Google Webmaster Tools Adds Paid Link Reporting Form & More

The Google Webmaster Central blog announced the addition of a few new features to Webmaster Central Tools. The main feature is a new form where you can report paid links that you find on various sites.

This feature was discussed at the Search Marketing Expo conference and provides a more formal way of reporting paid links than the another method Google’s Matt Cutts suggested in April.

Matt’s post sparked off a huge debate over paid links after it appeared (see here and here).

Google said they will use the feedback from the link reporting tool to “improve our algorithms and improve our search results.” It is unclear if Google will take manual action on any of the reports submitted but likely, given that Google has been stressing they take more manual actions these days.

In addition to the paid link reporting form, Google has made small changes to the user interface of the Google Webmaster Central dashboard. They also have renamed the reinclusion request form to “reconsideration request” form.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.