Comments on: Matt Cutts vs Ted Murphy on Paid Blogging & Sponsored Conversations

By: Uttoran Sen

Uttoran Sen — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 07:42:48 +0000

humm… the problem is that there are not too many companies that offers nofollow sponsored review opportunities, and i wish there were because nofollow is not bad, just useless to search engines…

By: sohbet

sohbet — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 11:22:05 +0000

thankks you sohbet chat

By: Judith Lewis 'deCabbit'

Judith Lewis 'deCabbit' — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 13:27:52 +0000

I’ve blogged about this, I’ve spoken about it and I’ve commented about it.

*all* links are paid links because at the end of the day time is money and if you get good service and blog & link, it was paid for through employing someone specifically todo that job.

Journalists get freebies all the time and are paid to write.

You can easily argue that there is no such thing as a free link – or lunch and that’s where I’m off to :-)

By: Terry Van Horne

Terry Van Horne — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 06:11:24 +0000

Unlike many here I agree with Google sponsored links should include disclaimers so users know it’s an ad, there may even be a law that says that, I know when SEs first started placing ads in and around results the FTC made them label them as Ads or “sponsored”. I could care less what Google says nofollow should be used. NoFollow is the author or webmasters call based on their criteria, not Googles. Afterall the HTML spec says that’s the purpose of the attribute… not to tell Google how to remove sites using paid links from their results.

I do believe that labelling for the public/their user is part of the beef Matt/Google has with the paid blogging. IMO, they are just a bad day for someone at the FTC unleashing the hounds and Google doesn’t want to be part of that again!

By: andrew wee

andrew wee — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 01:36:56 +0000

I am disturbed by Google’s position as the self-appointed gatekeeper of what’s kosher and what’s not.

So with some inconsistencies that they are filtering what China internet users are able to view, in “consultation” with the Chinese government, they’re moving on to the next lap by dictating that the mere fact that a post is sponsored, affects the final editorial output?

Seems pretty draconian to me.

A blanket policy (even if it enhances brand visibility, builds social goodwill) seems overly mechanistic and disregards a user’s possible positive reception to being “marketed” to.

If this is their position, I’ll probably be bringing more business to search.twitter.com or other channels.

By: CybernautSEO

CybernautSEO — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 23:15:02 +0000

This all brings up a question.

What is the incentive to giving someone a dofollow link?

Just no follow all of your links and horde your PageRank for yourself.

is this not just as unethical?

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 22:25:18 +0000

I think things are going to Google’s head… it’s not our job to work the way Google wants us to (though most of us do to some extent) it’s Google’s job to work around us/the web/users/websites. Just because they’ve hit a brick wall and can’t figure out how to make their algorithm smarter doesn’t mean we pay the price. If you upset the people the people will go somewhere else. I don’t see the difference between paying someone to write a review about your website on their blog and putting dofollow links vs doing it yourself… business as worked this way for years why do you think so many websites write reviews about products. Sure the bias ones can be spotted a mile away. Google needs to implement their TRUST algorithm sooner rather than later because there is much more on the web to consider besides dofollow links. The nofollow tag was a nice thought and a good recommendation but I think it’s gone too far.

By: Joshua Sciarrino

Joshua Sciarrino — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 20:02:30 +0000

@massa That would be a great idea but sadly congress is in bed with Google. So, no luck winning any battles against Google, unless Google FUBAR's and I doubt that will happen. If Google was really serious about Nofollow, they'd educated people more. A lot more. They have a huge visibility factor, heck, put it on the homepage, youtube, blogger, etc. But no, they try to play hide and sneek and then smack someone when they find someone. Google is a hypocrite. But then again, much of Coporate America is. It's all about money. (Enjoy the vid :D)

By: John Somerton

John Somerton — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 19:49:12 +0000

What would be interesting is if everyone just stopped using nofollow – then what would Google do? Penalize everyone?

Their bread and butter relies on providing relevancy in the search results. Seems pretty shortsighted on their part to put so much control over that relevancy (or irrelevancy) in the hands of everyday bloggers and webmasters and their use of nofollow. Great news for professional SEOs though – yet another enabler.

By: Melanie Phung

Melanie Phung — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 19:46:25 +0000

Gee, here I thought I was supposed to write content and link to things I liked with my users in mind, and not manipulate my sites specifically for the search engines.

As someone pointed out before, what if I’m just serving my users and don’t even have a clue what nofollow is? How is Google serving its users when it punishes my site because I’m not coding my links to this totally confusing and capricious FUD standard?