Google, Prostitution and Paid Links
When is it against the rules to sell something that you can give away for free? When you’re dealing with sex or links.
This is the kind of hypocrisy that has always smacked me. If I can do something legally of my own free will, the reason that I choose to do it should be of no one’s interest. It doesn’t matter if the “police” are the actual vice squad or simply Google’s spider.
Yet, it does matter and very much. In the real world, at least in the U.S., being or seeing a prostitute can land you in jail and, likewise, selling your PageRank can result in a giant PageSpank.
Though I don’t think paid linking is “right”, there is a certain element here that has me worried as Google has created a whole economy around linking. Before Google, people just linked to help others find information. However, Google recognized that turned it into a search algorithm that remains the best available. Along the way though, linking took on a new significance, one that Google has done little to discourage.
But with that significance and Google’s rise to prominence commercial value became applicable to links. More links meant higher search engine rankings and those meant more customers. Google, understandably, thought this could hurt their search engine so they’ve been declaring an open war on paid linking, reducing or banning sites that participate in it and casting a dragnet that has caught many legitimate Webmasters.
The problem is that this is Google’s own monster, one created by their system. They hitched their wagon to a flawed factor of determining page value and, by becoming as popular as they did, ruined it.
Now, Google is trying to control it and doing it in a way that punishes people that try and profit from the system they created. Though Google is quick to say that they are not trying to tell people what to do with their site, they know full and well that, for a site to survive, they have to bow before the Google Gods. But they are an angry and vengeful God, even when they created the playing field.
Hybrid Economies and Linking
In Lawerence Lessig’s latest book, Remix, he put forth the idea of hybrid economies. The basic premise is that there are two kinds of economies, one that center around money (IE: Stores, businesses, etc.) and sharing (IE: Friends, family and neighbors). Both economies trade in goods and services, but the first uses money as the token of trade and the latter uses intangibles, such as goodwill, kindness or fun.
Prostitution is actually a good way to think of this. Prostitutes charge money for sex, meaning they are a purely commercial economy. However, prostitutes aren’t the only ones having sex, married couples, bar scenes and lover’s lanes are all places where a sharing economy in sex takes place.
Hybrid economies are environments where both sharing and commercial economies thrive. Open source is one (free contributions and large corporations give and take at will) and the Internet itself is one in many ways too, especially when it comes to linking.
Traditionally, linking was just a sharing economy until Google turned it into a way to hone its search results and promoted PageRank. Then links had value outside the sharing economy and became a commercial commodity as well. When the economy turned hybrid, which was almost inevitable, it was met with a backlash both from Google and the Web at large. Sites like Pay-Per-Post were roundly criticized and its member were hit with PageRank reductions.
But those reductions did not just affect those who sold links. It also hit people like me, who committed the crime of having a lengthy blogroll. Though blogrolls were, atone point, a very natural part of the sharing link economy, they were not tolerated under the new system as one could not barter at all for links, even with just other links.
This is part of the reason why finding a site with a robust blogroll is almost impossible.
Google, in its infinite wisdom, wants linking to be a hybrid economy but one where only they profit. It is perfectly acceptable for Google to take a look at the links around the Web, determine who is best for a keyword and make a fortune when people realize that they are better than Altavista, but the minute we Webmasters attempt to profit from this economy through anything Google calls “inorganic” we are cast into the pits of PageRank Hell.
The big problem is that, as the blogroll problem points out, they aren’t just stifling the commercial economy, but much of the sharing one as well. If I like a site and think that they are good and we decide to swap links, that is fine. It is only link farming when you don’t care who you link to. Google, however, can’t tell the difference so it puts the kibosh on all of it.
And that’s the problem with the situation. The term “paid link” is far too ambiguous. Much like with prostitution laws, paid link rules fail to get to the heart of the “problem”. If you don’t believe me, consider the following issues.
Define “Paid”
There are several situations that are clearly paid links. If you use something like Pay-Per-Post and someone pays you cash to write about a topic, that is definitely a paid link. Likewise, if you use Text Link Ads to insert Google-friendly links from advertisers in your site, that is also clearly a paid link.
But what happens if we take money out of the equation? Ponder the following:
- What are the rules if a husband links to his wife even though he thinks her site stinks. He does it either because he loves her or doesn’t want to sleep on the couch?
- What happens if I link to a neighbor because he helped fix my car or paint my house?
- What if, rather than getting money, a company sends me a free sample of their product so that I can write a review?
- How should Google handle blogs that link to other sites as part of a contest, even though most will never be paid and do it just for fun?
- What about corporate blogs that link to their own products and services, perhaps partly in a bid to gain search engine ranking?
None of the cases above are traditional “paid link” situations but they all have one thing in common, that they are links that don’t represent an actual “vote” for the receiving site. This means that these links are just as wasted to Google as any paid link.
Google wants us to only link to content that we like and find relevant, the problem is that finding relevant content is not supposed to be our job, it’s Google’s. If we do anything to hinder Google’s efforts, whether intentional or not, Google has and will smack us. Google wants the linking economy to exist by its own rules.
This is grossly unfair to Webmasters, especially given the position Google is in and the fact that it created the existing environment.
A Better Solution
The simplest solution is for Google to no longer use linking as the center of its relevance analysis. There are many reports that this is already the case but it is still fairly clear that linking does play a big role. As such, the market for paid links remains robust and new services are coming online in hopes of gaming google.
But since Google still feels the need to patrol the link economy, there may be a much better way for them to handle it. Rather than declaring war on those who decide to sell links, perhaps they should allow it.
The idea is simple, rather than publicly targeting sites that sell links, use the information that you have about sites sell links and trust those links less. It is that simple. No need to reduce PageRank or bump them from the index (that will happen naturally as fewer humans trust the site). Let advertisers spend millions of dollars buying up links that are worthless, let these Webmasters make a quick buck and watch the economy wither and die.
If you go to the Netherlands or Germany, places where prostitution is legal, you’ll find that there aren’t as many prostitutes as you’d think. Sure, there are red light districts, but they are smaller than you’d think. In fact, in many towns the last of the brothels are closing because of a lack of business.
Keeping paid linking illegal keeps prices high, motivates people to try and beat the system and creates a secondary black market of black hat SEO that does far more harm than paid linking alone. “Legalizing” and controlling paid linking will let you put the paid linkers out of business by reducing the value of the link to an amount not worth the reputation damage and then making those links worth as little as possible by giving them no weight.
The goal is to fight a war of attrition against the link commercial economy, not wage a direct war against alleged paid link sellers. Such a dragnet always catches innocent bystanders and only encourages the problem.
Google’s response, simply put, is about the worst response you can have to the situation. It has ensured that paid linking will be around for a long time and will continue to hurt innocent Webmasters that have done nothing wrong.
Conclusions
Where prostitutes are filling a need created by millions of years of evolution, paid linkers are filling a need created by Google itself. Obviously, Google isn’t happy about this problem (the latter one at least, no word on the first) but their solution has helped to created the black market and put them in a moral quandary that challenges the whole notion of “Don’t Be Evil”.
Google is in a bind and, while I don’t dispute their right to control their index as they see fit, their handling of this “crisis” leaves their ability in this area heavily in doubt. Paid linking is stronger than ever, the results pages are easier to game than ever and Google is punishing Webmasters with blogrolls.
Google lost its appearance of invincibility a long time ago, but this is a black eye that really hurts. The punch lands close to their core, their search feature. If their search starts to wane, so will Google itself.
Where the searchers go, so does Google. If they go away, the company will too…
