Matt Cutts Confirms Paid Links & Google PageRank Update

Google must not stop link selling

Because google must think about webmasters

So does this mean that if I buy text links from, say, textlinkads.com, my site won't get penalized ?

I think Google will clean the search results for a better relevance ranking. Is it like this?

i never sold a link from my site ucables.com, but this summer i put a link to my new girlffriend website about real estate: ibizaloft.com and from october i lost my pagerank from 5 to 0.
i have send some messages to google to reconsider my site, but i have not received any response after 2 months. My traffic decreased 20% and continue decreasing. I have removed this link already from my site.
I think google should try at least to contact with owner before to do this type of action.

I wouldn't mind so much about the PR as that's really just a status thing when people look at the green bar, it's like owning a BMW, nice but ultimately not required to get from A to B.

What I do object to is Google having magically wiped out a whole load of traffic that we did receive for no apparent reason and with no means to contact them to talk to someone about it. I have tried.

We don't sell links that I am aware of but we do run some ads that aren't Adwords and to be honest, should that really matter on how good a site is or how good and relevant the information is on it to the search query? But then as a busy webmaster running a business as well as a social site, do I have the time to vet every link on a large site, the answer is a simple no, I don't.

So, I have to assume that, if the traffic dropped after this update, primarily a drop from Google that somehow, the innocent are being punished with the guilty and, that's not fair.

K.

Wouldn't it be true that formatting links SPECIFICALLY so that they look unpaid, to try to get them to pass page rank so you can accept increased payments for them, is only worth doing because a search engine (Google) exists?

But does accepting increased payments for paid links that pass page rank mean you are making links for search engines to benefit yourself? Or, put another way, does making paid links “for users not search engines” mean formatting paid links appropriately, so as to not pass page rank/game search engines?

It should be obvious to everybody reading this blog that pagerank is now meaningless. I no longer use google but prefer Yahoo (or actually wabbadabba.com where you stand a chance of winning a prize). I used to display my pagerank on my site but no longer do so. I have replaced it with SEOmoz's page strength. Their pagestrength give an accurate indication of the value of your website. And they also give indicators of exactly what they use to calculate your pagestrength - what a difference from Google!. Try it! You can also add the pagestrength indicator to your browser toolbar and scrap Google's useless pagerank indicator. The only way that Google is going to understand that they are now a joke is when people stop using them.

With so many high ranking site showing low PageRank, I think all we should be asking Google to clarify this situation. Some sites have thousands of paid links, but they aren't punished. If the link farm or commercial linking site is still highly ranked on Google, and several are, why should their customers be punished?

It is better to finish the concept of page rank. Your algorithms is different for one and different for another, doing partiality...

The visible google page rank is a misleading short cut which we all use but which we shouldn't. It's a bad habit even glancing at that green bar.

I've said as much myself. But now, page rank has been used by google is a novel way....as a warning shot to those that google perceives are not "white hat" enough.

Google & Matt Cutts have issued an update on their treatment of sites selling links, and their ongoing lobbying to designate paid links with a no-follow on the Google Webmaster Central Blog

"The visible google page rank is a misleading short cut which we all use but which we shouldn’t. It’s a bad habit even glancing at that green bar."

I’ve said as much myself. But recently, I’ve developed a new view starting with the fact that page rank has recently been used by google is a novel way. They've used it as "warning shot"

Google PR number is a useful measure of what it measures.

The fact is that I’ve seen a very strong correlation over the last four years between my viewable page rank and my position in the search engines.

Use Alexa instead. Alexa traffic stats are not influenced by Google and its corporate decisions, or algorithmic choices, and is instead based on actual traffic measurements. The only problem with Alexa is that is a sampling-based approach, but its coverage is steadily increasing and thereby getting more reliable.

http://www.b-1st.com

The update was ok for me, PR4. No matter, traffic is the most important goal for my work and everybody knows, that Pr doesnt influence this any more.
Greetings
Martin der SEO

I think PageRank is not very important by now but I like to have a large :)

I am confused about this page rank? Because i have a few sites that are ranking in google on page 1 with less PR than the other sites on page 3 or 4. But what exactly this PR is meant for?

Still a lot people buy links and pay according to page rank!

I went from PR4 which i had no PR for 7 months(New blog). After 2 days I got PR2 and after a week I got PR0 wtf? :)

The only thing is i did sell text link ads and i removed them!

After this update webmster should take their focus more to the content of their projects then to the links. projekts with lots of informative content have also lost -1 pr, but hold their positions into the serps. And thats the only thing that counts.

Will people ask Google to re-update PR or something like that? We are ashamed by Google having no fault in links selling but being charged.

It is really a confusing message that is being sent out by Google - and from the way they have gone about this update it seems to have been done primarily to spread doubt - without actually giving away much information.

Hit people's little green bar and everyone is screaming they've been penalized - evry link seller fears being banned and stops selling links (or cross linking in blog networks).

But the fact remains that there are little reports in traffic loss or ranking drops - so what does it really matter?

I recently did a survey on Digital Point and of those that were already buying links, 90% are continuing to do so.

Now i'm pretty sure that educated link buyers will just ignore page rank and take other factors into account.

There will always be paid links that Google can’t detect, and smart link building can at least reduce the chances that competitors turn in such linkage. But that’s another league. I don’t think that Joe Webmaster has the skills to accomplish that, nor the budget to pay a SEO consultant who can do it. My posts addresses folks not able or willing to take the risks involved with paid links.


When a site sells links via a public service leaving footprints, and all those brokers put trackable links, then this site’s owner, Webmaster or SEO slept the last years. In this case refunds caused by subsequently applied link condoms are unavoidable, and probably Google will approve a reconsideration request. By the way, the brokers deal with condomized links too, and lots of sites sell nofollow’ed links. Google has devalued paid links since 2003, probably even longer, hence dofollow’ed link trades dealt with zilch PageRank anyway. IANAL, but I doubt that it’s possible to win a case when the commodity both sites agreed over is a fiction and this fact was public knowledge at the time the contract was signed. Of course, full disclosure is a no-brainer.


From the few sites suffering from deducted toolbar PR I visited recently, I could write the primitive algos to detect most of the paid links myself. I mean when a blog has blinking banners linked to hosting services and well known advertisers like that, links to text link brokers masked with tinyURL only, parts of the blogroll duplicated on tons of affiliated sites, pay for review buttons nofollow’ed or not …, then a blind, deaf and dumb monkey can detect link intents. I’m sure Google can do that algorithmically, and for this sort of links I posted the nofollow hack.

New PR uppdate will be soon I think, but it is not very important for page position.

The question is how far will they go with this?

Never sold links but have got PR lower (-1) :(

We have seen that many sites with footer links where deranked by Google. That I understand, because of footer links are are made only for the search engines and not for the human visitors.

Many of my sites had suffered possibly because they have a lot of incoming links from article directories and video sites. One of them was ranked among the top 10 by Google for the key phrase of “digital products”. Now no longer being ranked among the top 100.

I take note of what ADAC says, but the drop in my PR was not just that my directory links were downgraded. Even if Google ignored all of my links from directories I should still easily remain PR5. I was PENALISED by Google, presumably for having links from directories that were free but have now become paid directories.
I have spent about an hour a day every day over the past two years submitting to directories. I now have an extra free hour a day as I will never submit to another directory in my life.
The day of the directory is dead.
I am not an SEO expert, but my understanding was that you were penalised for linking to bad sites but there was no penalty if bad sites link to you (you cannot somebody linking to you). Matt seems to have changed this fundamental.

Hello,

I would like to ask from google via you that i am not selling and buying link for my site..still google down my 2 sites PR . Is it fair for good sites that are not including it is market...even there are lots of site that are buying links from high pr site and google still not giving any kind of penalty to those site. Why google is behaveing like this and what kind of algo update is.

This is good that google dont want that anyone can play with G-PR. So gooogle has to give PR back to good sites that are not include in buying and selling links.

Thanks

Miami Real Estate - Go to your nearest Catholic church and light as many candles as you can, though be careful not to burn the place down. Then confess your sins to Matt Cutts and promise never to try and make money outside of Google again. Only they are worthy.

Man, what are you crying about. Google is not God. Forbes is a 4 PR and that's what you are. You should be thankful. When are all you scared chickens going to wake up. Combined, you web publishers are far more powerful than any one organization on the web. Google is the most powerful now because you believe it. Believe in yourselves.

I thought that the uproar about the PR drop was all about ego. I never considered the income drop related to the drop. So the PR bitch is about money! Hmm... I can see clearly Now! THANKS

I have a concern, if anyone can adress it? My page rank was 4 before this happened, but I believe I may have been punished by google for excessive reciprocal linking, which I have stopped. I used to be very high under the term miami real estate,but I have been pushed back to the 70th page for about 2 months or more now, although under the image search, my site is on the first page of most relevant search terms. I requested reinclusion. Any ideas? Im not an SEO guy, just a realtor.

I think site like th one Terry Quested mentioned are a good example of the snowball effect this type of change would have.

Even without ever paying for or selling links you can be affected. If several of your key high PR incoming links were affected(large drop in PR) then this would also affect you. Your change could be coming from several generations of sites higher.

>>>>SEO Ranking is an weighted average of all these. As for example 20% to tiltle relevancy, 15% to keywords density, 30% to PR like this. They changes the % and ranking varies a lot.

I agree except I would add age of domain as a large ranking factor.

Re the PR drop, because of observiing over 30 similar sites (some of which dropped and others didn't) I also believe the demotion is a portion of a PR point.

PR is not figured via 1 point but from like say PR 4.1 to PR 4.9. The demotion may have only dropped a portion of 1 PR so it looks like it's still PR 4 but actually bordering on becoming a 3, i.e., a PR 4 site that actually is a 4.1 and then loosing a few links drops it down to a PR 3.

My main website took a pounding. I have no paid links and have never paid for a link. I do have a few thousand thousand incoming links from free directories, all of which I applied for manually over the last two years. Since my site is continually growing I can see no reason whatsoever for my PR drop. I was hoping for a rise to PR6 and instead got a drop to PR4 and all internal pages also took a one point drop. I have removed all external links from my main page, including the link to Google.
I guess free directory links are useless as a very small recent wordpress blog I set up with just a dozen incoming links is now the same PR4 as my main site (which is bristling with unique content). This is total nonsense and Google has clearly got it wrong in my case.
Also, I would like to say that a google sitemap also seems to be useless. Google generally gives the same PR to all internal pages and appears to totally ignores the relevant importance indication given in the sitemap.

Oddly, none of my sites with paid text link ads dropped in PR, and two of my sites which previously had PR0 now have PR5. Perhaps they just got bumped up because of the PR Updates by Google? Not sure.

it is impossible to understand paid links by google...

my site enjoyed PR 5 for almost 4to 5 years. Now it has come down to PR4. However traffic to my site since last 2 days jumped up by 25% at it is maintaining the trend. I have deleted some of the links given to my own sites and i have to observe how does it affect the rank in next update !!

Damn! I went up in PR by 2 points, and I noticed that I'm no longer ranking for the only keyword I optimized for (which I was on the first page for but now I can't be found anywhere). I'm sitll in the listing for my site title but this sucks, I didn't do any paid links but I'm in some directories..crap this is completely messed up.

How odd is it that text-link-ads.com is still a PR 7? I know they were hit with some sort of penalty, but it's odd that if it really revolves around this talk, why would TLA remain a 7 when they're kind of the target of the whole mess!

Yes I'm baked, thanks.

>>>>>>>No word from Matt Cutts or Google yet on how exactly sites are targeted for Google’s change of opinion


http://blogoscoped.com/forum/110901.html

just look in your referrer logs archive for any or these links mention.ed in this post.

Most of the sites under suspicion are probably high profile sites - or sites belonging to well known SEOs.

But unfortunately, there are many false positives