evilgreenmonkey

When Matt Cutts writes a blog post about Google rather than his evil cats, it can often be a warning shot before a glitch in the Google matrix occurs. The latest of such posts has informed people how to report paid links and stating that his team were testing new filters to detect them - something which caused a bit of a stir in the SEO community. No need to panic though unless you’ve been a plonker with your SEO; you haven’t been a plonker now have you?

Matt advises publishers to add spider readable disclaimers such as “This is a paid review” to advertiser content, which also tells SEOs which publishers NOT to deal with. Stay away from “Sponsor Links” boxes and “Advertisement” headings when buying links, like a vampire to garlic. Dave Naylor has noted ranking movements for Honda suggesting Google is already implementing filters and the UK comparison site Money Supermarket valued at around $2 billion is also thought to have been hit. When approaching link development, follow Jim Boykin’s lead and try to get links within content pages or blog posts.

Speaking of blog posts - how about paid blog review services such as ReviewMe and PayPerPost? I think they’re SEO safe for now, as long as bloggers don’t add comments such as “This was a paid review” in the posts and there’s no detectable footprint. Matt himself suggests that if a web directory only uses payment to independently review a site and rejects some URLs, it should be okay. So what’s the difference between this and a paid blog review? Bloggers at most of these brokers have the oppurtunity to reject a review request, even offer criticism about the site and add a nofollow attribute to links if they wish. Surely this is even less spammy than a link in the Yahoo Directory?

Some of you may still be unsure about my reference to a “detectable footprint”. What I mean by this is a pattern in the HTML of a site, pointing it out as a paid link broker, link exchange service or advertisement of some kind. Terms such as “Sponsored By” and “Partner Sites” will probably raise red flags with the filters being introduced, and so may patterns amongst the major link brokers. You may think that a paid text link is undetectable, although most are quite the opposite.

Text-Link-Ads is one of the largest brokers of paid text links, offering a mouth-watering array of potential publishers - from small blogs to major newspapers. I liked the simplicity of the service although have never used it, thinking that the simplicity which made it attractive may also make it dangerously formulaic. TLA is not alone in this dilemma, I’ve simply chosen the market leader for this example. By logging into the advertiser control panel, I’ve randomly selected 3 paid link publishers and visited their websites. Below is a snippet showing the TLA links on each of the publisher pages (with the advertiser edited out):

As you can see, although some variations in the CSS attribute ordering and values occur, it is still possible to manually and algorithmically pattern match these paid links. This is actually quite a transparent implementation compared to many others out there. One link network (which I’ve yet to identify) publishes paid links in <ul id="linksXXXXX"></ul> tags, where XXXXX is the publisher’s five digit membership number starting with the number 5.

Other types of link networks are also at risk, such as the DigitalPoint Ad Network. Although not a paid link service (more of a link exchange) it still fits Google’s target of a disclaimer-free text link service. Even though the text links displayed by DigitalPoint are clean, the service uses an image pixel tracker to monitor impressions - leaving an easy footprint across its network of publishers. The network accounts for over 80% of inbound links to 2 major UK loan providers, something which may completely change the search result set in the loan market soon and any other market where sites are using similar networks for that matter.

These are just a couple of the ways in which a paid link can be detected, although any link with a pattern or advertising disclaimer is at risk. If you don’t want to be part of the fallout, go back over your inbound links using Yahoo Site Explorer and either clean out obvious paid links or start building more links to counter-act any discounting or penalties. Approach each potential link publisher personally, and spend time finding quality sites and communicating with the owners. Don’t automate or cheaply outsource link development, and don’t accept a link in the “Sponsors” box of a website.