More on the Google PageRank Brouhaha

The world of SEO is endlessly fascinating to me. I know the basics but enjoy watching those steeped in the mysteries discuss its ebbs and flows. This most recent controversy with Google manually punishing those it deems have crossed its invisible line seems to have gotten everyone uptight - some feel it just and righteous others find it wicked and unfair. Fortunately, there’s a matched pair of articles that encapsulate the view points.

The first is this TechCrunch piece that points out how editorially confusing PayPerPost (or pay per post like services) are. They differentiate what they do when they post their “thank our sponsors” posts with links to their various advertisers because there’s no editorial content, just links. Whereas in a pay per post there’s often no mandatory disclosure within the post itself saying that it was sponsored. That seems questionable, ethically.

Andy Beard seems to have taken exception to that post. His central idea is that Google doesn’t give a squat about confusing readers, Google’s only care is (and should be) about confusing spiders and it’s pagerank algorithm by passing link juice for money. That is, since so much web importance is given to the presence of links, paying for links distorts the accuracy of the algorithm - the links aren’t there because they are important, they’re there because of money. Spiders no likey.

Given that premise, thanking sponsors is in exactly the same boat as pay per post. And he feels that it is unfair that Google should punish the Pay Per Posters so thoroughly while giving the thankers a free ride - especially since pay per posters tend to be small to midsize blogs and the thankers the huge ones who’s link juice matters a heck of a lot more. If I get a dozen links from small bloggers (I wish!) the effect on my traffic would still be a fraction of what I’d get from a single link from one of the big boys.

Pay per post and it’s relatives should require full disclosure within each post. To be honest, I’m not sure why they don’t (they do make you disclose, but it could be in a sitewide footer - not very useful), the link juice they get is the key bit, I’d think. Other than that I have no real beef with the idea - somewhere to go to look for blogging ideas, make some money, whatever. In general, I think I am inclined to side with Andy’s group on this topic, especially given an ethics based argument from TechCrunch. They are the ones after all who supported that Federated Media fiasco a few months back where they were effectively endorsing various advertisers without disclosure.

Ultimately I think it is Google’s place to punish those tactics it finds questionable as they relate to Google’s ranking algorithms. But it needs to do it consistently and in this case I don’t think they are - they attacked the low hanging fruit of pay-per-post since

A) it’s easier since people will see that there are certain journalistic ethics involved

B) and more importantly its users tend to be the smaller less powerful voices. Going after the thankers would involve severely penalizing the big boys of the blog world who have a lot more say and influence around the nets.

Google has an opacity problem - they do things quietly and in their own way and time. They give cryptic hints here and there about what’s Google approved and what isn’t, but they never simply spell it out. For most of us, it isn’t a problem, but companies live and die by their Google ranking and for them they need to know. Google needs to be much more translucent about what it’s doing and what is acceptable and what isn’t - being secretive about everything only hurts the majority of folks while leaving those who wish to hack the system free to continue to exploit the system and find the loop holes.

I’m just kidding, I love you Google! Don’t punish me!

Nov 19th, 2007 · Comments RSS · · · · · Tags: google