Who’s afraid of the Big, Bad Google?
By now everyone in the SEO and internet marketing/paid blogging world would know of Matt Cutts’ post regarding how to report paid links to Google. To be honest I think is a really dumb idea anyway. I wonder how are you going to tell which links are paid and which are not?
Every day thousands of webmasters and web directory owners deal with link buying and selling via Digital Point, V7N and various other webmaster forums for SEO and backlinks purposes. I should know, because I am among those who sell links…usually for $10 – $20 per link per year.
Of course everyone on DP is debating the merits of Google’s latest announcement but really, I don’t think anyone should be worried. As Simplified SEC pointed out in a blog post:
…there is no way the big G is going to be able to filter these purchased links from the serps without causing a lot of collateral damage to perfectly honest sites. I think they realize this and have decided to spread some misinformation in hopes of scaring webmasters away from those link sales.
Think about it from Google’s standpoint. Matt Cutts blog is read by tens of thousands of webmasters. His word is absorbed by people as if it has been handed down by god himself. What better way to start wide spread panic than to use him as the point of origin? Everywhere you look on Digitalpoint and other reputable webmaster forums you see countless posts with webmasters in a panic like the sky is falling. All of this and Google hasn’t even done anything yet.
Penalising paid links? Yeah, right. Scare tactic? You bet. So who is afraid of the big, bad Google?
ashotiwoth says:
April 19th, 2007 at 11:55 pm
i don’t know – should i be?
the only real danger i see in me if google starts penalising paid links is that i will have less people paying me to review them…that means, lost of side income, and that’s just plain crap……