SES San Jose 2007 - Evil link buying
The session on paid links was probably the most heated discussion this year. Rather reminiscent of the click fraud debate last year. Unfortunately for Google’s Matt Cutts the odds were stacked against him, being the only search engine representative on the panel. A real shame that all the other engines stayed out of this debate.
For anyone who missed the debate Dave Dugdale managed to video it:
Much of the anger on the part of the link buyers, sellers and brokers revolved not so much on the issue of Google’s stance on link buying, but on their right to dictate how a publisher essentially selling advertising space should code the link (with a rel=nofollow), so Google can recognize that the link was a paid vote. Google is not the Government, internet police, nor a moral guardian for the web so the argument went. Feelings were further compounded as Matt Cutts referred to an FTC finding which stated that even word of mouth marketing which does not state that it is paid for, illegal.
To me the title of the discussion ‘Are paid links evil?’ asked the wrong question. Paid link debate is about Google’s reliance on link data and more importantly the text contained within links when defining relevance, and their inability to distinguish between real votes and bought ones.
The stakes are too high not to exploit a marketing loophole if it is there. Asking marketers to unilaterally disarm because of some ethical principle or publishers to add a tag which would see their income drop while competitors profited is a bit naïve from Google, who is arguably the largest ad-broker in the world.
I’m a big fan of the ‘Kill the anchor’ club, and I strongly believe that reducing the weight of anchor text would also reduce the impact of bought links. Having looked at millions of links to large brand sites, I’ve rarely seen any natural anchors containing competitive search terms. There’re plenty of other better ways to determine relevance.
Having had the opportunity to continue the link discussion with Matt at the Google dance, I’m inclined to believe that changes are on its way, but may be not any time too soon.
BTW for anyone wondering how you should build links without paying. The guy who made the above manged to do it. Is that better or worse for the web than buying links?
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