Are Paid Links Evil? (Or is Google?)
I was reading a thread on V7n Forums that mentioned a post on BruceClay.com site that covered an SES session called are paid links evil?
It’s an interesting writeup. Graywolf says (paraphrased by Lisa Barone),
“…Google is not the government. They have no authority to dictate policy to you. They are a for-profit company…. Google has overstepped its bounds. Google’s mission statement is not to tell you how to build your Web site. It’s not to tell you how to buy or sell ads. It’s not to tell you how to run your business.“
And after Graywolf is done, he gets a standing ovation.
[Be sure to check out Graywolf's PPT slides.]
What is next? Will Google come up with more rules on how you should link to people? All blogs that don’t rel=nofollow their blog comments will be penalized? Google will say, “you have the right to build your Web site in whatever way that you want, but we have the right to penalize it if you don’t rel=nofollow your blog comments”.
Where is Google going to draw the line on “buying links”? Is it forbidden to pay for a banner on a site that also happens to give you a clean link? What if the banner also has some text below it with a link? Is Google going to tell webmasters that they have to rel=nofollow or somehow mark banner links as being paid links in order to compensate for flaws in Google’s algorithm?
My prediction is that the term “banner link advertising” will become a euphemism for selling “paid links”. The ads will read like this:
“Banner advertising costs $X per month. An example banner can be seen below. [banner ad example shows clean link with some descriptive text and a clean text link beneath it.]“
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