Google has decided to take strong actions against the link selling websites. The guru of the Web Spam Activity Group, Matt Cutts, went on a crusade against the offending sites, kicking and screaming about how bad the link selling is and how negatively it can influence the results returned by a search engine. There is a great number of people who support Google’s stand on the issue. Why? The answer is rather simple - they don’t know better.

What’s the problem with Matt Cutts’ logic?

He believes that webspam is created by webmasters who invest their hard-made money into a link buying business, which will result in a higher position of their spammy sites in the search engines. Matt Cutts gives an example of a Google result page that displays some paid articles about some brain tumor treatments. He does not believe that what was returned by Google was accurate, classifying the articles as Web spam. Interesting is the choice of the topic. It couldn’t be more dramatic unless the POOR CHAP decided to go for the dying children in Ethiopia or the Romanian orphans perhaps. The only problem that Matt could find with the articles was some inaccurate information concerning, for instance, the length of the period in which a given treatment has been in use. But, is that what makes the site a Webspam? After all, we have various contradictory studies coming out every year, which support different viewpoints, depending on who is paying for the research. Does Google want to become a censor of the news that appear on the World Wide Web? What is the measure of accuracy? Whose view is Google going to support?

This is leading nowhere or perhaps is obfuscating the real issue at hand.

What is Web spam? The way I understand it, Web spam is the sites created not for the regular Internet user but for a search engine. A spam site has a specific purpose. It can be built to promote other sites, which are the real sites that the owner of the spam site wants to promote or it can be an easy money earner for the owner living off Google’s Adsense (the so-called Made For Adsense sites). A real business selling its Gamma Knife treatment online and willing to pay for advertising on other Internet sites will never fit that description. Matt Cutts knows all too well that there are links exchange systems that can influence the SERP in a much more effective way than link buying. The latter is heavily limited by the resources of the website owner. Link building systems can guarantee your sites to perform well on the search engines and are much cheaper than anything else on the net.

Example:

• http://www.link-vault.com/

• http://www.linkvault.com/

• http://www.linkme.pl/

• http://www.linkdiary.com/

• http://www.linkmarket.net/

• http://www.jsilinkexchange.com/

and the list may continue forever…

Put yourself in the position of a web spammer. What do you do when you want to promote your spammy site quickly and start earning money? Here is the solution. Everyone knows that the age of a site is very important, especially for SE such as Google. Buy yourself a website that is a few years old! It’s highly unlikely that when you start promoting the site on some highly competitive keywords, the site will ever get into some kind of a filter. Google knows the site and has sufficient trust in it to believe that it wasn’t created for a quick buck. After all, it has been around for a number of years. Get a good link exchange system and start building a link network! If you happen to have a number of such sites, it shouldn’t take you too long before you start seeing the results in SERPs. The site can be completely useless to the end user, but that’s normal. It wasn’t suppose to be interesting! It was supposed to make you money.

Matt Cutts is not willing to deal with this issue and find the real spammer. It’s not that he doesn’t know about these techniques, because he does.

It is because Google is doing something much nastier than what any Web spammer can ever do.

Using its status of the Internet monopolist, the SE tries to intercept the flow of money, which otherwise would have landed in the pocket of an honest webmaster trying to monetize on his/her website. Billions of dollars that people are willing to spend to promote their websites will not go to other site owners but to the poor guys at the Googleplex, all in the name of the fight against the spam.

Why doesn’t Yahoo or MSN have this problem? The answer is also very simple. They disregard links that are irrelevant to the theme of the site. Simple solution to a simple problem. Killing the ability of a site to make money on selling links is tantamount to killing the spirit of free enterprise and economic freedom. Google has a problem with the spam, Google should fix it algorithmically without threatening webmasters with all sorts of penalties.

A lot of defenders of Google’s policy would say that the corporation has the right to set their own rules. You don’t like the rules, you don’t have to use Google! Nonsense! Google is a monopoly the same way as your local phone company is. What if the phone company decided to stop you from calling a particular number? After all, they can set their own rules..

Meantime, I can sit and watch the spam flooding the Google’s SERPs and thank Matt Cutts for his great efforts…

Living in a dream land or what..?

I can’t understand people who claim that link selling is unethical and that you shouldn’t buy your way into the top of the search engine results. They’re talking about leveling the playfield. Suddenly, everybody has the same chance to make it to No1.

You may find statements like

“Buying the search engine rankings is not fair to small businesses and those guys trying to make a buck or two by selling ads on an original blog or forum. It is the same as a huge department store moving into the neighborhood and putting all of the mom and pop businesses out of business.”

“voluntary backlinks would rise to the top without a penny being paid for links. It would be a giant step towards the SE rankings reflecting the users’ assessment of the quality of websites out there.”

People who say things like that are out of touch with reality at best. What’s gonna happen if everyone follows Google advice and stop buying or selling links? What if despite all your efforts your website still ranks poorly in Google? What can you do?

The Internet is not just a wonderful medium for conversing with other people worldwide, but also a great business opportunity, of which Google is the best example. There are only 10 spots on page 1 of the results. Only ten lucky sites will find their way there. If you happen to be the owner of the most comprehensive site about making money on the Net, giving all sorts of information, do you truly believe that you will rank in the top10?
Let me bring you down to Mother Earth for a minute
Here is an example:

How do you know Google won’t install more sponsored links at the top of the results in the future?

After all, it’s close to impossible to get a link from your competitors.

Everyone is going to use the “nofollow” attribute just in case; sort of a statement to Google that the link that you placed to another website, which is irrelevant to the topic of you site, is not a paid one - you don’t want to get banned, do ya?

Google is slowly trying the patience of webmasters by introducing a modest number of sponsored links displayed at the top, but we are talking big bucks here.

Money talks and it wouldn’t be long before Google opts for three, four, and five of these links.
It will justify it by saying that they are properly marked, but let’s not kid ourselves. Regular users don’t know the difference and they don’t care. They get what they want and don’t have to search any further.

Here is your level playing field!

Money will always be involved and without paying for your position, you’ll end up on page 5, which is a dead end for the most persistent Internet users.