Google recientemente ha revelado en unos de sus blogs más información acerca de su lucha contra los links pagos.

La firma justifica su comportamiento diciendo que quiere minimizar las inequidades y mejorar la precisión de su buscador. Además está dejando de mostrar publicidad de sitios que venden PR en sus AdWords.

Google no está muy afilado en lo que se refiere a detectar links pagos, por eso ha creado un sitio donde humanos, y tal vez perros, pueden reportar sitios con links pagos.

Muchos webmasters desconocen estar inclumpliendo con las normas de Google, o lo que es el atributo nofollow, por lo que Google debería concientizar -utilizando un sistema automático por ejemplo- antes de penalizar.

De forma análoga al sitio anterior, todos aquellos que hayan observado una merma en su PageRank, debido a links pagos, pueden pedirle a Google una reconsideración.

Fuente: Search Engine Land

Our goal is to provide users the best search experience by presenting equitable and accurate results. We enjoy working with webmasters, and an added benefit of our working together is that when you make better and more accessible content, the internet, as well as our index, improves. This in turn allows us to deliver more relevant search results to users.

If, however, a webmaster chooses to buy or sell links for the purpose of manipulating search engine rankings, we reserve the right to protect the quality of our index. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank violates our webmaster guidelines. Such links can hurt relevance by causing:

- Inaccuracies: False popularity and links that are not fundamentally based on merit, relevance, or authority
- Inequities: Unfair advantage in our organic search results to websites with the biggest pocketbooks

In order to stay within Google's quality guidelines, paid links should be disclosed through a "rel=nofollow" or other techniques such as doing a redirect through a page which is robots.txt'ed out. Here's more information explaining our stance on buying and selling links that pass PageRank:

February 2003: Google's official quality guidelines have advised "Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank" for several years.

September 2005: I posted on my blog about text links and PageRank.

December 2005: Another post on my blog discussed this issue, and said

    Many people who work on ranking at search engines think that selling links can lower the quality of links on the web. If you want to buy or sell a link purely for visitors or traffic and not for search engines, a simple method exists to do so (the nofollow attribute). Google’s stance on selling links is pretty clear and we’re pretty accurate at spotting them, both algorithmically and manually. Sites that sell links can lose their trust in search engines.


September 2006: In an interview with John Battelle, I noted that "Google does consider it a violation of our quality guidelines to sell links that affect search engines."

January 2007: I posted on my blog to remind people that "links in those paid-for posts should be made in a way that doesn’t affect search engines."

April 2007: We provided a mechanism for people to report paid links to Google.

June 2007: I addressed paid links in my keynote discussion during the Search Marketing Expo (SMX) conference in Seattle. Here's a video excerpt from the keynote discussion. It's less than a minute long, but highlights that Google is willing to use both algorithmic and manual detection of paid links that violate our quality guidelines, and that we are willing to take stronger action on such links in the future.

June 2007: A post on the official Google Webmaster Blog noted that "Buying or selling links to manipulate results and deceive search engines violates our guidelines." The post also introduced a new official form in Google's webmaster console so that people could report buying or selling of links.

June 2007: Google added more specific guidance to our official webmaster documentation about how to report buying or selling links and what sort of link schemes violate our quality guidelines.

August 2007: I described Google's official position on buying and selling links in a panel dedicated to paid links at the Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference in San Jose.

September 2007: In a post on my blog recapping the SES San Jose conference, I also made my presentation available to the general public (PowerPoint link).

October 2007: Google provided comments for a Forbes article titled "Google Purges the Payola".

October 2007: Google officially confirmed to Search Engine Land that we were taking stronger action on this issue, including decreasing the toolbar PageRank of sites selling links that pass PageRank.

October 2007: An email that I sent to Search Engine Journal also made it clear that Google was taking stronger action on buying/selling links that pass PageRank.

We appreciate the feedback that we've received on this issue. A few of the more prevalent questions:

Q: Is buying or selling links that pass PageRank a violation of Google's guidelines? Why?
A: Yes, it is, for the reasons we mentioned above. I also recently did a post on my personal blog that walks through an example of why search engines wouldn't want to count such links. On a serious medical subject (brain tumors), we highlighted people being paid to write about a brain tumor treatment when they hadn't been aware of the treatment before, and we saw several cases where people didn't do basic research (or even spellchecking!) before writing paid posts.

Q: Is this a Google-only issue?
A: No. All the major search engines have opposed buying and selling links that affect search engines. For the Forbes article Google Purges The Payola, Andy Greenberg asked other search engines about their policies, and the results were unanimous. From the story:

    Search engines hate this kind of paid-for popularity. Google's Webmaster guidelines ban buying links just to pump search rankings. Other search engines including Ask, MSN, and Yahoo!, which mimic Google's link-based search rankings, also discourage buying and selling links.


Other engines have also commented about this individually, e.g. a search engine representative from Microsoft commented in a recent interview and said

    The reality is that most paid links are a.) obviously not objective and b.) very often irrelevant. If you are asking about those then the answer is absolutely there is a risk. We will not tolerate bogus links that add little value to the user experience and are effectively trying to game the system.


Q: Is that why we've seen some sites that sell links receive lower PageRank in the Google toolbar?
A: Yes. If a site is selling links, that can affect our opinion about the value of that site or cause us to lose trust in that site.

Q: What recourse does a site owner have if their site was selling links that pass PageRank, and the site's PageRank in the Google toolbar was lowered?
A: The site owner can address the violations of the webmaster guidelines and submit a reconsideration request in Google's Webmaster Central console. Before doing a reconsideration request, please make sure that all sold links either do not pass PageRank or are removed.

Q: Is Google trying to tell webmasters how to run their own site?
A: No. We're giving advice to webmasters who want to do well in Google. As I said in this video from my keynote discussion in June 2007, webmasters are welcome to make their sites however they like, but Google in turn reserves the right to protect the quality and relevance of our index. To the best of our knowledge, all the major search engines have adopted similar positions.

Q: Is Google trying to crack down on other forms of advertisements used to drive traffic?
A: No, not at all. Our webmaster guidelines clearly state that you can use links as means to get targeted traffic. In fact, in the presentation I did in August 2007, I specifically called out several examples of non-Google advertising that are completely within our guidelines. We just want disclosure to search engines of paid links so that the paid links won't affect search engines.

Q: I'm aware of a site that appears to be buying/selling links. How can I get that information to Google?
A: Read our official blog post about how to report paid links from earlier in 2007. We've received thousands and thousands of reports in just a few months, but we welcome more reports. We appreciate the feedback, because it helps us take direct action as well as improve our existing algorithmic detection. We also use that data to train new algorithms for paid links that violate our quality guidelines.

Q: Can I get more information?
A: Sure. I wrote more answers about paid links earlier this year if you'd like to read them. And if you still have questions, you can join the discussion in our Webmaster Help Group.

Posted by Matt Cutts
  

Labels: webmaster guidelines

The comments you read here belong only to the person who posted them. We do, however, reserve the right to remove off-topic comments.
84 comments:

Jason said...

    What about sites that received the penalty by mistake?

    I have 1 blog that has never bought or sold a link that was reduced to PR0. I'm hesitant to submit a re-inclusion request because it requires admission of wrongdoing. That blog has done nothing wrong and has no options.
    December 1, 2007 5:27 PM  
http://search-engines-web.com/ said...

    YOU ARE NOT BEING FAIR in fact you are being stupid!!

    Not all paid links are bad. You can not group all paid links under one banner. A Webmaster has every right to charge for a link when there is a competitive market to get a link on that page.

    What you fail to understand is that there are just no opportunities for small Webmasters to get attention.

    This is especially true of commercial sites. Occasionally a information or trivia site might make the Digg Homepage - but few people are going to help small Webmasters unless there is something in it for them.

    Not all Webmasters can even THINK of competing with large organization who spend MILLIONS as if it was water.

    The concern is not whether a links is paid but whether it is relevant.

    You have an obligation to help the small Webmaster if you are going to insist that they not use paid links.

    What other option are you giving them. Are they to just die and wither away.
    December 1, 2007 7:55 PM  
Michael Clark said...

    On one of my web sites, I actively sell advertising to organizations in my regional niche. I now add the nofollow to those links. If I don't have an adbox sold for a certain time period, I use that space to link to one of my other web sites, in effect advertising my own sites. Is that bad/against the webmaster guidelines? No money is involved, since it is my own sites involved.
    December 1, 2007 9:08 PM  
Lizz West said...

    I'm another entirely unhappy webmaster. I write a blog and up until the recently, I had a PR of 2. Not an extremely high number but I was proud of it nonetheless. Come to find out I'm now a ZERO. I didn't do ANYTHING! I write occasionally for PayPerPost and I've been known to have the occasional Google AdSense ad embedded into my posts. I don't know why exactly I was penalized or what I did, but I am not happy. In fact, I'm furious. I even blogged about it.

    I used to be a fan of Google, I used to LOVE Google. But now I can see that you're all just as bad and stingy and greedy and money-hungry as the assholes who are gouging us at the pumps. They raise our gas prices, you guys bitch and moan over a few measly dollars. Grow a pair, Google. Maybe it's time you realize that not all of us are wealthy billionaire CEOs, not all of us know how to make millions off of AdSense, and some of us really rely on that PR for a few extra bucks and I mean that literally... $5.00 here and there. It may not be much to you, but it means the world to one of my children when they get a happy meal with it.

    I'm disgusted.
    December 1, 2007 9:13 PM  
LEGIT freebies dude! said...

    Lizz West: It's probably because of the PayPerPost reviews you do is why you got penalized.

    I don't suppose any links you mentioned in that post were included with the "nofollow" attribute?
    December 1, 2007 9:26 PM  
Sir Jorge said...

    Oh well, I don't worry a whole lot at this point.
    December 1, 2007 9:49 PM  
lottobymath said...

    This STILL doesn't explain why JoeTech.com dropped from PR5 to PR0 over night. I didn't sell any paid links and nobody ever told me what I did wrong.
    December 1, 2007 10:17 PM  
Matt Cutts said...

    lottobymatch, bear in mind that Google also did a full PageRank update a few weeks ago, and PageRanks can fluctuate naturally as a result of that as well. For example, joetech.com doesn't have any sort of webspam penalty in Google. We do occasionally see PageRank variations for sites because of canonicalization issues. You might check this post for advice, for example: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2006/09/setting-preferred-domain.html

    jason, you didn't mention your site name, but the same advice applies to you as well. In addition, I left this advice on a different site earlier this week:

    "We did do a full PageRank update several weeks ago. seomoz.org went down one notch not because of link selling but just because there's less PageRank flowing around in some areas (e.g. search and SEO). Vanessa Fox's site dropped by one as well, and for her as well, it's just a case where less PageRank is flowing in some niches of the net. PageRank doesn't always monotonically increase."

    Michael Clark, cross-linking between your own sites can be perfectly fine, especially if the links are relevant and you have a small number of sites. At a site review panel, an audience member once claimed that he had been deindexed by two major search engines for only cross-linking. Tim Mayer from Yahoo asked how many sites he had. The audience member sheepishly replied that he had 1500 (!) sites. I definitely wouldn't recommend heavy cross-linking if you've got that many sites. That's a lot of sites no matter how you slice it.

    Lizz West, you may disagree with Google's stance against selling links that pass PageRank, but every major search engine has said similar things to Google on this issue.
    December 1, 2007 11:55 PM  
Jennifer Mathews Somogyi said...

    I personally have never used purchasing links or any linking program to obtain rankings. I have found that by using the "old school" techniques of meta tags and content within the website while targeting relevant key terms obtains rankings slowly, but the rankings stick indefinately.
    I do, however know of some SEO people that use links to obtain rankings and never optimize the website itself just for the results and money, and believe it is not only wrong, but the rankings don't hold.
    Than you Google for cracking down on such black hat SEO's.

    I would also like to add that with the pagerank update 3 of my websites increased in pagerank by 1-2 points *Yeah*
    Keep up the good work!

    Jen
    SEO Goddess
    Everything I know I learned ont he Internet :o)
    December 2, 2007 12:42 AM  
sritchie70 said...
    This post has been removed by the author.
    December 2, 2007 12:57 AM  
sritchie70 said...

    It's funny, Google penalizes link-sellers, whom i dislike as well, but promotes sites like Dmoz which has no value what-so-ever...lol... Wow Google, way to set those standards!

    Business directories actually used by human searchers are easy to distinguish and should be rewarded.

    -Eg. Yellowpages, superpages, 411...-

    But, useless sites like Dmoz are ranked higher and actually used by google directory. It's like saying that yahoo directory is a valuable reference. Ummm, no, Yahoo sells links. Yahoo Dir is a paid link site Matt! An expensive one too.

    Scott
    Web Designer
    December 2, 2007 1:02 AM  
Arnold said...

    I think that the problem is that this pagerank review seemed to be almost random in its effect which has confused many people.

    It seems to have hit sites taking paid posts, yet not all of them by a long way. Others which don't take paid posts have been hit equally hard.

    If it is, I think that in time the quality of paid posts will go up dramatically and they'll deserve to be in Google's index too.
    The only thing I can see in common with those that have been hit (and I've not seen all, of course) is that they write posts based almost entirely around a single link. Essentially they are writing pure advertisements. Whilst not wanting to single out one site, JoeTech.com looks like that to me: it has advertising style posts, albeit not paid for ones.

    On the other hand many taking paid posts haven't been hit. These appear to use the sponsor's link as a trigger for an article (and again, I've not seen all of them). In fact, aside from the relevant posts being tagged "sponsored" or similar, you'd be hard pressed to identify those ones as being paid for.

    Is anyone in Google prepared to say if that assumption is correct? ie that advertising style posts are those being hit whilst those that create "proper" articles (albeit some sponsored) are OK.
    December 2, 2007 1:05 AM  
Jason said...

    Thanks for the advice Matt. It's a new blog so I suppose the PR I had for about a week or so could have been a false reading. If not...

    Is there any way of asking for a review that doesn't require falsely stating that we've gone against the webmaster guidelines?
    December 2, 2007 1:10 AM  
mike said...

    This was a great read.

    I'm interested to know some things that were not mentioned.

    What is your stance on sites like web directories, which are mainly categorized pages of links.

    Assume a general web directory has strict guidelines on what gets accepted - based on how a site would satisfy a user (good content, no spammy pop-ups etc) and it therefore only contained high quality websites. This web directory charges a minimum fee for review, but also allows the webmaster to bid for placement - so the higher the webmaster bids the higher ranked in a category page it gets displayed. Should this use nofollow? Where should nofollow be used? On its own detail page? On the category page?

    If the minimum fee was for the review of a website, and the webmaster could bid higher for better exposure what actions would you advise the directory owner to take in terms of nofollow use and other things to note in order to avoid some form of penalty.

    I have seen some of these bid for placement style directories loose toolbar pagerank, and also have seen some given a SERP penalty - the style where they don't even rank 1st for their own name.

    As a directory owner I wish to remain within googles guidelines. The use of nofollow doesn't sound nice, as very few would submit to a directory using nofollow on all external links.
    December 2, 2007 2:54 AM  
HawkEye said...

    Same spirit as mike.

    As a web directory owner and administrator, I'm a bit worried.
    Even if my directory is very selective, and the editors who check, and correct every submission manually make an excellent work, I'm worried that Google might simply compare my website architecture to some "models", and "algorithmically" categorize it as a spammy website... although it's not.

    In mine, you can't pay for a better position, and you don't have to pay to be reviewed. The static link towards the "customer" website doesn't wear a rel="nofollow" attribute, as it's way too much considered as an insult by webmasters, when they don't simply beleive you want to "keep your PageRank for yourself"... :)

    Now one more thing if you please. I do agree with Google's position, and I do appreciate Matt's teams work (you can't say there hasn't been an improvement in SERPs these months), but I must say that all of these problems you have to solve come from one and only thing: the fact that PageRank is displayed in the toolbar.

    It's the "voice of God" for too many people who don't understand what these green pixels mean... and if PageRank was not advertised as much as it is, you probably wouldn't have to fight spam and "PageRank-distribution techniques" as you have to do it now.

    Matt, let's get back to this discussion about removing PageRank from the toolbar ;)
    December 2, 2007 3:54 AM  
EDI-L said...

    Can I assume that if my PR did not change, that my site does not violate buying or selling links? The reason I ask is because my site dmovers.com holds some kind of penalty (I think) and I want to narrow down what the penalty could be.
    December 2, 2007 6:54 AM  
Viraj said...

    Just a quick question - if Google's aim is to keep their results relevant , why are they removing websites that participate in paid links altogether from searches - shouldn't they contact the webmaster first?

    There is simply so much competition out there that great content has to be complemented by links - be they paid or not, after all, rubbish content may skew results for a while but people will soon realise it is useless and the consequences will have to be faced by websites publishing such content.

    The truth is - for the first time - Google is scared. They're abusing their power in search rankings to drive services such as PayPerPost and SponsoredReviews out - because many small-website owners have found AdSense pays them peanuts compared to what these websites give.

    I used to be a huge fan of Google, but things are starting to change.
    December 2, 2007 9:48 AM  
NSpeaks.com said...

    My Blog NSpeaks.com came down from PR 4 to PR 0 Suddenly
    I was in payperpost directory but didn't even wrote a single review for them. Neither I sold links on my site.

    Still couldn't figure out why I got penalised.

    I will ask for reconsideration in next few days.
    December 2, 2007 10:41 AM  
Glen at Webstart said...

    Along the same lines as Mike and Hawkeye my interest is to do with a very new directory I have recently started to promote and how the paid links affect this.

    PR is not an issue for me at the moment as the directory is new and of course sits at PR0 for the time being. Some listings within the directory will be on an annual subscription and, as such, they will have way more functionality and features than a basic listing. The listings will be linking back out to the relevant websites and the listing holders will often be linking from their websites to the featured listing on the directory.

    Does this fall into the paid links arena as it is not intended to?
    December 2, 2007 10:41 AM  
Brian said...

    Even though I don't want to admit it, I find myself agreeing with Viraj's comments. If a site has relevant content it has relevant content - despite whether it chooses to sell links or not. If Lifehacker.com decided to sell links, would it suddenly mean that content was worse? Are their tips of less value to people searching for them? As a user of search engines, I would want them to give me the most relevant results regardless of whether the source sells links. Wouldn't you agree?

    I can see a few other problems here.
    1. Google has said in the past to not code their sites for search engines. Now it seems search engines are asking people to add nonstandard HTML attributes for them.
    2. I'm curious how Google can tell that money has exchanged hands. Is there proof that money has changed hands or are people assumed to be guilty until proven innocent?
    3. How is Google "working with webmasters" on this? My cousin has a site that has been penalized and he says that he yet to receive any communication from Google about it. I don't know if this is the norm, but one would hope not. It seems that people can't tell if Google is doing a normal pagerank update or if they are being penalized. Perhaps Google can give a breakdown or notification of the penalties that are being applied.
    December 2, 2007 10:43 AM  
jasmin said...

    By releasing Page rank, Google boosts unfair practices of acquiring unmerited links.

    Manipulating search results will last as long as Google release PR or any other part of its algorithm.
    December 2, 2007 1:17 PM  
Matt Cutts said...

    "Can I assume that if my PR did not change, that my site does not violate buying or selling links? The reason I ask is because my site dmovers.com holds some kind of penalty (I think) and I want to narrow down what the penalty could be"

    In the case of dmovers.com, you're inheriting a bit of an issue from the previous owner of the domain. The domain at one point had keyword stuffing that looked like this:
    "Are you seeking any of the following words:

    mover, mouse mover, house mover, car mover, international mover, piano mover, nationwide mover, auto mover, personal mouse mover, people mover, mobile home mover, apartment mover, allied mover, lawn mover, furniture mover, first mover advantage, household mover, long distance mover, earth mover, mayflower mover"

    and stuff like that. If you do a reconsideration request for dmovers.com and mention that you have nothing to do with the previous owner/text on the domain, I believe that the request should go through just fine.
    December 2, 2007 1:24 PM  
Matt Cutts said...

    2-3 people have asked about directories. I've talked about this before, so I'm going to include the answer that I gave at http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-to-report-paid-links/ a few months ago:

    "Q: Hey, as long as we’re talking about directories, can you talk about the role of directories, some of whom charge for a reviewer to evaluate them?
    A: I’ll try to give a few rules of thumb to think about when looking at a directory. When considering submitting to a directory, I’d ask questions like:
    - Does the directory reject urls? If every url passes a review, the directory gets closer to just a list of links or a free-for-all link site.
    - What is the quality of urls in the directory? Suppose a site rejects 25% of submissions, but the urls that are accepted/listed are still quite low-quality or spammy. That doesn’t speak well to the quality of the directory.
    - If there is a fee, what’s the purpose of the fee? For a high-quality directory, the fee is primarily for the time/effort for someone to do a genuine evaluation of a url or site."

    I hope that helps answer the question of how (say) the Yahoo directory is different from the examples I showed in my post at http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/selling-links-that-pass-pagerank/ . I hope it also answers the question of why a "bidding directory" that just gives the top slot to the highest-money bid might not be as trusted by Google.
    December 2, 2007 1:30 PM  
Matt Cutts said...

    "Is there any way of asking for a review that doesn't require falsely stating that we've gone against the webmaster guidelines?"

    Jason, great question. I don't want to force people to claim that they've violated our guidelines in doing a reconsideration request. I believe that we've already softened our language on that form once and that we added the option to say "something happened on this domain before I got to it."

    But your feedback is something that I've heard before, and I'll try to have someone at Google look at what we can do to remove that concern. If you have suggestions for language or the best way to do it, I'm open to whatever you want to propose.

    Arnold, it is the case that we don't reduce the PageRank for every site that we know of that is selling links. The reason for that is that we don't want to provide a roadmap of places to buy links.
    December 2, 2007 1:37 PM  
lottobymath said...

    Matt, Thanks for the reply, but if joetech.com was not penalized, and I have a "preferred domain" set, I can't imagine any good reason for a page rank drop from 5 to zero, especially when some sub-pages still have page ranks and have a lot less links back to them. Here's what I see in Webmaster Tools: "The preferred domain name www.joetech.com was set on Feb 5, 2007."
    December 2, 2007 2:09 PM  
sritchie70 said...

    Hi Matt,

    Thanks for the reply. Your a good guy.

    Nuts! Now I have to pay the Dmoz editors to list my crappy sites again.

    =-(
    December 2, 2007 2:35 PM  
Glen at Webstart said...

    Thanks for the reply on directories Matt, my mind has been put to rest a little as our directory does not link out to a website unless the owner has put in relevant and useful content regarding their business and/or product. The directory is a resource for listing businesses and not individual websites.

    Thanks for the useful link: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-to-report-paid-links/ ...now I just need to book a weeks holiday to read all the comments!
    December 2, 2007 2:56 PM  
Matt Cutts said...

    Thanks, sritchie70--I appreciate that. I've heard a lot of claims about DMOZ editors being corrupt, but I don't think I've seen any documented examples. If you are looking for links, either debunking that myth or providing some evidence either way would be one way to get links. Just a thought.
    December 2, 2007 3:55 PM  
Matt Cutts said...

    Glen, one thing to bear in mind is that for all the hundreds of comments on that thread, there have been more than an order of magnitude more reports of paid links into our spam report form. So while there are some people debating this loudly on the web, there is also a large number of people who have been helping Google with reports, even if they aren't as vocal on the web.

    By the way, if you're traveling to PubCon or traveling for the holidays, you could open up that thread in a laptop and read it on the plane journey. :)
    December 2, 2007 3:56 PM  
Ghosty said...

    My name is Ghosty, and I'm an ex PPPer.

    First, Matt, I don't read your blog, so all that great commentary these past couple of years slipped right by me. Of course, I plan to correct that oversight shortly. :)

    Second, many of us who did work for PPP and similar companies weren't thinking about selling links. We were thinking about getting paid for writing posts. Honestly, the whole bit about selling links didn't cross my mind until I started getting wind of all this.

    Now I know better, I have to say Google is absolutely correct in it's stance. Companies who can afford to purchase large numbers of links unfairly affect the popularity of a site in a search engine.

    I am also quite upset at some of my former-fellow PPPers, who seem to have the mistaken idea that Google owes everyone a means to make a living from their blog. No, it doesn't, nor would it make sense for that to happen.

    My only remaining issue is that Google never sent me a warning. I have a Blogger blog. I have GMail. I have Analytics, and I have an account with Webmaster Tools. An email saying "you're breaking our rules, and here's why" would have been nice because, hey, I work 10-hour days and don't have remaining time to read Google's TOS and assorted blogs on top of writing in my own. And you can betchum sweet bibby I'd have followed up on it, too.

    Live and learn. Got my PR and my search traffic back, so I'm happy.
    December 2, 2007 4:51 PM  
Matt Cutts said...

    Hey Ghosty! I appreciate your feedback, and we'll do some thinking about whether it's possible to add a notification message in the Google webmaster console.

    Typically our first priority is to protect our index quality, but after that I agree that it's important to communicate.

    We saw this happen with malware as well. First we were taking action to remove the malware from our search results. Then we started to do more communication with site owners when we detected a malware problem. Now we're much better about alerting site owners about malware on their site (although I wouldn't claim we're perfect).

    In the same way, I agree that it would be nice to alert site owners if we think this is an issue for them. I wouldn't expect us to send out notices right now, but it's a good suggestion and I'll see if we can work on that.
    December 2, 2007 5:03 PM  
Snoskred said...

    "Arnold, it is the case that we don't reduce the PageRank for every site that we know of that is selling links. The reason for that is that we don't want to provide a roadmap of places to buy links."

    ^^^^ Please explain what you mean by this.

    It could be interpreted as "We'll punish some people, but not others".

    You are going to reduce the page rank for EVERYONE selling links, right? You're not going to selectively choose sites which won't get penalized for whatever reasons, right? If you find absolute proof that a site is selling links and not putting in a no follow as you request, that will mean their page rank is reduced to a 0, correct?

    How can reducing the page rank of sites be considered providing a roadmap of places to buy links?

    Your logic seems faulty on this one.
    December 2, 2007 8:54 PM  
jaz said...

    I have one very big question. Why do I have to be penalized for violating some terms of service that I never asked you to give me in the first place? Why are blogs that deal with paid posts getting spanked like little kids when, in fact, google is acting like little children because they are not getting the whole money pie?

    I am NOT trying to be malicious here. Just asking a fair question. I really do want to know. Now, do not give me some blarney answer please.
    December 2, 2007 9:05 PM  
jaz said...

    By the way, my MINISTRY SITE that sells absolutely NOTHING got hit too. Care to comment?
    December 2, 2007 9:08 PM  
Matt Cutts said...

    Hi jaz, I already tackled the question of why some sites that aren't selling links may have gone down in PageRank a little bit too. Here's what I said in a previous comment on this thread:

    "We did do a full PageRank update several weeks ago. seomoz.org went down one notch not because of link selling but just because there's less PageRank flowing around in some areas (e.g. search and SEO). Vanessa Fox's site dropped by one as well, and for her as well, it's just a case where less PageRank is flowing in some niches of the net. PageRank doesn't always monotonically increase."
    December 2, 2007 10:28 PM  
Matt Cutts said...

    "Why do I have to be penalized for violating some terms of service that I never asked you to give me in the first place?"

    jaz, Google tries to rank sites in a way that we feel is good for our users. We believe that buying/selling links that pass PageRank is bad for relevance on the web. Accordingly, if a site is selling links (for example), that can cause Google to lose trust in the website.