Really I wasn’t going to post this but since Matt Cutt’s asked people to snitch on paid links again I thought I’d bring up another case of Google’s double standard and two tiered justice.
CASE A
A public relations person starts working for a Bed & Breakfast in New England. The person comes up with the idea of inviting high profile A List bloggers up for an all expense paid weekend, flights, room & board, meals the whole shebang including activities are comp’d. In exchange they ask the bloggers if they had a good time please write about it on their blog and post some pictures to flickr. Total cost of the PR event $10K.
CASE B
An SEO starts working for a Bed & Breakfast in New England. The person comes up with the idea of buying some on topic text link advertising on travel related blogs. Total cost for 6 months of link advertising $10K
So I ask you dear readers and specifically you Matt Cutts what’s the difference? At the end of the day $10K was converted into links. Why does Case A get rewarded and lauded as a success? Why does everyone involved in Case B get called out for being the scourge of the internet? Why are all of the websites in Case B penalized, filtered, or in some cases completely annihilated from any and all internet visibility, while the sites in Case A bask in their ego stroking navel gazing glory?
Why does Google aggressively go after the SEO’s and ignore the PR people? Why do people continue to tolerate Google’s double standards and two tiered justice?
The example presented in Case A has been examplified here to protect “the innocent” but if you don’t think things like this are going on every day your kidding yourself. In fact Elisabeth Osmeloski wrote about this earlier this year (see Why All Links Are Paid Links in the Travel Trade). It’s not just the travel industry, how many gadgets, cell phones, digital cameras, and even computers are sent high profile bloggers in exchange for visibility and links?
Hey Google Want to prove that you are being fair and shut me up? Get your human editors to review the top A list bloggers in the technorati 100. Look for posts where “gifts” were exchanged for links. Put your money where your mouth is and start banning or dinging them for the exact same behavior you are attacking sites in the paid link advertising space for. Start banning and blocking the A List attention whore bloggers, cut off their payola and side income. Something tells me they’ll stop singing your praises and a few GB of free Gmail storage wont shut them up or solve the problem. How about it Google prove that you are fair and equal and that justice is blind, because from where I sit your rules are selectively enforced and you take an aggressive hard line stance against internet markters, while little Mary A List gets off scott free …
Related posts:
- Hey Google Going to Drop the Paid Links Hammer on Coke Hey Google
- Did Matt Cutts Expose a Hole in Digg Last week
- Dear Matt Cutts, What We Have is a Failure to Communicate Dear Matt
{ 1 trackback }
{ 58 comments }
← Previous Comments
Danny pointed out the very obvious, rather simple and clearly accurate explanation. The reality here is that people who don’t see the difference see much of what (if not everything) Google does is wrong and evil.
Lauren said “The idea of having a Google employee monitoring every post you make, looking for any indication that you might have gotten some financial benefit from a particular post… Well, it creeps me out anyway.”
so you object to the possibility that google finds a way to scale their human review techniques, but you are ok with what happens now.
it seems those who have no worries are comfortable now knowing they won’t be reported for paid links and suffer the hand review, but they object to the practice for being too creepy already.
is it just a matter of time before google creeps out a majority of people?
I believe links / articles from these high profile bloggers DO NOT result in better rankings. They may help drive the traffic for a while but NOT the rankings. Google has been doing a tremendous job of identifying these kind of paid links (direct or indirect). If you think in CASE A people are getting better placement in organic results – YOU ARE WRONG!!
People – links from blogs/reviews do not pass much value ANYMORE. So if you are paying for links or giving money to high profile bloggers to write an article about you on a page with high PR – IT IS NOT GOING TO HELP YOU MUCH AS FAR AS ORGANIC RESULTS ARE CONCERNED. Stop Whining and focus on adding quality content on your site to help your users.
Google has ways of identifying the links and has done a great job with it.
@Michael – I wonder why you removed my comments
@harry: first time commenters get moderated until I approve them. I’m ok with ppl disagreeing with me and never remove them.
The only ppl who get deleted are complete trolls who shoot off one liners or profanity.
Michael – I’m totally with you, and it is not only travel journalists who get freebies. Automotive reviewers get the use of a “nicely equipped” vehicle for some period of time, electronics folks get their cool toys (that’s how I got a 60 gig iPod the month after they came out and ranked on page 1 for 2 years — a toy and affiliate money — sweet). There are countless other examples, and most have to do with the notion of breaking a story or reviewing a new product or service.
Your argument that these public relations offers are effectively paid links is spot-on. Anyone accepting some good or service (even with a negative review) is likely to write or blog something. They simply won’t get prize #2 if they don’t.
So yes, Google continues to selectively enforce its own rules. That’s the beauty of being the top cat. You get to do stuff like like that.
As for the true paid links debate, I’ll maintain what I said directly in the last SES San Jose link panel everyone was at last summer. “How does a paid link differ from a paid post if the paid post also provides value, links to other sites as well and so on?” Every media outlet in North America practices that trick. Smaller circ papers or broadcast groups are more prone to do so, but don’t believe that it doesn’t happen at the NYT or Washington Post or that newspapery-thing out in SF.
I’m happy to debate the division between advertisers and traditional news outlets all day long. Why not, they have the same debate for the biggest dogs. Think advertisers don’t have sway? I was in a small town in the west several years ago, speaking at a luncheon for car dealers. The paper’s editor was there with about 10 dealer folks. I watched them back him into dropping a syndicated column that was prepaid or they would shift their spend to radio.
Advertisers traditionally have power over media outlets unless the media outlet grows bigger and upsets the balance between them. That Google now controls advertising, content, prominence and an unhealthy share of market is a function first of “doing it better” and then of branding. Someone else will eventually come along.
Meanwhile, if small business gets burned because companies buying and selling text links offer poor quality linking, that’s a horrible trade-off. Go after the quality, not the practice. The practice has been a fundamental staple of media for several hundred years.
The fact that this is Google rather than Gutenberg should make no difference.
Welcome to big business. As far as google is concerned, they pretty much have a monopoly on how visible any particular page on the internet is going to be. While I agree with your post 100%, they make the rules. When I sell text links on my own sites, the solution is rather simple actually. I make the ad sales text a graphic file. That way unless my sites are manually reviewed, google has no way of knowing I’m actually selling text links.
← Previous Comments
Comments on this entry are closed.