Is Google Right By Banning Sponsored Reviews and Links Selling?
I have been reading a lot about the new buzz of the big G since some time and I now want to express my opinion about this topic. To start let me explain the meaning of this topic for those who are not so familiar with what I am talking.
What is actually a sponsored Review?
Assume you own a website or any services and you want to promote it. The latest most performing way to do this is to get your services or website (well whatever you want) to be discussed on a blog which has some decent traffics and hence people will know about it. So as a result the ‘advertiser’ which is the one who have requested the review, will get more traffics on his website from your blog. Another reason some advertiser would want to get a review done is for pagerank. When you will do a review for an advertiser you will be asked to set atleast about 2 ‘do-follow’ links to his website and hence increase his number of links toward his website… finally resulting in increasing his pagerank!
There are some companies like sponsoredreview.com who act like an intermediary between an advertiser and a publisher(the blogger) and normally with sponsored review you can earn upto $25 per review of about 400 words. Now some ‘creatures’ like John Chow can even earn $500 per review! But don’t dream as you are not a CHOW!
Now we come to the second term which is Links Selling.
What is Link Selling?
There are many companies which act as the middleman to sell links. For example assume you have a post about Kamasutra! So a condom company want to buy some links. He can pay you a monthly fee (most about $10 per month) so that you get one or two of the words to become a link to his website. So in other word you are giving him a backlink in exchange of payment. Why he buy the links? Simply as I said above to increase his pagerank and to get traffic from your blog.
Oki! Enough of the tutorial now lol. Now the topic of the day is that is Google right by banning sponsored reviews and links selling? You must know that Google has become very damn severe recently by punishing many blogs and website which were doing sponsored reviews and link selling! Infact big G sees these transactions as a way to mess with their search engine results ranking. How?
Look assume guy X is the ugly son of Bill Gates and he got daddy’s money and NAME to buy anything. So he can make the most asshole website of the world concerning the topic of ASSES and pay all bloggers $500 to give him a link! So assume he pay about 1000 bloggers to do that for him. So he is now having backlinks from 1000 top blogs! And search engine will think that his UGLY website which he copied from somewhere else is a mega star of the web! In another way he is messing with search engine results as he will be most probably be listed as the first star when someone search for ASS on google. This is just a foolish example. So to stop these practice, Google is now punishing bloggers who sell links! Do you think Google is being bad and evil by doing this?
Punishments? Well… for example you can get your beautiful PR from 7 to ZERO in no time. You can also disappear from google’s index and stop getting traffics from search engines! And eventually the blog dies! Now the question.
IS GOOGLE RIGHT TO DO THIS? AND WHY?
One question that strike my mind is how can their algorithm determine which link in a blog post is a paid link and which are genuine links? One problem is that I know of some blogs who have suffered these bans or temporary bans even though they were not selling links!
Google will never tell us how they determine these as people will definitely find ways to bypass these methods. Some possible ways google can determine if a post is sponsored? I am not sure of these but here are my views which can be right or wrong.
To start the websites are not scanned by human manually. There are bots who crawl all these trillions of blogs and website and these little piece of algorithm who decide your site’s fate! So can a piece of code really know which link is a paid link? In my opinion I think that they cannot! But instead these bots mostly look for possible evidence of link selling and then blacklist the site which is then banned either manually by a big G personnel or by other algorithm!
These are the possible ways I could think of that gives google the evidence that you are selling links:
- A large amount of outgoing links in one single post! This might be an indication that you are selling links but well I would find it weird that I read a blog post of 500 words with 10 links! It can be taken as a sponsored review if the links are do-follow!
- Some bloggers tend to write in big H1 that they are doing sponsored review. Maybe those google bots scan for such words and try to guess it you are doing sponsored reviews. Try avoiding linking back to these sponsored review site simply.
- Keep a short blogroll only for the blogs you really read! Remove old blogs that are no more updating.
- Linking to a lot of unrelated websites! – Yea assume your site is about Casino in Mauritius and most of your links are toward Condoms company, there is no such relations and it can or cannot be taken a paid links. (Well even if we know that they use lots of ‘it’ in the casinos lol)!!
- By the way I also heard that a site can get banned for using Pay Per Play advertising!!
- And the most dangerous of all is using plugins provided by link selling companies! I am not sure whether google bots can locate these, mostly if the companies keep giving new versions of the plugin! I am refering for Inlinks here. Do you think google can know if someone if using inlinks?
So what are the other ways you think google can determine if someone is selling links or doing sponsored reviews?
To end this little discussion, I’ll advise you people to STAY AWAY from sponsored reviews and link selling EXCEPT IF you place the links as NO-FOLLOW!
Edited by Kurt Avish on Jan 13, 2009 | 240 views
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why r u after chow .. si pas crow
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I am (i mean my blog) is living proof of this… PR3 to PR0 in 2 months.
One of the easiest ways Google identifies paid links is by looking at the code… even if it’s shortened, the spider knows… he always knows…
Frak Google! :S
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interesting. I think IC itself is selling links.. (..oops, did google hear me?..)
Well, as a matter of fact if they actually have a way to detect that, it might be a good thing. if a blogger is selling 1-10 words on his blog. Let him be.. poor child.. now if he’s selling 200-300 words.. then.. i happily agree with google. ban the dude.
and for sponsored reviews.. uh.. its kind of an income source all by itself. And i dont think its illegal, but still if a site becomes overcrowded with such things, generally there is nothing neccessary to view there. so get ban dude.
I think the “ban” thing is right, but there has to be a certain “Tolerance”. and i think there is that.
Rock ON!!
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I did not understand anything.I need to stop listening to Shah and I need to get off my hands from the “drugs”.
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Quoting the internet guru Timothy Sykes (timothysykes.com):
“Trolls never win, the idiots help me get more traffic/make me more controversial…otherwise i’m just a simple trader who knows how to make a few grand/month…lol”
I hope you learn something Avish. That’s exactly what you’ve been doing to Defi’s webmaster. It totally applies to him. You’ve almost made him the most popular guy in Mauritius.
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Ya Google is absolutely right about this, as you mentioned above, that’s really cheating
Google is the master of the web, they own almost everything on the web and those using adsense might soon have to remove sponsor links or other backlinks else you might get banned
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Also Google is very very powerful, u cannot know the extend of their technologies, the algorithm they use are so hard to break down or imitate
Better not use anything against their TOS else u might be kicked from the web
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Kurt Avish Reply:
January 14th, 2009 at 8:12 AM
@Sailesh: As at now I dont think a publisher will get adsense penalise due to selling links. The site can lose its value but concerning adsense it a separate channel. Well… thats up to what i know of latest. if someone got a recent entry about adsense ban due to link selling please share with us.
@Ajith: yea i agree with you. Banning him completely was not really justified. If we search for John Chow now on google no results appear. Also i think and as someone said above, google should see the amount of paid links to the amount of genuine links..like a ratio. They should be allowing atleast some paid links. Its a way for bloggers and webmasters to earn some side income. For example they can allow a ratio of 1:500…just an example.
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In fact, I am with Google on this though I have done three or four paid reviews (out of ~130 posts or so). See, at the end Google is providing you credit for the backlinks that you have and the popularity of the content. If you forcibly try to make something popular they have to curb that trend right?
Punishment, however, should not result in total ban. Because they are search engines and hence they should index everything possible. Although, I hate John Chow, it was bad from Google to de-index him totally… A total ban should happen only if there are way too many link sales or illegal content.
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Kurt Avish Reply:
January 14th, 2009 at 7:43 AM
@Yusha: I dont hate John Chow. I just dont like his ways
in a similar way to our super star “specific” newspaper ridiculous webmaster here in mauritius
@Carrot: Their spiders are evil lol. I wonder how can they really determine if its a link bought without using any middleman. Unless they check people paypal transactions lol
For your blog, I still find this weird as you have not done any sponsored review or sell links. You think its due to the PPP? Try also preventing people to leech your full content.
@Sandeep: It was better i removed them. So already corrected the mistakes
@Tushal: Use female drugs
They are much better than chemical drugs hahaha
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Kurt Avish Reply:
January 14th, 2009 at 8:05 AM
@Raj: Thank you for the quote. By the way did you just said “Timothy Sykes”? HYPERLOL! Well if you are his follower then i understand why such a stupid response as your comment
Concerning your friend the mauritian defi webmaster i’ll answer you, there are two types of ways to be popular.
1. You are a hero by doing something people will praise you for
2. or you are an amateur worthless who shout aloud when he discovered a pea under his bed and alert the newspaper.
You friend is the 2nd. Well if you assume it to be a sign of popularity…and short term popularity is what matter most for you, then sure… he is popular
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I stopped doing ads on site. They don’t make you as much money as advertising products and services in WOW (and other games but I’m mostly in WOW.)
Chow, Mchow, whatever, you just love the status quo. I do not. Enjoy your ads issues unless you want to innovate.
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Kurt Avish Reply:
January 14th, 2009 at 8:22 AM
@Shah: Its Macoooow wlol
Infact john chow has already made a name and he got over 40000 rss subscribers. So he dnt really care abt google banning him…well even if he cared..he already got some 40000 people to read his crap about his toilet lol.
“”advertising products and services in WOW”" – Please explain
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Exactly my point – why the love for the status quo set by a dude?
It can get you banned if some n00b reports you. Assume person X has a URL to spread to his peers and underlings in the game. Got that? Note: This is just an assumption and I’m NOT a WOW player even if I am which would make me a paradox which in turn would mean that I am Ethan Hunt and you are Max who loves Paradoxes. So, if you do know my character, make as if you never saw it ever! I’ll PWN you though.
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I’ve already removed all sponsored posts. I’m now waiting to see what Google will do with the PR next month.
Or the companies may contact me to refund them since I deleted their posts!
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OFF-TOPIC: You have been tagged – read: http://shah.developer4ever.com/2009/01/14/back-in-time-with-friends/
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@Shah: My nomad connection does not permit me to play online lol
@Carrot: You didnt had to delete the sponsored posts. Would have been simpler to just make the links in the posts nofollow by adding rel=’nofollow’
It would have work… and also remove the word sponsored around the post.
@Shah: Already check the tag post. Will post one here …got to look for the photos wlol.
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I don’t know about Google’s reasons for the ban but remember that Google offers Adsense which, in some way, costs money but paid back by the customers whose links are clicked. Thus, if you are selling links or making reviews on the same site using Adsense, there are other routes of leaving the site than using the Adsense links = less money for Google itself.
Speaking of this, I’ve just published an SEO oriented topic on my blog. Google indexed my last post and it went up to 1st results page in less than 30 minutes.
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Hi, came from socialspark! Glad to be here. Nice input. I see how many feedbacks you’ve got here…heehhe! Just wondering why you joined socialspark (sponsored review website) when you advise people to keep away from taking it. hehhe…:)
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Kurt Avish Reply:
January 15th, 2009 at 7:25 AM
@Dhemz: Hi. Thank you for reading. Well if ever i do a review for social sparks it will be with no-follow links and the article will be disclosed as a review
And I wanted to also have a look wht is social spark… kept hearing abt it from everyone. So I went to check.
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Google bots are automated engines, they cannot justify whether those links are real or fake
they just do what they have been programmed to do
BAN IC FROM GOOGLE SEARCH!!!!
haha, hope the bot see this piece of word and BAN u
Kidding
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Yeh, I got to learn some new stuffs here, keep tutorial-ing Avish, hahaha
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@ I don’t know who—> Go to sleep, will ya? He is not a popular guy in Mauritius.
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[...] In fact, I had written about the monetizing potential of the blogroll a few posts ago. Of course, Google can ban blogs that contains sponsored reviews and paid links but that does not prevent most bloggers and webmasters from monetizing the page [...]
Whether Google is right or wrong is irrelevant to the small business person trying to make a buck off of Adsense and\or Adwords! What is relevant is getting their sites back up and cranking out cash.This company helped me when Google banned me and I will be forever grateful to them edinc.us
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