Paid Links: An Unknowing Webmaster Speaks Out
There has been an eruption of debate regarding Google actively promoting their stance that paid links are against Google’s quality guidelines and will be algorithmically (or manually) devalued wherever possible. Furthermore, there is clear evidence of toolbar PageRank being lowered in reaction to sites that are selling links. We’re not talking about link farm-esque networks of paid-inclusion directories, we’re talking about sites selling links full stop.
When paid links were officially bad, my first reaction was: “what the hell do people do who depend on the revenue for those links? Use AdSense???” People buy their way to the top through Google’s channels everyday, but ‘quality of results’ in the natural listings is a true aim? Someone I’ve bought links off in the past would say otherwise.
‘Danni’ is a woman who has worked for 11 years running her world news portal, which collates news with the intent of providing an independent view to Americans. Her site has dropped from a PR7 to a PR4 in the past year. As PageRank is exponential, that’s A HELL OF A DROP. Her site also sells a lot of links. Is toolbar PageRank just a magic green bar? Danni’s experiences would suggest otherwise. She’s kindly let me publish a couple of e-mails that she sent me, with obvious bits taken out. I asked to publish these because I feel it’s a true reflection of a Webmaster’s view, one that is not aware of the implications of paid linking. It’s not like you open the Metro and read: “Matt Cutts warns Webmasters that selling links might hurt them.”
She’s not a Web marketer, she is a woman who has set up a cracking independent news resource.
I will review what you sent me. I think it is terrible that Google would lower our page rank and penalize us because we sell advertising in order to stay in business. I have a full time job but I have been dedicated (for the past 11 years) to providing ‘MySite’ to Americans in order to show them news from outside the US from a non US perspective (or US bias). Hundreds of thousands of people come to the site for substantive information. For taking text link advertising we are penalized and at risk of shutting down? Surely Google can see we are not a link farm but a legitimate news site and what is the difference between MySite selling Google’s text links and MySite selling them directly?????
There is something very wrong with the way the internet works if Google has the power to put a web site out of business because they are in essence competing against them regarding links.
Am I missing something here?????
I did reassure her that her site wouldn’t be de-indexed purely for selling links and expected that her traffic losses shouldn’t be too bad. I’ll be recommending alternative sources of revenue. Unfortunately the timing of things indicates otherwise, which she presents in this e-mail:
Our traffic is down — although we still get great traffic. But when we had a page rank of 7 we were getting a ton more traffic than we get now. Maybe that has something to do with the addition and competition of more and more web sites, but it seems weird that it happened exactly at the same time as when I started to take text link ads. Since most of my revenue comes from text links — if companies stop buying links from us, we will be forced to shut down — no money - no website. When I first lost page rank I contacted Google and they told me it was because I had too many unrelated links on my site. Google said that they were counting the links I had in our database sections for world headlines, world blogs and world newspapers and magazines from these three url’s: [deleted].
They clearly don’t want anyone offering free and/or paid links…
I mean if you go to google and search [for World headlines and other key search terms, she is on the first page].
This doesn’t make us relevant??????
I could site thousands of search examples where we come up in the top 10 - which is why over 500,000 unique users come to the site. But a year and a half ago we had close to a million unique users coming to the site — until Google lowered my page rank. All of a sudden MySite wasn’t relevant any more???
I am convinced they punish sites like mine because if every single web site sold text links on their own - without Google. Google would be out of the sponsored link business.
Please by all means post my thoughts. I would be interested in finding out
what other people have to say about my thoughts…
Sorry to waste your time but I have spent 11 long years building up the traffic to ‘mysite’ and without the text link revenue, we will be forced to shut it down or sell it. And we can’t really sell it without ad revenue, so I lose no matter what…
This is a prime example of a Webmaster being caught unawares. It is only through my correspondence and noticing that Google was taking active measures against her site that she realized the implications of link selling.
If Google is to continue their crusade against paid links, then they should at least notify websites personally when they have been affected as a result of this. As one of Danni’s primary revenue stream for the site, she can’t just take them down and expect to be able to maintain the site.
The key now is to find other ways to monetise her site. Any ideas away from AdSense would be most welcome.
2 Responses to “Paid Links: An Unknowing Webmaster Speaks Out”
1 andymurd 6 March 2008 @ 3:08 pm
I’m sure you know this, but you can still sell adverts, it’s just that the links have to have rel=”nofollow” so that you really are selling advertising, not pagerank.
I’m not sure how Danni’s readership might react, but she could try selling paid articles on her site. I guess that would steer her away from the goal of independance.
If its any consolation, sites seem to bounce back quickly from pagerank purgatory once the Google gods have been appeased.
2 Neil 6 March 2008 @ 3:27 pm
Hi Andy. Thanks for the comments. Yes, you can still use rel=”nofollow”, but it would only be a matter of time before the sponsors caught onto this and stopped paying for them. I probably should’ve mentioned this in the blog post eh?
Maybe introducing banners instead of text links would be a good idea. The line between paid links and advertising is a lot less clear with banners than anchor text.
I think paid articles would open up another can of worms, as pay-per-post bloggers/sites have been hit pretty hard by Google in recent times.
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