slimster.net

There has been a lot of attention paid to the effectiveness of “paid” links to a website’s SEO success. In a recent post by Matt Cutts, he makes a point about how companies tout their paid links as “undetectable” when, indeed, the Google crew is able to filter them. Matt has mentioned in the past about detecting “networks” and devaluing those networks and the links they produce. So what links actually count?

The answer, as usual, is ‘it depends’. But I think the key to detectability is the “network”. Who knows how long it will be before Google recognizes Text-Link-Ads and devalues those listed in that network? It just depends on whether Google sees that company as a threat to it’s relevancy algorithm. Think of it this way - a brothel is much easier to discover than a lone prostitute simply because of the traffic. The question is, how far will Google go to “clean up the streets”? To take the analogy further, how will Google determine the difference between a ‘paid’ relationship or just a really expensive date - or will they bother with this determination? Google treats the Yahoo directory as a high class date. Given their earlier attempts to make all of their search listings paid, I tend to think of Yahoo as a whore…ok, maybe just a mistress.

As long as there is a relationship between linking and SEO success, there will be those that buy and sell links for cash. Linking is a commodity. What will be interesting to see is how Google polices this commodity.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 2nd, 2007 at 4:16 pm and is filed under Linking, SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.