Google Gives Free PR8 Links to Paid Partners, and Doesn’t Follow Their Own Guidelines
January 8th, 2008 by Michael Gray in GoogleIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Read my top posts or learn more about Michael Gray. Want more frequent updates follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!
One of the more entertaining aspects of the entire paid links debate is Google is pretty quick to dole out the punishment, even though in many cases they haven’t taken the time to get their own house in order.
We’ve discussed the links to Golfballs.com on the Google checkout blog multiple times. At this point it pretty obvious Google has done some sort of manual adjustment as the page clearly isn’t passing any link juice. Why Google has chosen this route instead of any of the methods outlined in their webmaster guidelines remains something of a mystery.
We’ve also been assured that none of links on these Google mini pages are influencing the algo or ranking in any way. Again curiously they’ve chosen not to implement any of the solutions spelled out in the webmaster guidelines.
Here’s a new one I stumbled across last week a list of Google Partners who have implemented Google Checkout all sitting on a nice PR8 page with straight links.
I’m sure someone from Google will be along shortly to tell us these links have been taken care of algorithmically and are not passing any juice or influencing the rankings in any way. Fine I’ll believe them.
However what I’d really like to know is why isn’t Google following their own recommendations and implementation suggestions for nofollows, redirects, and robots.txt. Should all 5000+ of my readers file spam reports that Google is selling text links? Could we reasonably expect that page to be banned from the index (please oh please that would so make my day).
How can Google the company who is attempting to dictate how the web should structured expect everyone else to comply with their guidelines when they are doing miserable job of following those same guidelines themselves? If that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black I don’t know what is …
Sphere It
January 8th, 2008 at 5:14 am
Google…fare as always.
January 8th, 2008 at 5:47 am
You hit the nail on the head there.
Hypocrites.
January 8th, 2008 at 6:14 am
Do as I say, not as I do.
January 8th, 2008 at 6:26 am
I’ve been reading your rss for a while now… this sort of stuff Google does is quite annoying, but what can you do? Someday there will probably be some sort of high profile lawsuit… but until then…
January 8th, 2008 at 7:23 am
I lost my PR 6 rank - I’m assuming due to a couple of text link ads I sold on my site. It happened over night. Your post is just more reason why I don’t use Google Search anymore - - I’ve switched over to Yahoo for my search needs and will shortly be making the switch to a different ad system.
Grassroots is what it will take, really. A mass effort to get people to stop “Googling” - - boycott Google. But really, looking at internet consumerism, as a whole - the only people who really care about such things are ‘web masters’ who track these things…no one else really cares. I’m sure that’s what Google counts on.
It’s like having only one cable provider in town - - no matter how shitty their service is, you really don’t have a choice, and they know it.
January 8th, 2008 at 7:29 am
Google might be fixing it algo wise but will Yahoo and MSN like these links as they are followed?
January 8th, 2008 at 9:59 am
I actually wrote about this last week, I don’t think that page listing google checkout merchants is passing any value except for possibly the image links at the top. The text links are all Javascript and some of the text links are anchor text that don’t match the merchant, for which they still don’t rank for…
http://www.handsomelogic.com/blog/seo/official-google-blogs-not-passing-link-juice/
January 8th, 2008 at 11:14 am
I wrote about this a while back.
http://www.ppcblog.co.uk/seo/the-google-checkout-directory/
January 8th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
Michael, am I misunderstanding your post? I visited several of the Google Checkout retailer sites listed on the Google Partners link in your post and most of them have between PR3 and PR5, according to my PR Firefox extension.
January 8th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Good stuff Michael. I’ve searched on many of their pages and it’s a bit shocking how they don’t lead by example. One of the pages I researched every single link they had and the results were kind of shocking at how many had the Google link showing in their backlinks. (http://blog.linkworth.com/more-hipocrisy-by-google-nofollow/) This is valid proof their algorithmic check either sucks or they missed a page.
January 8th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Google is a business. People seem to forget this. I agree with all of the comments and with Mr Gray on this but guys….what ya gonna do about it (can you do about it)? Answer = Squat.
January 8th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Wasn’t that said like .. ummm ~3-5 months ago?
January 8th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
wasn’t that line said like … ummm ~3-5 thousand times?
January 8th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
January 8th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Some of these are familiar. On link #1 (a post on the Google checkout blog), I looked into that one after Aaron posted last year at http://www.searchnewz.com/topstory/news/sn-2-20070809GoogleCaughtSellingHighPageRankLinksAgain.html . When Adam and I looked into it, the links were editorially chosen. The Checkout team offered to modify the link if it was causing discussion, but given that the links were editorial, I didn’t believe that the links needed to be changed.
On link #2, we already took action based on http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/015481.html to stop links on a similar page from flowing PageRank. The way that we did it was doing a redirect through a url that didn’t pass PageRank. The url that time was http://www.google.com/enterprise/mini/success_stories.html . (You can see the redirects on those urls if you view the page source). It looks like the url you’re talking about is http://www.google.com/enterprise/superstars/success.html though. I’ll be happy to ask that we make sure the new url gets the same response that the old url did.
On link #3, I can ask, but I’m pretty sure that none of those sites paid to be there; it’s a listing of sites that use Google Checkout.
I think link #2 is the closest to what you’re asking about, and we did implement a way to keep similar links from flowing PageRank. On http://www.google.com/enterprise/mini/success_stories.html it happens to be doing a redirect through a url that doesn’t pass PageRank, but that’s one of the ways that we mention in our HTML documentation at http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66736 to not flow PageRank.
January 8th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
#1 while the links may have been editorially chosen, can you agree that it’s not completely unreasonable for someone to come to the conclusion that might be a conflict of interest? Even though we know they are not passing any juice it’s still curious they remain straight links.
#2 definitely looks like straight links in the code
#3 look at those top graphic banners they are all straight links. IIRC google gets a % of the transaction on all checkout fees, so clearly there is a financial interaction which acts as a possible motivation.
Here’s the thing though like any big corp lots of times the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing, and things get done in complete contradiction of company policies. So how can Google expect everyone else to have their house in order when they can’t do it themselves … passes stone to Matt sitting in the glass house
January 8th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
“the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing”
you by chance watch ‘intervention’ last night? they used that same line and I thought it was great.
January 8th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Storm the gates!
January 8th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
In a recent email to Ted at IZEA Matt Cutts wrote “If a link were truly editorial, someone wouldn’t have had to pay [for a review] to get that link…”
Editorial means an article, typically short, expressing an opinion or point of view.
The Google Checkout links aren’t editorial or of any point of view. They are a list of sites that have a business relationship with Google–sites that earn money for Google by using their product.
Matt says here that they are not paid links.
“I can ask, but I’m pretty sure that none of those sites paid to be there; it’s a listing of sites that use Google Checkout.”
They are not evil paid links, but they only exist because money is changing hands.
So, as long as your financial arrangement with the people you are linking to is the reason you are linking (and not some other opinion or editorial viewpoint), then your links are ok.
Under this painfully particular policy I can sell a graphic of a pig on my website and create links to all the websites that buy my pig graphic because they bought my pig graphic. It’s not selling PageRank because I’m only linking to sites that are customers of my pig graphic!
WTF is this policy other than bullshit?
January 8th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
This is a very touchy topic regarding all links in general. Certainly it may seem easy to punish the publisher by devaluing the sites, in hope of penalizing advertisers. However this logic is really bad for search engines because without solid financially healthy independent publishers, there would be no world wide web. The algorithm needs to be fixed.
January 8th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Not that I care and I haven’t checked for no-follows, but what about Google Analytics case studies:
http://www.google.com/analytics/sp_case_studies.html
January 8th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Uppss…wrong link. Here:
http://www.google.com/analytics/support_partner_provided.html
January 8th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
>>>On link #3, I can ask, but I’m pretty sure that none of those sites paid to be there; it’s a listing of sites that use Google Checkout.
Was that seriously just said? No - really. Are you kidding me? Matt - that statement is going to haunt you for soooooo long.
January 8th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
hum and on http://www.google.com/analytics/support_partner_provided.html click on the images of the phones…look at all the hidden text on that page.
January 8th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
was checking http://www.google.com/analytics/support_partner_provided.html to see if links were direct…but found lots of hidden text on that page…click on the images of the phones to see it.
January 8th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
“it’s a listing of sites that use Google Checkout.”
My site still uses Google Checkout. Why it’s not there? How much annually to be on that page?
January 8th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
>>>On link #3, I can ask, but I’m pretty sure that none of those sites paid to be there; it’s a listing of sites that use Google Checkout.
What? You mean it’s a listing of sites that PAY for Google Checkout.
January 8th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
@someone - “was checking http://www.google.com/analytics/support_partner_provided.html to see if links were direct…but found lots of hidden text on that page…click on the images of the phones to see it.”
No, they are just using css layers for design purposes (click the arrow next to the vendor name and you’ll see the text pop down): http://www.sugarrae.com/cool-design-feature-or-accident-waiting-to-happen/
January 8th, 2008 at 7:17 pm
“On link #3, I can ask, but I’m pretty sure that none of those sites paid to be there; it’s a listing of sites that use Google Checkout.”
“#3 look at those top graphic banners they are all straight links. IIRC google gets a % of the transaction on all checkout fees, so clearly there is a financial interaction which acts as a possible motivation.”
so are these links definitely flowing the love then? if so i’m off to sign up to Checkout, and if someone could let me know where to mail the cheque i’ll whizz you my anchor text across asap
January 8th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
“On link #3, I can ask, but I’m pretty sure that none of those sites paid to be there; it’s a listing of sites that use Google Checkout.”
Matt,
Techcrunch has a history of having posts monthly or so to ‘thank their sponsors’
I doubt this placement is a part of the advertising contract, its a ‘thank you’ they do gratis.
So those links are not paid for.
Following your logic, these links are editorial (far more so than link #3, above!!). And yet, Techcrunch recently felt compelled to nofollow them.
Do you think they needed to?
Are you starting to understand just why what you are asking of webmasters is so hard, given that Google itself can’t even consistently nofollow ‘links that look dubious to everyone else’?
Its not that we don’t understand you have a problem with paid links, its that you’ve asked for changes in a way that is unclear and difficult to implement.
(I have no connection with Techcrunch - I rarely even read it)
January 8th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
@rae but in the bottom right of the CSS enabled box has nice clean link, editorially given of course
January 8th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
um, none of the sites I know of paid to put links places, they just wanted to be part of their site.
promise
:=)
January 9th, 2008 at 1:21 am
Fun, fun, fun till Daddy takes the T-Bird awaaaayyyy! Keep digging folks you will find more.
January 9th, 2008 at 3:08 am
A little off-topic, but while you’re working on that webmaster communication Matt, you seem to have forgotten about answering this thread here (which you started, and started saying how you agree that Google should increase webmaster communication). http://sphinn.com/story/19758 http://seoroi.com/search-engines/msn-search-share/
January 9th, 2008 at 7:30 am
This is very bad.Google is practicing double standards. I have always wondered if there is any form of Internet regulation to level the playing field.
January 9th, 2008 at 10:23 am
“Matt,
Techcrunch has a history of having posts monthly or so to ‘thank their sponsors’
I doubt this placement is a part of the advertising contract, its a ‘thank you’ they do gratis.
So those links are not paid for.
Following your logic, these links are editorial (far more so than link #3, above!!). And yet, Techcrunch recently felt compelled to nofollow them.
Do you think they needed to?”
I believe Read/Write Web got slapped for the exact same (or very similar) thing a few months ago. They called Google and got it sorted out, but the point is that they got slapped in the first place.
January 9th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Why don’t u people just leave google alone. What is there in creating so much buzz about such a small issue.
January 9th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
I wonder how much it helps to rank good having adsense on your site. Google earns money too with every click.
January 15th, 2008 at 8:42 am
it seems now that google do runs the business for money..that would be awful..
January 16th, 2008 at 5:26 am
Google is being hypocritical… again. Nothing new under the sun.
January 16th, 2008 at 5:38 am
As always, Google is Google… We can’t point directions for them… That’s just sad that money makes these things possible with Google.