You own a website, I own a website. I pay you $100 to show your visitors a link to my website.<p>=BAD<p>You own a website, I own a website, I pay $100 to Google who decides when to show my ad on your website and keep $60 for itself.<p>=GOOD<p>How do you justify Google’s SEO policy of not allowing paid links.
You're absolutely allowed to pay for links, that's what pretty much all internet advertising is based on after all. Google just doesn't like when you pay for links that pass PageRank. So as long as you do a nofollow on the link, it's fine.
You have to distinguish between ads and links being part of the page content.<p>As long as you seperate ads clearly from the site content and maybe give them a rel="nofollow" attribute, there should never be negative consequences.<p>Paying someone for low quality content around links to increase search engine rankings lowers the quality of the overall web for everyone.<p>Google does a lot of questionable stuff and I personally don't like the power they weild over the web. However, in this particular instance, I can't see anything wrong with this policy.
The general point of Googles page rank algorithm is to find the best and most relevant content. It's premise is that people are more likely to want to link to good content than bad content. When people start using money rather than quality content to influence the algorithm, it destroys it's premise and thus undermines it's effectiveness.
Actually it goes like that:<p>You own a website, I own a website. I pay you $100 to show your visitors a link to my website. The link is presented as an organic, non paid link.
=BAD<p>You own a website, I own a website. I pay you $100 to show your visitors a link to my website. The link is presented as a paid link, with a no follow attribute.
=GOOD<p>On a side note, your breakdown of the Ad Revenue using Google as a middleman is wrong.
If you pay Google 100$ (via Adwords) to decide to show ad on my site, I will get 68% of that 100$ and Google will get 32%<p>Adense revenue share: <a href="https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/180195?hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/180195?hl=en</a>
It's not justifiable. It's just band-aid for widespread malpractice, but as it is now, this just favors paid links that are hidden better, e.g. inside articles, random texts etc.<p>The whole concept of "link juice" is no longer useful. Google should identify and count real humans visiting web pages via GA and Chrome and rank search results based on actual website usage, and not on how well they can cheat in SEO.
I don't think it is justifiable. Google's policies are a bandage for gaps in their algorithms, rather than fix their algorithms (admittedly, this is hard and it's not like they aren't trying) they have reached a point where they can use their monopoly power to dictate how websites act. They punish behaviour which hurts their main business - adwords.<p>I would expect an anti-trust case in the coming few years.
My 2 cents: if you pay for Adwords, you'll be on the top of the page, so you can buy from Google your way to the top of search results. Sure some people realize the first results are paid, but still, get a decent title on your campaign and you're on the top of the page.<p>We should also mention that Google tells people to "merge" adsense on the website, so it doesn't appear to be an ad, inducing people to think that it's part of the website. Have you ever been on a download website with ads with graphics saying "Download" right next to the button just to make confusion and make you click on them? Yeah, I see plenty of those using adsense.
If google allowed paid links that passed on page rank, SEO instantly becomes pay to play. Preventing a situation where it only takes money to rank is in Google's best interest because it promotes a healthy internet ecosystem.
Buying links is fine.<p>Buying links in order to 'cheat' your way to the top of Google's search page, thereby skewing the accuracy of their results, isn't fine.<p>I'd liken it to Ford paying 500,000 people to drive a Ford car and then claiming to be the #1 best selling car in the country. If they did that publicly it'd be ok (and compilers of car sales listings would ignore them). If they did it secretly then it really wouldn't. Tagging a link with 'nofollow' essentially makes it public that the link isn't trying to cheat the listings.
It's dishonest to your users to display a paid link and and not tell them. Google feels the same way about displaying paid links that they look at. What does that have to do with ads, which you can display from anyone on your site?<p>Also, Google only keeps 32% of the ad revenue not 60%:
<a href="https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/180195?hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/180195?hl=en</a>
You are completely free to pay for links.<p>Google is completely free to have their algorithm work however they want to provide the best possible results.<p>(Personally I think using paid links as a signal for good websites is unlikely to improve results. You may not agree with this, but that is separate to the issue as to if they should be free to implement their algorithm however they like)
Paid Ads = OK
Paid links that look organic = bad.<p>You are not allowed to pay to increase your ranking.
You can buy ads on Google or another site and that's ok as long as they are marked as ads.