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. Read more