Google officially quashes [paid] PageRank passing

[KevinG]

Google has officially proclaimed that it doesn't like webmasters trying to hawk their lofty PageRank status to other sites.

In an update to its Webmaster Guidelines, the world's largest search engine says that any attempt to "pass PageRank" could result in a PageRank plummet.

"Some SEOs [search engine optimizers] and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites," the update reads. "Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results."

PageRank - essentially a measure of a site's importance to the web at large - is an integral part of the way Google orders search results. A site with a high PageRank can often boost the status of a less-popular site simply by linking to it. As a result, popular sites often provide such links in exchange for cash.

But in late October, Google appeared to lower the PageRank of many high-profile sites in an effort to crackdown on the sale of links. At the time, the company wouldn't acknowledge this was case, but Google search engine guru Matt Cutts said as much in a brief email conversation with Search Engine Journal.

Now, the company has made it official. But it points out that not all paid links violate its Webmaster Guidelines. "Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results," the company continues. "Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such." Webmaster are instructed to add a identifying tag to paid links or redirect them to a page that's blocked from search engines.

In a post to Google's Webmaster Central blog, Cutts explains that all this is an effort to make its search results more accurate.

"Our goal is to provide users the best search experience by presenting equitable and accurate results," he goes on to say. "We enjoy working with webmasters, and an added benefit of our working together is that when you make better and more accessible content, the internet, as well as our index, improves. This in turn allows us to deliver more relevant search results to users."

Paid links, he explains, can damage search results by creating:

- Inaccuracies: False popularity and links that are not fundamentally based on merit, relevance, or authority

- Inequities: Unfair advantage in our organic search results to websites with the biggest pocketbooks.

Cutts also says that if webmasters want to continue selling links, Google's not stopping them: "Webmasters are welcome to make their sites however they like, but Google in turn reserves the right to protect the quality and relevance of our index."

Source: http://www.channelregister.co.uk/200...ank_crackdown/

Google blog post with more info:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogsp...d-selling.html

If you are "legitimately" selling links as text ads and they do not run through an ad script or ad server, (which makes it obvious to G they are ads), then G says they want you to use the nofollow tag to tell them to NOT count that link towards rankings.

There was one important situation they did not address:

What about NATURAL 1-way text links. What about when one site links to another because they really think it is cooler than shit?

How do they KNOW for sure when a link is there for money or for love? Hmmm?

[Rcourt64]

Google is interested in so much more than that.
It has reportedly approached the Federal Communications Commission recently about obtaining wireless spectrum...



...For at least the past three years, the company "Google" has been buying up swaths of unused fibre-optic cable -- so-called "dark fibre" -- around the world.

[Hammer]

In an attempt to make their results more accurate they penalize anyone that trades links with other sites, even if they aren't doing it to manipulate their PR. Bullshit. They need to find ways to make their results better without expecting me to only link to sites that I know are blocked from the SEs or to add a fucking tag to any outbound link on my site.