Comments on: Paid Links Under Scrutiny By Google Again

By: WebOptimist

WebOptimist — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 21:42:16 +0000

OK, let’s say a magazine’s web site sells a link or even a banner to a company who also happens to be mentioned in a story on the site (this happens all of the time with newspapers and magazines. A story with a mention of a company prompts an ad purchase by that company) and there’s a link to that advertiser’s site in the article as well as somewhere else on the site.

Will Google come down on that site for selling the ad? Will they discount the link in the article to the company because of the paid link elsewhere? Will they force the advertiser to only buy AdWords?

That last one is sounding more and more like the case.

By: Lucky Lester

Lucky Lester — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 17:45:12 +0000

It would be too easy for the government to regulate the Internet and the US would in a heart beat if not for the ACLU. If it weren’t a crime I would offer odds on the good ole US of A starting an Anti-Trust action on Google in the very near future.

By: infokwik

infokwik — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 06:24:27 +0000

Lucky Lester is right on. Google is getting closer to a monopoly all the time. If SuperPages.com sells links, should they be punished by Google or should Google just buy them and eliminate the problem?

The whole thing sounds not only unethical, but very much monopolistic.

If they keep it up we will end up with a government regulated internet.

God help us if that happens.

By: Michael Martinez

Michael Martinez — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 18:49:29 +0000

The problem is that Google allows links to pass anchor text, which really has absolutely nothing to do with whether a document is relevant to a user query or not.

People perform an average of 30+ queries per visit on Google but only 9-15 queries per visit on Ask, Live, and Yahoo!. There is something spooky about that.

What Google needs to do, instead of asking people to be link vigilantes, is just stop allowing links to pass anchor text.

People will have no choice but to stop manipulating Google’s search results through anchor text if it doesn’t work any more.

By: Lucky Lester

Lucky Lester — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 18:39:26 +0000

Why not discount all links? Seems to me that the thing that brought Google their wealth and power was developed on the back of linking. Now that Google has a fat war chest to rest upon, Google wants to make it so only they can make money on linking. Kind of reminds me of how the old robber barons changed the rules once they came into power. No evil my ass!