Sohaib Thiab – The Story of an Internet Entrepreneur

Some of you have probably heard or read about the huge storm Matt’s recent posts specifically this one regarding paid links and the spam form he asked people to report websites selling links on.

This post has generated a huge controversy about whether will Google start looking at paid links as “spam”, the fact that Google’s engineers are thinking of penalizing sites selling links and the fact of asking webmasters to report paid links is a whole different story, and in my opinion, is a very bad idea for a number of reasons:

1. How can you really know if that link was bought? or was it placed because the owner likes the site? or has he placed it as a favor for a friend? how can you really know?
2. What kind of guarantees does Google have tat people reporting paid links are doing it our of the kindness of their heart? Cant anyone buy some links for his competitor’s and then report them? are they going to email sites selling links and tell them stop that? can they really interfere with the way a website does business in?
3. The market of selling links grew so quick only because of that little green bar which is usually the biggest reason people pay for links. Isn’t that Google’s invention?
4. Will networks like text-link-ads, PayPerPost and every other text link broker shut down because of this?
5. Google has clearly asked webmasters to build websites for the users not for the search engines, however, with these new rules, we need to tell the search engines which links are paid (using nofollow or javascript) and which links it should follow, what next? should we read the content of the website to the spider? if the algorithm can distinguish between paid links and links out of love, why should we do it for you? were basically shooting our selves in the foot! Which brings us back to point two, most people will be submitting links to bring their competitor’s down.

Below I highlight some of the replies from very well known individuals in the online marketing and SEO industries.

- Andy Beal from Marketing pilgrim wonders “What business does Google have in dictating the disclosure of any business relationships on others?”

- Raj Dash from Search Engine Journal questions whether Google is aiming towards being a monopoly, he says “Google seems to be going after a monopoly on advertising, telling webmasters what they can or cannot have on their sites. Does anyone else now think it’s a conflict of interest that search engine as powerful as Google is monopolizing advertising?”

- Over at threadwatch “I can’t believe it is anything more than a publicity stunt and mind control exercise.”

- SEOClass has the following title for the post discussing this topic “Google Wants to Tell You How to Run Your Website”

Other posts to check out:

- Webpronews, 7 Reasons Google’s Paid Link Snitch Plan Sucks.

- Searchengineland, Paid Links Under Scrutiny By Google Again

- SEOblackhat, A Hearty Welcome to All the New Search Engine Spammers!