The embattled and embittered Google, desperately fighting on all fronts, effectively admitted they are losing the war being waged on their fragile Maginot Line, often referred to as “The Algorithm“.
In a last-ditch attempt to stay in control of their vast empire, they’ve escalated their attacks on sites that compete with them for revenue by selling links.
On October 7th, Danny Sullivan, Prime Minister of Search Engine Land* had this to report,
“Official: Selling Paid Links Can Hurt Your PageRank Or Rankings On Google“
Google’s war on paid links has escalated, though it is still unclear how effective these latest actions will be. Several unofficial sources speculate that the collateral damage will be far more severe than intended and many innocent civilians will suffer.
Other insiders insist that after a few high profile targets have been eliminated that the war will once again settle into the static trench warfare that SEO soldiers have become accustomed to.
Perhaps most chilling is this quote from the Prime Minister of Search Engine Land,
“In contrast, if you’re a smaller site not deemed as important to relevancy, a harsher punishment of a ranking penalty may be dealt out…”
In effect, the easiest way to assure survival is to comply with Google’s demands or provide them with large sums of money in ad revenue.
In an amusing twist, Google will still provide ad services to their sworn enemies via AdSense and Adwords.
In closing, the Prime Minister had this to say,
“If Google traffic is important to you, don’t sell links”.
*There is no truth to the assertions that the Prime Minister is a propaganda agent in the employ of one or more search engines. Speculation as to why the official publication of the Prime Minister is named “Search Engine Land” and not SEO Land or SEM Land is simply that, speculation.
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Pingback on Oct 20th, 2007 at 11:04 pm
[...] Why would Google make an official webmaster announcement, but provide no quotes for the story and not publish it on any of their own websites? Probably because they know what they are doing is illegal, and want to be detached from the story to not look like overzealous dictators. [...]
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Pingback on Oct 22nd, 2007 at 4:32 pm
[...] Why would Google make an official webmaster announcement, but provide no quotes for the story and not publish it on any of their own websites? Probably because they know what they are doing is illegal, and want to be detached from the story to not look like overzealous dictators. [...]
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October 9, 2007 at 10:44 am
Just another superficial issue. ;-P
What inquiring minds really want to know is IF Google ever gets organic search and search personalization really right – say, so much so that the organic search results sate user drive / intent / impuse / whatever – would that be good or bad for Google?
I dunno. I’m a happy little clam. Got a thick layer of nutrient rich muck – 1,650,000,000 search results – to help me understand this text links issue better. ;-P
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=text+links
http://www.google.com/search?num=50&hl=en&newwindow=1&safe=off&q=are+paid+text+links+bad&btnG=Search
http://www.google.com/search?num=50&hl=en&newwindow=1&safe=off&q=%22Are+paid+text+links+bad%3F%22&btnG=Search
Too bad Google won’t tell me.
Your search – “Are paid text links bad?” – did not match any documents.
October 9, 2007 at 4:41 pm
Hi DG,
I won’t comment on the link wars. There is too much bad Karma around this.
But it’s damn good to have you back. Where have you disappeared to? Is there another blog I should be reading?
Yoav
October 10, 2007 at 8:39 am
Webwork, I don’t think we’ll ever have to worry about search being perfect. ; ) You did find a query you could own though, and one that will be getting some volume in the future. Nice to see you on the blog porch.
Hello Yoav, thanks. It feels good to be back. Had some pressing issues that left very little time for anything else. I have other blogs, but I don’t think they’re worth reading. ; )
November 2, 2007 at 9:00 pm
PR of many blogs is falling down due to TLA .
have to remve them , waiting for next update