclusion. Google has talked about this in the past. Here’s a video about it from Matt Cutts from 2009: The user-submitted questions Cutts was responding to was: Will Google consider Yahoo! Directory and BOTW as sources of paid links? If no, why is this different from another site that sell[s] links? He doesn’t entirely answer the question, however. He does say: “Whenever we look at whether a directory is useful to users, we say, ‘OK, what is the value add of that directory?’ So, you know, do they go out and find their entries on their own, or do they only wait for people to come to them, you know, how much do they charge and what’s the editorial service that’s being charged?” “If a directory takes $50 USD and every single person who ever applies in the directory automatically gets in for that 50 dollars, there is not as much editorial oversight as something like the Yahoo directory, where people do get rejected. So, you know, if there is no editorial value add there, then that is much closer to paid links.” So basically, it sounds like if a directory rejects some things, this is OK. How Best Of The Web Works So how does Best Of The Web Work, exactly? You go to submit a site, and you’re presented with a page like this: It’s clear that the main motivation for submitting to this directory is to help your search engine rankings. It says, “Listing your website in the internet’s most respected directory will help increase your website’s visibility in major search engines.” The first example of a “link scheme” Google lists on its page about them is: “Links intended to manipulate PageRank.” While I can’t find anything on BOTW that specifically says anything about PageRank, is that not what submitters are after here? Best Of the Web presents multiple quotes from various marketing-types, like: “After implementing a plan with listings across several BOTW directories, we were able to see immediate and quantifiable improvement in our rankings. Working with BOTW has been a great success for Marriott.” — Benjamin Burns, Search Specialist “BOTW provided excellent service for us and our listings. I would hire them over and over again every time we need directory listings.” — Marek Wawrzyniak, SEO Specialist “Best of the Web has proven to be a successful strategy for Extra Space Storage when coupled with other local SEO techniques. We have seen a consistent ranking improvement in many areas with our local storage facilities by having Best of the Web part of our organic strategy.” — Tim Eyre, Interactive Marketing Manager It’s obvious that the reason one would want to be listed in this directory is SEO. It’s not because people are going to the directory to search for businesses. It’s an SEO strategy – something BOTW seems pretty up-front about. Link Schemes Let us refer to that “Link Schemes” help center page (linked to from its Quality Guidelines page) for a moment. That says: Your site’s ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to you. The quantity, quality, and relevance of links count towards your rating. The sites that link to you can provide context about the subject matter of your site, and can indicate its quality and popularity. However, some webmasters engage in link exchange schemes and build partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. This is in violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and can negatively impact your site’s ranking in search results. Examples of link schemes can include: Links intended to manipulate PageRank Links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging (“Link to me and I’ll link to you.”) Buying or selling links that pass PageRank Let’s read that last one again. “Buying or selling links that pass PageRank.” Links That Pass PageRank As far as I can tell, if you have managed to get listed in Best Of The Web, the link will pass PageRank. The links I looked at do not include the nofollow attribute, which would prevent them from passing PageRank: The links marked as “ads” at the top of category pages do include the nofollow atribute. The category page above has a PageRank of 5. Some pages are higher, and some are lower. The home page has a 6. Back To The Submission Process If you click to get started, you are prompted to provide your email address (twice), and then to fill out a large form. The last part of that form is for the payment details: You can choose from two plans: annual fee or one time fee. Once you click submit, your card will be charged. You must check the box that says you’ve read the ToS and privacy policy. It’s only when you click through to the ToS, and through one more link there, that you find out your site may not even appear in the listings. It says, “There is no guarantee that my site will be added to the directory” and that the charge is non-refundable. You agree that you understand that, “BOTW editors, in their sole and final judgement, shall determine the suitability, placement, title and description of all sites listed in the BOTW Directory.” There’s nothing wrong with BOTW wanting to be selective in the editorial process. That’s what Google has indicated in the past is actually what makes directories like this higher quality in Google’s eyes. That said, Google is always preaching about user experience, and encouraging sites to provide what’s best for the user. User trust has been a major theme, particularly since the Panda update. BOTW does require submitters to read the TOS, before charging them, but the part about potentially not being included, even with no refund, seems a bit buried. Is BOTW’s practice OK in Google’s eyes because they’re using enough judgment not to include EVERY link that people are paying for in hopes of a listing? Is This What Google Wants From A Directory? I’m not going to advise you sell or pay for links at all, but I feel like Google is sending some very mixed signals here. Search engine industry vet Tim Mayer, who worked from Yahoo until 2010, tells WebProNews, “It is interesting as they [BOTW] are positioned similarly to the Yahoo directory of old with editors and payment. Other directories’ such as business.com model failed due to Google changing their treatment of them. Not sure if this was due to quality or the lack of editorial oversight.” “Many other directories are or are considered spam sites/directory link farms as they are just pages of paid links,” he adds. “Seems to me this is may be legacy treatment. But I have not looked at BOTW and analyzed it in some time. Google probably has a better sense of if this is a good authority hub or not. If it is they should use it. I would bet that they are better quality than most directory sites.” But it’s not really even an issue of quality. It seems like more of a double standard on Google’s part, given that the company clearly lists “Buying or selling links that pass PageRank” as an example of a link scheme. Editorial judgment is clearly a factor, but is it really the “best” of what the web has to offer or is it some of the best, with some that actually paid for reviews getting in there too, regardless of whether or not they’re really the best. Update: Hartnett says “an almost imperceptible percentage” of the links are from those who paid for the reviews. Look at this listing for Caagal.com on BOTW’s Business Classifieds category page, for example. A quick glance at this site (complete with loading errors) doesn’t suggest “best” of what the web has to offer in this niche, though this is certainly subjective. It doesn’t even seem to be largely business-oriented, but more property and boat oriented. For the record, I have no idea if this site paid or not. Granted, the site is nowhere to be found in Google, for the query “business classifieds” (at least within the first six pages). It’s hard to say how much value that site may have gotten from paying to be listed in Best Of The Web, but I guess they at least got a PageRank 4 link out of it (PR for that category page). Obsess With Google’s Quality Guidelines or Not? Webmasters are frantically trying to distance themselves from some directory sites after getting messages from Google about unnatural links. Even directories who have never offered paid links are getting emails from upset webmasters. Jayde, for example (disclosure: owned by WPN parent iEntry), has gotten quite a few. Jayde has never offered paid links, and recently made all links nofollow. If webmasters are looking to start suing sites that are linking to them because they are under the impression that these links are hurting them, that’s pretty bad. Interestingly enough, Google used to encourage directory submissions. “In fact, if you look at our webmaster quality guidelines, we used to have a guideline that says, you know, submit your site to directories, and we gave a few examples of directories,” Cutts explains in that video. “And what we find, or what we found was happening, was people would get obsessed with that line and go out and look for a lot of directories.” “We ended up taking out that mention in our webmaster guidelines so that people don’t get obsessed with directories and think, “Yes i have to go find a bunch of different directories to submit my site to,’’ says Cutts in the video. I realize this video is 3 years old, but I have to say, this seems to be an example of mixed signals coming from Google again.This would indicate that you shouldn’t obsess over the things in Google’s quality guidelines, but as you probably know, the Penguin update, which launched a couple weeks ago, was all about targeting sites violating the quality guidelines. To Sum Up - Google used to encourage directory submissions from the quality guidelines. - Google decided people shouldn’t obsess about that. - Now people are freaking out about links that they have from such directories that they submitted to, and some may even be so angry as to threaten legal action (though I can’t imagine there are any legitimate grounds). - Best of the Web, who charge money for the chance to have links designed to influence search visibility, which seems like it would violate Google’s guidelines aren’t considered a major problem. Something seems wrong with that picture. We’ve reached out to Google for comment and have not heard back from them. Update: We have received a thoughtful response from Best Of The Web President Greg Hartnett. On the criteria for sites to be considered the “best,” and gain a listing, President Greg Harnett says, “Our guidelines for listing are pretty straightforward: we list sites that contain quality, unique content in the most relevant category within the directory. If the site does not provide a user with informative content then we don’t list it. We have always been focused on providing the user with quality content from trustworthy sources.” “When users (humans or spiders) come to BOTW, they know that they can trust that (for instance) all of the listings in a San Francisco real estate category contain relevant information about San Francisco real estate,” he adds. “A human being has been in there and verified it. We’ve got a dedicated team of fantastic editors that ensure that.” On the percentage of submissions that are rejected, Hartnett says, “I don’t work the submission queue, so I don’t really have a handle on the specific numbers. However, as a percentage of total submissions, I believe that we reject fewer sites now than we did in the past. The overall quality of submissions has increased as the years have gone by. Perhaps in general, people are now building better sites. Perhaps it’s a matter of more people knowing that BOTW doesn’t accept low quality sites, and they don’t even bother submitting. Whatever it is, I know that it makes our editors happier.” We asked: It seems like Google advises against paid links, but doesn’t Best of the Web charge users to have their links reviewed for possible listting? “Google certainly advises against paid links,” Hartnett tells us. “We’re not a pay for placement, or link buying platform. Payment for review in no way influences whether or not a site is listed within the directory. The fee is for the review, and is non-refundable. It’s not for a link. We caught a lot of flack about that policy in the early years of the directory, but we did it for a reason. We retain complete editorial control and integrity with each submission and listing. It’s completely up to our editors to decide is the site gets listed, and if listed, the title, description and category placement.” “It should also most definitely not be overlooked that the review model accounts for a minuscule amount of the listings within the directory,” he adds. “We have millions of listings, of which our editors have added approximately 95% for free. They work daily scouring the web adding quality sites to relevant categories to build a more comprehensive resource. An overwhelming majority of the listings in the directory have had zero interaction with BOTW at all, nonetheless paid for a review.” “I have no idea why Google does or does not approve of what it is we are doing,” says Hartnett. “I don’t work for or with Google and I don’t have any access to them outside of what Joe Internet does. I’d be surprised if they thought about us at all, but if they did I would like to think that they respect what it is we have been doing for all these years.” “We feel we have put together (and continue to build) a fantastic resource for users that are interested in finding resources that they can trust,” he says. “We have always focused on providing the user with quality resources, and figured users appreciated, and will continue to appreciate, that effort. We’ve recently added the ability for editors and site owners to add social information for each listing, as we continue to evolve with the landscape and provide users with additional information about listings as well. It’s really been a fantastic project to have been working on for the last decade or so, and we’re excited to continue on our mission.” Do you think Google is sending mixed signals about paid links? Let us know in the comments.

There some discussion going on in the webmaster/SEO community that Google may have de-indexed some free web directories. Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable points to a WebmasterWorld forum thread on the subject. The thread begins with a post from user Sunnyujjawal, who says: While checking some sites links I found 50% free submission directories are out of G now. Will Google count such links in negative SEO or unnatural linking? Schwartz concurs that about 50% of the ones he searched for did not have listings. He points to one example: global-web-directory.org. Indeed, I’m getting no results for that site: I’m not sure about the 50% thing though. I’ve looked at a number of others, and haven’t come across many that were not showing listings (though I have no doubt that there are more out there). Either way, there are still a lot of these sites that are still in Google’s index. We do know, however, that quite a few of them recently received PageRank reductions with the recent update. This discussion happens to come at a time when we’ve been analyzing Google’s quality guidelines, and its treatment of a certain directory, Best Of The Web, which sells reviews for potential listings, which appear with links that pass PageRank. Other directories that follow a similar model, may be experiencing similar treatment from Google. In that same WebmasterWorld thread, user Rasputin writes: I have a paid directory that I haven’t touched for about 3 years, only gets about 25 submissions ($10) a year – strange thing is, I just looked and not only is it well indexed but all the internal pages are now showing page rank – for a very long time they were all ‘greyed out’ after the google clamp-down on directories a couple of years ago. No idea when it came back, certainly nothing I’ve changed and pretty unlikely it’s attracted natural links. That’s pretty interesting. User Netmeg adds: I don’t think free or paid makes anywhere near as much of a difference as to whether or not the directory is actually curated for quality. Because if it isn’t, what other reason is there for it to exist other than to create links? That’s a very relevant point, and that seems to be Google’s reasoning, based on this video from Matt Cutts from several years ago: “Standard directory listings remain in our editors complete editorial control, and as such do not need the nofollow tag,” Best Of The Web President Greg Hartnett told WebProNews. “An editor looked at those listings (pay for review or not) and decided that they meet editorial guidelines and as such merit a listing. We vouch for that listing, so why would we nofollow it?” If you go to global-web-directory.org,’s submission page, it would appear that they violate Google’s quality guidelines. There is a pricing structure as follows: Express Reviews – $2 Regular Reviews – Free Regular Reviews with reciprocal – Free While they advertise a paid review process, it’s clearly much different than how Best Of The Web operates. The only payment is for speeding up the review process, from the looks of it. Otherwise it’s free, and they’ll even throw in a reciprocal link for free. That could be the part that Google has a problem with. If sites are really being “reviewed” for quality, perhaps that is one thing, but if your’e saying flat out that you’ll give a link back, that might fall under Google’s “link schemes” criteria, discussed in the quality guidelines. It does list “links intended to manipulate PageRank” as the first example, and it does look like the site attempts to show the listings’ PageRank right with the listings.: If you really look around the site, however, you’ll find many category pages without listings, just displaying ads. It’s not hard to see why Google wouldn’t want this site in its index. Update: There’s an interesting post about this issue at Search News Central, from Terry Van Horne. Terry writes: Directories that would be candidates for this kind of “draconian” action were as good as de-indexed ages ago. We sent out our super staffer Mike, with our vetted list of directories to see what he could find. From that (top end list) we found 65 no change, 2 domains parked and 1 de-indexed site; roughly 1.3% were de-indexed. Next we went to our friends at Steam Driven Media for the last 100 (based on TBPR) from a list of 1500. From this group we found 1 with low indexation and 9 deindexed/gone – roughly 10% affected. Keep in mind, we have no idea how long these sites were out of the Google index. Van Horne questions whether directories are really “getting nuked or not”. So far, we’ve not really seen anything indicating it’s as big a change as made out to be by the original poster in the WebmasterWorld thread. Have you seen paid directories rising in Google? Free ones disappearing? Let us know what you’re seeing.

We recently ran an article called “The Blurry Lines Of Google’s Paid Links Policy“. Much of the article talked about web directory The Best Of The Web, which has a submission process, requiring submitters to pay a fee to have their sites reviewed. If BOTW deems the site worthy, it will list a link in the appropriate category. Since initially running the article, we’ve had an ongoing dialogue with Best Of The Web President Greg Hartnett, the initial part of which was included in an updated version of the article. Since then, he’s responded to a few more questions. BOTW considers any payment to be for the review process, rather than the link itself. However, when you are the webmaster paying for this review, isn’t the end product you are expecting to receive a listing and a link? The review consists of BOTW choosing yes or no on whether to include the submission. Can you imagine anybody paying $150 for a submission to BOTW thinking they are paying for a review rather than inclusion in their directory? What BOTW Says “The end goal of the submissions is not a link – it’s a review,” Hartnett tells WebProNews. “Obviously we are not privy to the inner thoughts and motivations of the site owners who pay for review.” “While one may argue that those owners are in it for a link, maybe their motivation is simply a listing in a relevant category,” he adds. “Maybe it’s additional exposure for their site.” Google, according to its guidelines, frowns upon paid links that pass PageRank. As illustrated in the first article, the regular directory listings we looked at were made up of links that did not include the nofollow link attribute, which would keep them from passing PageRank. We asked Hartnett if the links on BOTW are passing PageRank. “Not all of them, no,” he tells us. “Our spots that are influenced by the site owner, our Ads or sponsorships, are all nofollowed. We do this because even though those are still reviewed by an editor, the site owner has more control of the anchor text, description (which may be more marketing-centric than directory listings) and category placement. Those listings are not fully controlled by our editors, so they get the nofollow tag.” The listings marked as ads include nofollow. This reiterates what we said in the first article. “Standard directory listings remain in our editors complete editorial control, and as such do not need the nofollow tag,” Hartnett adds. “An editor looked at those listings (pay for review or not) and decided that they meet editorial guidelines and as such merit a listing. We vouch for that listing, so why would we nofollow it?” BOTW’s submission page touts the search visibility benefits of getting listed in the directory. Hartnett points out that such language is only used on one page out of over 110,000. However, that one page is the submission page where you would expect to see the benefits of paying for submission to BOTW. Clearly, the reason one would submit a site to BOTW is as BOTW’s submission page says, to “increase your website’s visibility in major search engines”. What Google Says We asked Google about the issue generically (not mentioning BOTW by name): Just to be clear, if a web directory charges people for links, and advertises these listings as a way to help the submitter’s site gain visibility in major search engines, that would be a violation of Google’s quality guidelines, correct? Well, the advertising part may not be a violation, but on the topic of paid links that pass PageRank, the company simply referred us to its guidelines. So, here’s the exact text of Google’s Paid Links page linked to from its quality guidelines: Google and most other search engines use links to determine reputation. A site’s ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to it. Link-based analysis is an extremely useful way of measuring a site’s value, and has greatly improved the quality of web search. Both the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of links count towards this rating. However, some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results. Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such as: Adding a rel=”nofollow” attribute to the <a> tag Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file Google works hard to ensure that it fully discounts links intended to manipulate search engine results, such as excessive link exchanges and purchased links that pass PageRank. If you see a site that is buying or selling links that pass PageRank, let us know. We’ll use your information to improve our algorithmic detection of such links. What Do We Make Of It? Could the second paragraph be exactly where the lines are blurred? In one sentence, it says, “However, some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites.” Emphasis added. The next sentence is: “Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results.” That second part seems pretty clear, but the bolded part in the first sentence could be where BOTW is able to take advantage. The thinking seems to be that they exercise some editorial judgment, so it’s OK. So, by that logic, would it be OK for a publication like BusinessWeek to post an article called the “Top 10 SEO Services On The Web,” but charge different SEO services for the ability to be considered to be on the list? And then at that publication’s own discretion, possibly include some of those paying services on the list, with nice, PageRank-passing links? For some reason, it doesn’t seem like that would be cool with Google. BOTW is a nicely organized directory, and is not your typical list of spammy links. However, the question is not how great of a directory BOTW is. It’s whether Google’s webmaster guidelines interpret the selling of a “review” that leads to inclusion in its directory as being equivalent to selling a link that passes PageRank. If not, Google ought to be more clear about this in its webmaster guidelines.

Even before the Penguin update, a lot of webmasters had been getting messages from Google about questionable links. About a month ago, we talked about Google de-indexing paid blog/link networks, which led to some such messages. This appears to have been only one of Google’s major efforts in early 2012 to crack down on search engine manipulation and black hat tactics. Then came the Penguin update (formerly known as the Webspam update). This is designed to target webmasters engaging in such tactics and violating Google’s quality guidelines. One of those guidelines is about not participating in linking schemes designed to increase your site’s PageRank (and we know PageRank is still a major part of Google’s algorithm, despite an increased emphasis on social and personalization). “In particular, avoid links to web spammers or ‘bad neighborhoods’ on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links,” warns Google. On a page in the Webmaster Tools help center specifically about Link schemes, Google says, “Your site’s ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to you. The quantity, quality, and relevance of links count towards your rating. The sites that link to you can provide context about the subject matter of your site, and can indicate its quality and popularity. However, some webmasters engage in link exchange schemes and build partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. This is in violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and can negatively impact your site’s ranking in search results.” Google gives the examples of links intended to manipulate PageRank, links to web spammers/bad neighborhoods, excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanges and buying or selling links that pass PageRank. Eric Ward, who as been an authority on link building for many years, has a good round up of ways links can affect your search rankings. In a nutshell, these include: other sites getting enough quality links to outrank you, google algorithm updates, trusted sites linking to you shutting down, sites cheating and outranking you, Google devaluing sites linking to you, Google caught you using spammy tactics, and negative SEO. Note: Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz is currently testing the negative SEO waters (though some question how effective his experiment will be given. “The best way to get other sites to create relevant links to yours is to create unique, relevant content that can quickly gain popularity in the Internet community,” says Google in the help center. “The more useful content you have, the greater the chances someone else will find that content valuable to their readers and link to it. Before making any single decision, you should ask yourself the question: Is this going to be beneficial for my page’s visitors?” “It is not only the number of links you have pointing to your site that matters, but also the quality and relevance of those links,” says Google. “Creating good content pays off: Links are usually editorial votes given by choice, and the buzzing blogger community can be an excellent place to generate interest.” This illustrates the close relationship the Penguin update has with the Panda update. The Penguin update goes after the abuse specifically, and the Panda update promotes the good stuff that people actually want to link to. Granted, this is when everything is working as it is supposed to. Google’s algorithm isn’t perfect, and the company will no doubt continue to make adjustments. It also illustrates the significance of the blogosphere and social media to search. While I believe Google has a lot of work to do in the relevancy department, it does show why Google wants to use social data so much in rankings. Of course social signals are ripe for abuse, and I’d not be surprised to see future Google updates target social abuse specifically, the way they’ve targeted link abuse with the Penguin update and with past efforts. As I talked about in a recent article, the titles you use for your content can go along way in increasing sharing. Great content, however, is what people link to. That’s been true for as long as I can remember, and it’s not going to change. People will link if you give them a reason to. If you think Google unfairly penalized your site with the Penguin update, Google has given you a place to explain (there’s a petition to have the update killed, as well). If your site was hit, and you know it was probably because of some shady practices on your part, you can still take the initiative and try to clean things up. Of course, remember that link schemes are only one part of Google’s quality guidelines. You can read about the rest of them here.

As previously reported, webmasters with links from paid blog networks that Google recently de-indexed have been receiving letters from Google Webmaster Tools. Google’s John Mueller talked a little about such letters and the reconsideration process in a Google Groups thread that you might find interesting (Another good find from the Google Forums by Barry Schwartz). “While we have just recently started sending out these messages, they may apply to issues that were already known (and affecting your site’s standing in our search results) for a while,” said Mueller. “If you receive a message like this, and you wish to resolve those issues, then I’d always submit a reconsideration request after having done so. In some cases, you may not be able to resolve all of the issues – if that’s the case, then it’s important to us that you document your efforts (you might even link to a Google Docs file if needed). It’s important to our team that it’s clear that you have taken significant effort to resolve all of the problems in that area, and that they can trust that these kinds of issues will not come back in the future.” “In situations where an algorithmic adjustment might have been made, you’re still welcome to submit a reconsideration request. It doesn’t cause any problems to do that, so especially if you’re unsure, submitting one is a good way to be certain,” he says. “Regarding the age of the unnatural links, I’d work to have them all removed, regardless of the age. For instance, in the general case where a site has been buying links for 2 years, it would be a good idea to go back that far.” He goes on to say that you should try to wait a penalty out if you’re serious about your site’s standing in search. “These are generally not issues that expire after a few days, they can affect your site’s standing for quite some time,” he says. Google’s own Chrome landing page recently had a 60-day penalty, which may have even hurt the web browser’s market share.

Google has been cracking down on lesser quality content littering its search results a great deal over the past year – probably more than any other time in the search engine’s history. Obviously, to those who follow the search industry, the Panda update has been leading the charge in this area. Google has been de-indexing blog networks that webmasters have essentially been paying to get links. Do you think this will improve Google’s results? Share your thoughts in the comments. One way that content, including some lesser-quality content, has been able to manipulate Google’s algorithm is through paid links, and linking “schemes”. Google has long had policies against these things, and has not hesitated to penalize sites it busted. See JC Penney and Overstock.com incidents from last year, for a couple of examples (not necessarily the best examples of low quality, but of getting busted). Google even penalized its own Chrome landing page, after paid links set up by a marketing firm were discovered. Penalties like these can greatly hurt sites. There was talk that Chrome’s share of the browser market was impacted by that penalty, and that’s Google’s own property. Overstock blamed Google for its ugly financials when it reported its earnings earlier this month. If such penalties can have such an impact on brands like these, think what they could do to lesser-known brands. Google is now cracking down on blog networks, which have added sites to their networks in exchange for fees. BuildMyRank, in particular has received a lot of attention. The site posted a message about it recently: On a daily basis, we monitor our domain network to check metrics like page rank, indexed pages, etc. As with any link-building network, some de-indexing activity is expected and ours has been within a permissible range for the past two years. Unfortunately, this morning, our scripts and manual checks have determined that the overwhelming majority of our network has been de-indexed (by Google), as of March 19, 2012. In our wildest dreams, there’s no way we could have imagined this happening. It had always been BMR’s philosophy that if we did things a bit different from other networks, we would not only have a better quality service to offer our users, but a longer life in this fickle industry. Sadly, it appears this was not the case. In case you’re not familiar with how BMR actually works, it essentially sells link juice. In the “how it works” section, it explains that the backlinks it helps you build “help add extra link juice and added indexing speed”. This comes at prices up to $400/month. Here’s their video overview: Word throughout the SEO community is that other blog networks have been getting de-indexed as well. Meanwhile, webmasters with links from these networks, have been getting messages from Google’s Webmaster Tools. SEOmoz shares a message from Google Webmaster Tools that some webmasters have received: Dear site owner or webmaster of http://example.com/, We’ve detected that some of your site’s pages may be using techniques that are outside Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes. We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you’ve made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google’s search results. If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request. If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support. Sincerely, Google Search Quality Team Is any of this really a surprise? If you’re paying a blog network, is this not basically paying for links? The most surprising thing is that sites have been getting away with it for so long, without facing the wrath of Google. That’s damn amazing, really. “Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank,” Google says in its Webmaster Guidelines. “In particular, avoid links to web spammers or ‘bad neighborhoods’ on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.” It’s pretty clear. Internet marketer Jennifer Ledbetter (otherwise known as PotPieGirl) wrote a fantastic article on this whole ordeal. “Let’s face it and be real,” she writes. “We’ve used any of these services, we know exactly WHY we use them, don’t we? We use them to get the in-content links to help our web pages rank better. Yes, we use them to manipulate Google rankings. We all know what we’re doing – we know Google frowns on that (ok, totally HATES that), but we do it anyway. So, please – no whining about how this isn’t ‘fair’, ok?” SEOmoz CEO Rand Fishkin had some helpful advice on Twitter: .ditto184202450662731776{background: #FFFFFF url(http://a0.twimg.com/profile_background_images/100506676/twitter_bg2.png) no-repeat;padding: 20px;} .ditto184202450662731776 a { color: #1495FF;} p.dittoTweet{background: #fff;padding: 10px 12px 10px 50px;margin: 0;min-height: 48px;color: #000;font-size: 18px !important;line-height: 22px;-moz-border-radius: 5px;-webkit-border-radius: 5px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata {display: block;width: 100%;clear: both;margin-top: 8px;padding-top: 12px;height: 65px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata span.author {line-height: 22px;color: #666;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;} .mainlink {font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 26px;color: #1F98C7;text-decoration: none;} .mainlink: hover {color: #1F98C7;text-decoration: underline;} .tweet {font-size: 24px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata span.author img {float: left; margin: 0px 7px 0px 0px;} p.dittoTweet a:hover {text-decoration: underline;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp {font-size: 12px;display: block;color: #999;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a {color: #999;text-decoration: none;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a > span {display: inline-block;width: 16px;background-image:url(http://images.ientrymail.com/socialditto/everything-spritev2.png);background-repeat: no-repeat;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.reply > span {background-position: 0px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.reply:hover > span {background-position: -16px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.retweet > span {background-position: -80px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.retweet:hover > span {background-position: -96px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.favorite > span {background-position: -32px 2px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.favorite:hover > span {background-position: -48px 2px;} @randfishRand FishkinIf you’ve been affected by Google’s recent link penalties, disclosing the details of how you acquired the links can speed up reconsideration 1 day ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto .ditto184202656204595200{background: #FFFFFF url(http://a0.twimg.com/profile_background_images/100506676/twitter_bg2.png) no-repeat;padding: 20px;} .ditto184202656204595200 a { color: #1495FF;} p.dittoTweet{background: #fff;padding: 10px 12px 10px 50px;margin: 0;min-height: 48px;color: #000;font-size: 18px !important;line-height: 22px;-moz-border-radius: 5px;-webkit-border-radius: 5px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata {display: block;width: 100%;clear: both;margin-top: 8px;padding-top: 12px;height: 65px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata span.author {line-height: 22px;color: #666;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;} .mainlink {font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 26px;color: #1F98C7;text-decoration: none;} .mainlink: hover {color: #1F98C7;text-decoration: underline;} .tweet {font-size: 24px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata span.author img {float: left; margin: 0px 7px 0px 0px;} p.dittoTweet a:hover {text-decoration: underline;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp {font-size: 12px;display: block;color: #999;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a {color: #999;text-decoration: none;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a > span {display: inline-block;width: 16px;background-image:url(http://images.ientrymail.com/socialditto/everything-spritev2.png);background-repeat: no-repeat;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.reply > span {background-position: 0px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.reply:hover > span {background-position: -16px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.retweet > span {background-position: -80px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.retweet:hover > span {background-position: -96px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.favorite > span {background-position: -32px 2px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.favorite:hover > span {background-position: -48px 2px;} @randfishRand FishkinPerhaps this is how webspam intends to fight the more underground/private link manipulation schemes 1 day ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto .ditto184184084707291136{background: #FFFFFF url(http://a0.twimg.com/profile_background_images/100506676/twitter_bg2.png) no-repeat;padding: 20px;} .ditto184184084707291136 a { color: #1495FF;} p.dittoTweet{background: #fff;padding: 10px 12px 10px 50px;margin: 0;min-height: 48px;color: #000;font-size: 18px !important;line-height: 22px;-moz-border-radius: 5px;-webkit-border-radius: 5px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata {display: block;width: 100%;clear: both;margin-top: 8px;padding-top: 12px;height: 65px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata span.author {line-height: 22px;color: #666;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;} .mainlink {font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 26px;color: #1F98C7;text-decoration: none;} .mainlink: hover {color: #1F98C7;text-decoration: underline;} .tweet {font-size: 24px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata span.author img {float: left; margin: 0px 7px 0px 0px;} p.dittoTweet a:hover {text-decoration: underline;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp {font-size: 12px;display: block;color: #999;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a {color: #999;text-decoration: none;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a > span {display: inline-block;width: 16px;background-image:url(http://images.ientrymail.com/socialditto/everything-spritev2.png);background-repeat: no-repeat;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.reply > span {background-position: 0px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.reply:hover > span {background-position: -16px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.retweet > span {background-position: -80px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.retweet:hover > span {background-position: -96px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.favorite > span {background-position: -32px 2px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.favorite:hover > span {background-position: -48px 2px;} @randfishRand Fishkin@LukeyG28 Google’s shockingly good at knowing when spam’s been built by you vs. others; I wouldn’t sweat it. 1 day ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto .ditto184186323526090754{background: #C0DEED url(http://a0.twimg.com/images/themes/theme1/bg.png) no-repeat;padding: 20px;} .ditto184186323526090754 a { color: #0084B4;} p.dittoTweet{background: #fff;padding: 10px 12px 10px 50px;margin: 0;min-height: 48px;color: #000;font-size: 18px !important;line-height: 22px;-moz-border-radius: 5px;-webkit-border-radius: 5px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata {display: block;width: 100%;clear: both;margin-top: 8px;padding-top: 12px;height: 65px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata span.author {line-height: 22px;color: #666;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;} .mainlink {font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 26px;color: #1F98C7;text-decoration: none;} .mainlink: hover {color: #1F98C7;text-decoration: underline;} .tweet {font-size: 24px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata span.author img {float: left; margin: 0px 7px 0px 0px;} p.dittoTweet a:hover {text-decoration: underline;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp {font-size: 12px;display: block;color: #999;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a {color: #999;text-decoration: none;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a > span {display: inline-block;width: 16px;background-image:url(http://images.ientrymail.com/socialditto/everything-spritev2.png);background-repeat: no-repeat;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.reply > span {background-position: 0px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.reply:hover > span {background-position: -16px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.retweet > span {background-position: -80px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.retweet:hover > span {background-position: -96px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.favorite > span {background-position: -32px 2px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.favorite:hover > span {background-position: -48px 2px;} @LukeyG28Luke Gregory@randfish getting a reply from the main man awesome! – although I have to disagree, if it’s a authority website yes, new website no dm me 1 day ago via Twitter for iPad ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto .ditto184201624699412480{background: #FFFFFF url(http://a0.twimg.com/profile_background_images/100506676/twitter_bg2.png) no-repeat;padding: 20px;} .ditto184201624699412480 a { color: #1495FF;} p.dittoTweet{background: #fff;padding: 10px 12px 10px 50px;margin: 0;min-height: 48px;color: #000;font-size: 18px !important;line-height: 22px;-moz-border-radius: 5px;-webkit-border-radius: 5px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata {display: block;width: 100%;clear: both;margin-top: 8px;padding-top: 12px;height: 65px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata span.author {line-height: 22px;color: #666;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;} .mainlink {font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 26px;color: #1F98C7;text-decoration: none;} .mainlink: hover {color: #1F98C7;text-decoration: underline;} .tweet {font-size: 24px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata span.author img {float: left; margin: 0px 7px 0px 0px;} p.dittoTweet a:hover {text-decoration: underline;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp {font-size: 12px;display: block;color: #999;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a {color: #999;text-decoration: none;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a > span {display: inline-block;width: 16px;background-image:url(http://images.ientrymail.com/socialditto/everything-spritev2.png);background-repeat: no-repeat;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.reply > span {background-position: 0px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.reply:hover > span {background-position: -16px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.retweet > span {background-position: -80px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.retweet:hover > span {background-position: -96px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.favorite > span {background-position: -32px 2px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.favorite:hover > span {background-position: -48px 2px;} @randfishRand Fishkin@LukeyG28 I tried recently to “bowl” a few small sites out of Google (using some black hat friends’ advice/networks) but they stayed fine 1 day ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto .ditto184203045641523200{background: #C0DEED url(http://a0.twimg.com/images/themes/theme1/bg.png) no-repeat;padding: 20px;} .ditto184203045641523200 a { color: #0084B4;} p.dittoTweet{background: #fff;padding: 10px 12px 10px 50px;margin: 0;min-height: 48px;color: #000;font-size: 18px !important;line-height: 22px;-moz-border-radius: 5px;-webkit-border-radius: 5px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata {display: block;width: 100%;clear: both;margin-top: 8px;padding-top: 12px;height: 65px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata span.author {line-height: 22px;color: #666;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;} .mainlink {font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 26px;color: #1F98C7;text-decoration: none;} .mainlink: hover {color: #1F98C7;text-decoration: underline;} .tweet {font-size: 24px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata span.author img {float: left; margin: 0px 7px 0px 0px;} p.dittoTweet a:hover {text-decoration: underline;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp {font-size: 12px;display: block;color: #999;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a {color: #999;text-decoration: none;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a > span {display: inline-block;width: 16px;background-image:url(http://images.ientrymail.com/socialditto/everything-spritev2.png);background-repeat: no-repeat;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.reply > span {background-position: 0px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.reply:hover > span {background-position: -16px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.retweet > span {background-position: -80px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.retweet:hover > span {background-position: -96px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.favorite > span {background-position: -32px 2px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.favorite:hover > span {background-position: -48px 2px;} @LukeyG28Luke Gregory@randfish those friends wernt blackhat enough lol. Ive been trialing it on some of my old sites and there dropping like flys.msg me for info 1 day ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto .ditto184204631654662144{background: #FFFFFF url(http://a0.twimg.com/profile_background_images/100506676/twitter_bg2.png) no-repeat;padding: 20px;} .ditto184204631654662144 a { color: #1495FF;} p.dittoTweet{background: #fff;padding: 10px 12px 10px 50px;margin: 0;min-height: 48px;color: #000;font-size: 18px !important;line-height: 22px;-moz-border-radius: 5px;-webkit-border-radius: 5px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata {display: block;width: 100%;clear: both;margin-top: 8px;padding-top: 12px;height: 65px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata span.author {line-height: 22px;color: #666;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;} .mainlink {font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 26px;color: #1F98C7;text-decoration: none;} .mainlink: hover {color: #1F98C7;text-decoration: underline;} .tweet {font-size: 24px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata span.author img {float: left; margin: 0px 7px 0px 0px;} p.dittoTweet a:hover {text-decoration: underline;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp {font-size: 12px;display: block;color: #999;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a {color: #999;text-decoration: none;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a > span {display: inline-block;width: 16px;background-image:url(http://images.ientrymail.com/socialditto/everything-spritev2.png);background-repeat: no-repeat;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.reply > span {background-position: 0px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.reply:hover > span {background-position: -16px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.retweet > span {background-position: -80px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.retweet:hover > span {background-position: -96px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.favorite > span {background-position: -32px 2px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.favorite:hover > span {background-position: -48px 2px;} @randfishRand Fishkin@LukeyG28 Like I said, I suspect there’s some footprints of those sites that make G more apt to allow for link penalties 1 day ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto There has been a lot of discussion from webmasters worried that competitors will be able to hurt their sites by posting bad links to their content, and the general consensus, as it has been for years, is that if you get good links, it should counter the bad. Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable points to a quote from Google saying, “Our algorithms are pretty complex, it takes more than a handful of bad links to sway their opinion of a website. Even if Webmaster Tools shows a million links, then that’s not going to change things if those links are all ignored for ranking purposes.” According to Google, you really shouldn’t be focusing on the number of links you have anyway. Matt Cutts put out a video last week talking about how Google doesn’t count a lot of your links. “I think a lot of people sometimes focus on the low-quality links that a competitor has, and they don’t realize that the vast majority of times, those links aren’t counting,” Cutts said. “So, for example, the New York Times sent us a sample of literally thousands of links that they were wondering how many of these count because they’d gotten it from some third party or other source of links, and the answer was that basically none of those links had counted. And so it’s a little easy for people to get obsessed by looking at the backlinks of their competitors and saying, ‘oh, they’re doing this bad thing or that bad thing.’ And they might not know the good links. And they might not know that a lot of those links aren’t counted at all.” It’s getting to be about time for Google to announce its monthly list of algorithm changes, but in last month’s list, one of the changes was “Link Evaluation”. “We often use characteristics of links to help us figure out the topic of a linked page,” the company said. “We have changed the way in which we evaluate links; in particular, we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years. We often rearchitect or turn off parts of our scoring in order to keep our system maintainable, clean and understandable.” While links are the foundation of PageRank, it seems to me that links have become less and less important in search visibility altogether. Don’t get me wrong. Links matter. Good links are great. Links from sources Google thinks are great are still great, but just having a bunch of inbound links won’t get you very far if they’re not significant links. Search visibility these days is much more about who’s sharing/discussing your content (especially on Google+), who you are as an author, how fresh your content is, and how in-depth it is compared to your competition. This is of course simplifying things a great deal (Google has over 200 signals), but if you consider these things more than just chasing meaningless links, not only will you likely do better in search, you will avoid getting a destructive penalty from Google. All of that said, you may be spending too much time obsessing over search in general, and would do better to consider other means’ of traffic. How dependent do you really want to be on an ever-changing algorithm? Expanding upon your social strategy is likely to pay off much better, and thankfully, the better you do in social channels, the better you’re likely to do in search. Should Google be penalizing blog/link networks? Are links as important as they once were? Tell us what you think.

Remember when Google was involved in that controversy regarding paid links on blog posts about the company’s Chrome browser? As people had caught wind of what was going on, Google implemented a PageRank penalty on Chrome’s landing page, which knocked it down in search results. “In response, the webspam team has taken manual action to demote www.google.com/chrome for at least 60 days,” Google’s Matt Cutts said at the time. “After that, someone on the Chrome side can submit a reconsideration request documenting their clean-up just like any other company would. During the 60 days, the PageRank of www.google.com/chrome will also be lowered to reflect the fact that we also won’t trust outgoing links from that page.” This was Google’s effort to show others that it would treat its own properties the same as others’. It looked like this had a direct impact on Chrome’s market share, at a time when Microsoft’s Internet Explorer was showing signs of improvement. The penalty has now been lifted, as the 60-day mark has come. Barry Schwartz reports that Google has confirmed this. It will be very interesting to see how Chrome’s market share numbers look after being out of the penalty box for a while.

Early this month, Google was caught up in some controversy related to paid linking. It’s funny how the Internet works. That seems like such a long time ago, and so many Google controversies ago. Since then, Google has sparked heated debate among users and the media around both Search Plus Your World and its new privacy policies. But anyway, some search results were showing up, leading to sponsored blog posts from bloggers talking about the benefits of Chrome. At least one was found to have what appeared to be a paid link, leading to sharp criticism that Google was not playing by its own rules. Google ended up putting out the following statement (via Danny Sullivan): We’ve investigated and are taking manual action to demote www.google.com/chrome and lower the site’s PageRank for a period of at least 60 days. We strive to enforce Google’s webmaster guidelines consistently in order to provide better search results for users. While Google did not authorize this campaign, and we can find no remaining violations of our webmaster guidelines, we believe Google should be held to a higher standard, so we have taken stricter action than we would against a typical site. Google’s Matt Cutts said in a Google+ post: Google was trying to buy video ads about Chrome, and these sponsored posts were an inadvertent result of that. If you investigated the two dozen or so sponsored posts (as the webspam team immediately did), the posts typically showed a Google Chrome video but didn’t actually link to Google Chrome. We double-checked, and the video players weren’t flowing PageRank to Google either. However, we did find one sponsored post that linked to www.google.com/chrome in a way that flowed PageRank. Even though the intent of the campaign was to get people to watch videos–not link to Google–and even though we only found a single sponsored post that actually linked to Google’s Chrome page and passed PageRank, that’s still a violation of our quality guidelines… Unruly Media was the company behind the campaign. They’re also known for successful viral campaigns like the Evian Roller Babies and the Old Spice “Man Your Man Could Smell Like”. One Googler said the whole thing illustrated “why you should pay attention to what any marketing, advertising, or SEO companies might be doing on your behalf.” Danny Sullivan is sharing an email that Unruly has emailed to partners to avoid another fiasco. The email points to guidelines and terms of service. Within that email, the firm says: First, let’s talk about links. Unruly’s video player typically links to the advertiser’s site, YouTube channel or Facebook page. It does this in a totally safe way (using nofollow, redirects, and JavaScript embedding) that does not transfer PageRank from your site to the advertiser’s site. This is really important. Be very, very careful if you add any of your own links. If you want to link to the advertiser’s site in an article, post, or tweet, only use the redirect links that we provide you that are also safe. If you don’t do this, you may be in breach of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines (Google guidelines). If you’re not sure, just don’t link. The video player links so you don’t have to! Second, let’s talk about disclosure. Unruly’s video player always has a disclosure underneath it making it totally clear that the video is sponsored. This is fine if you just embed the video in a column or area reserved for commercial content. However, if you embed the video in a blog post, you should always put the phrase ‘Sponsored Video’ as the first two words of the title of your post. If you link to a page containing the video in a tweet or status update, you should mark it #ad. It doesn’t matter that you’re not being paid to tweet or post the video – Because you stand to benefit commercially every time someone watches the video on your site or app, you need to make sure you disclose this clearly. Interestingly, at the height of the whole Google controversy, Unruly announced a new $25 million round of funding.

The topic of paid links is in the headlines once again, and ironically, Google is the accused. As WebProNews previously reported, Google was recently caught up in a controversy after it violated its own Webmaster Guidelines as part of a marketing campaign for Google Chrome. Aaron Wall, the author of SEO Book, first reported on the news after someone posted about it in one of his forums. As he explained in the above interview with WebProNews, the campaign was designed to relate Google Chrome to the Internet and tell why small businesses should use it. However, the posts were not of very high quality. Danny Sullivan, in fact, called the content “garbage.” “Basically, all these posts exist for no reason other than they are paid, they’re very low quality, and they’re flowing link juice,” Wall pointed out. While Google admits the campaign is theirs, it says that it did not intend to do any paid sponsorships. Apparently, Google hired Essence Digital, a digital media agency, for a video ad campaign to promote Chrome. Unruly Media, which is another media agency, was involved in the ordeal as well, and, from all indication, appears to be the company that actually executed the campaign. In the end, Google did come out and take action against itself. For “at least 60 days,” the PageRank for Google Chrome’s homepage will be demoted. On Google+, Matt Cutts said: I’ll give the short summary, then I’ll describe the webspam team’s response. Google was trying to buy video ads about Chrome, and these sponsored posts were an inadvertent result of that. If you investigated the two dozen or so sponsored posts (as the webspam team immediately did), the posts typically showed a Google Chrome video but didn’t actually link to Google Chrome. We double-checked, and the video players weren’t flowing PageRank to Google either. However, we did find one sponsored post that linked to www.google.com/chrome in a way that flowed PageRank. Even though the intent of the campaign was to get people to watch videos-not link to Google-and even though we only found a single sponsored post that actually linked to Google’s Chrome page and passed PageRank, that’s still a violation of our quality guidelines, which you can find at http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769#3. In response, the webspam team has taken manual action to demote www.google.com/chrome for at least 60 days. After that, someone on the Chrome side can submit a reconsideration request documenting their clean-up just like any other company would. During the 60 days, the PageRank of www.google.com/chrome will also be lowered to reflect the fact that we also won’t trust outgoing links from that page. Did Google fairly punish itself? Let us know what you think. A Google spokesperson also sent us the following statements: “Google never agreed to anything more than online ads. We have consistently avoided paid sponsorships, including paying bloggers to promote our products, because these kind of promotions are not transparent or in the best interests of users. We’re now looking at what changes we need to make to ensure that this never happens again.” Regarding the action: “We’ve investigated and are taking manual action to demote www.google.com/chrome and lower the site’s PageRank for a period of at least 60 days. We strive to enforce Google’s webmaster guidelines consistently in order to provide better search results for users. While Google did not authorize this campaign, and we can find no remaining violations of our webmaster guidelines, we believe Google should be held to a higher standard, so we have taken stricter action than we would against a typical site.“ According to Wall, because Google is such a big company, it is possible that all departments don’t know what other parts are doing. For this reason, he believes that Google should be more “lenient” when dealing with other individuals and companies regarding similar issues. “The big thing is, if all this stuff can happen to Google and they’re the one that makes those guidelines, then, of course, it can happen to tons of other people,” he said. Should Google be more lenient on the issue of paid links? What do you think?

Following the previously reported upon controversy surrounding a marketing campaign for Google’s Chrome browser, Google has apparently decided to devalue its Chrome landing page (in terms of PageRank). At least temporarily. Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land acquired a statement from Google, which says: We’ve investigated and are taking manual action to demote www.google.com/chrome and lower the site’s PageRank for a period of at least 60 days. We strive to enforce Google’s webmaster guidelines consistently in order to provide better search results for users. While Google did not authorize this campaign, and we can find no remaining violations of our webmaster guidelines, we believe Google should be held to a higher standard, so we have taken stricter action than we would against a typical site. Later, Google’s Matt Cutts jumped on Google+, while trying to take a “digital break” for a holiday in Central America. I his post, he said: I’ll give the short summary, then I’ll describe the webspam team’s response. Google was trying to buy video ads about Chrome, and these sponsored posts were an inadvertent result of that. If you investigated the two dozen or so sponsored posts (as the webspam team immediately did), the posts typically showed a Google Chrome video but didn’t actually link to Google Chrome. We double-checked, and the video players weren’t flowing PageRank to Google either. However, we did find one sponsored post that linked to www.google.com/chrome in a way that flowed PageRank. Even though the intent of the campaign was to get people to watch videos–not link to Google–and even though we only found a single sponsored post that actually linked to Google’s Chrome page and passed PageRank, that’s still a violation of our quality guidelines, which you can find at http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769#3 . In response, the webspam team has taken manual action to demote www.google.com/chrome for at least 60 days. After that, someone on the Chrome side can submit a reconsideration request documenting their clean-up just like any other company would. During the 60 days, the PageRank of www.google.com/chrome will also be lowered to reflect the fact that we also won’t trust outgoing links from that page. Other Googlers have responded to Matt’s explanation on Google+. Here are a few of the responses: Jason Morrison: Great explanation from +Matt Cutts. This is embarrassing, but a good illustration of two things: 1. Why I like working at Google. The Search Quality Team tries to apply the Webmaster Guidelines fairly – even on other Google products. 2. Why you should pay attention to what any marketing, advertising, or SEO companies might be doing on your behalf. Obi Felten: Was mortified yesterday to read Danny Sullivan’s story, and sad that he thought we were paying bloggers to promote our Chrome films in such a crude and horrible way. Having been in Google marketing for over 5 years I can testify that we don’t do advertorial or pay bloggers! It’s one of the things that makes me love my job here, we let the products speak for themselves and don’t overpromise. So this was pretty shocking. It was a media buy that went very wrong, we never agreed to do anything else than paid video ads – but clearly we need to be more on top of our media buys. As Matt explains in his post we’ve demoted the Chrome page in the search rankings in response. Marcus Foster: This is the kind of integrity and transparency that makes me proud to work at Google. Show me another company that would have acted in this way. James Bogosian: This was the right thing to do. Glad to see we did it. Of course, the whole search quality aspect wasn’t discussed in Matt’s post. One of the posts from the Chrome campaign, which I referenced in another piece, which has pretty “thin” content, is still ranking for “chrome small business benefits”. I don’t think Chrome losing its PageRank will help quality there, though it is still at the top of the page, via AdWords.