Over the years, I’ve been a ‘fan’ of Google. I say that with hesitation - I’m not an unbridled fan that runs around saying how Google is the bestest ever. I simply try to take a step back, see what they are trying to do, and think it through. I’ve made many a snide comments on Webmaster World to people who do nothing but bash Google non-stop. But I can see reasoning. As someone who has lived in highly oppressive countries, I believe that education is the single best way to help people. So I sorta understood why Google wanted to operate in China (the altruistic companion to their desire to make more money).

I only mention the China incident to separate me from the usual Google-bashers. Sometimes second-best is better than nothing.

But the recent post by Matt Cutts (lead of their quality control team) on reporting paid links really ground my bones.

As in most things in life, there is black, there is white, and there is a ton of gray in between. Matt’s previous post on hidden links was quite slam-dunk - that was a concentrated effort to hide the link from the users. The trifecta of link posts came with Matt agreeing with Matt (Mullenweg, creator of WordPress) that sponsored WordPress themes are bad (something for another day).

Four separate issues to tackle.

1. First off, I agree with Michael Gray - Google is now trying to dictate what we can and cannot do. The common argument is that if an advertiser is buying adspace for traffic, why not just nofollow it? The problem with that is nofollow was never intended for such use. The intention behind nofollow was links you could not throw your merit behind. When someone posts a comment on my blog and throws in a link to his/her website, I have no clue if that website is spam or not. Nofollow was a way of covering my ass. But advertisers are different. I’ve vetted them. They make sense for my audience. I am only going to allow related ads on my site. Just like Google ensures ad-quality by having relevant ads, I do that myself. So I can vet for these links, and nofollow makes no sense. I have no problem with recognizing that these advertisers exist, and are useful.

2. The one place where Google’s hypocrisy shows - dealing with sites they ban. They’ve publicly caught, banned, and shamed large companies like BMW for using spam-techniques (keyword stuffing, black text on black background, etc). Matt hosted spam content on Wordpress. What did BMW and Matt get? A slap on the wrist - they were back in the index within a few days. If I did the same? Good luck to me. I’m still fighting to get domains unbanned that were banned a year ago (when I didn’t even own them). The double standard here is bullshit.

3. What exactly construes a paid link? This is a huge gray area. What about partnerships? What if I happen to like a site (most webmasters do not worry about SEO and PageRank - thats why Blogflux.com has 2.6 million backlinks, of which most are not even required). How is Google going to make the distinction that a link is paid or not? On my personal site, I could link to sites that I own. That is now suddenly a no-no? On Enthropia.com (PR7) we link to sites which we own and operate. How does Google know if those are paid links or not?

4. What about pre-filled links? The WordPress installation comes with a default blogroll, and links to quite a few sites. What do we do with those? Does Ryan deserve his PR8? Should I report it? Over on the Wordpress Trac, Matt Mullenweg completely dismissed the idea of removing any of those links. So those are suddenly fine now?

As a webmaster, we have a very tenous relationship with Google. This latest call by Google is so close to a witch-hunt that it makes me feel uncomfortable all over.

Related Posts

• Google Starts to Index Images Uploaded to Blogger
Source : googlesystem - Even if this sounds hard to believe, Google Image Search started to inde...
• Google Facts
.google.com .google.ae .google.com.af .google.com.ag .google.com.ai .google.am .google.com.ar .g...
• How important is content for SEO
When people create a website and start to optimize it for search engines like google (which may take...
• Google Browser Sync for Firefox
I use two computers for development - a portable (MacBook Pro) and a desktop (Mac Pro). It’s h...
• Federal agencies ban Windows Vista
As Microsoft is out touting the "wow" of Windows Vista, two federal agencies are among those sayin...
• Google Finance in Beta
Google finally release its Google Finance service.  Google Finance takes the advantages of Flas...
• Google gets personal with My Maps
Search engine giant Google is launching My Maps, a new feature of Google Maps that enables users to...
• Google China : shortest domain name ever g.cn
Google says the new domain name, which is one of the shortest in the world, is more friendly to Goog...
• WWDC Steve Jobs Safari on Linux
Monday at the WWDC Steve Jobs announced that Safari would be ported to Windows. Many people in the...
• Googe or Google and Google Holiday Logos
When you look at the logo, you may worry that we forgot our name overnight, skipped a letter, or...