Today’s topic is paid links, search rankings, and sitelinks.

I’ve known about these paid links for a long time and so has Google I’m sure. In this particular example, we will be using phpBB.com as the site in question.

I do have to give credit to the phpBB.com webmasters for actually putting “sponsors” and making it very clear that that they are sponsored links. Even in the html, they use rel=”external sponsor” as part of the href link.

The problem I see here though, is that they are still selling links. Whether someone gave them a really big cup of coffee as a thank you or the companies sponsored a phpBB event, they are still sponsored links. phpBB.com still has a PageRank of 5, when it used to have a PageRank of 9.

I find it slightly ironic that Google will drop some sites completely out of the rankings if they have erroneously hacked links or absolutely nothing wrong with their site, but for a site that is clearly stating that they are selling links, stays at the top of the index for their keywords. Let’s take a look at what the rankings look like for phpBB.com still.

Next, let’s take a look at the search rankings and how Google is treating phpBB.com.

Sure, the search is for phpbb, the domain name, but let’s inspect it a little deeper than just that.

Running the query, we can see that phpbb.com is still the first hit. In fact, aside from clearly having paid links and clearly having their PageRank penalized for having paid links, they remain the first hit with sitelinks. Slightly ironic, again, that Google will still give this domain so authority and respect, despite violating its Webmaster Quality Guidelines. Matt Cutts has come out several times stating that this is a pretty bad thing to do and you’re likely to get kicked out of Google’s index for it.

But thing Matt forgot to mention is that it only depends on how big of site you have. If you have enough backlinks pointing to your site, Google will still rank you and still happily send you traffic.

So what’s the lesson we should learn from this example? Buy as many links as possible and spend as much money as possible to get as many backlinks as possible. Buy enough links and Google will still rank you just like do for phpBB.com.

Thanks for not being a hypocrite Google, we love you!

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Blogged on Google News by Jonathan Dingman © Fireside Media

Google Doesn’t Hate ALL Paid Links, Just Yours

© jonathandingman for Google News, Inside., 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Google Mac, Google SEO, Matt Cutts, Paid Links

This time around, “two real estate agents in Victoria, Australia have filed suit against Google. Mark Forytarz & Paul Castran claim defamation due to articles painting them in a negative light that can be found on the search engine.”

This story sounds awefully familiar. Oh yeah, we last heard this from Kinderstart. Kinderstart.com had their PageRank set to zero, so the logical thing to do was to sue Google. Not too long after Kinderstart.com brought the lawsuit on Google, they lost — Google: 1, Kinderstart.com: 0.

Similarly, these two Australian real estate agents think they can beat Google because it’s giving them a bad name.

People really ought to find something better to do with their time. If these two real estate agents had any idea about how Google works, they would know they could simply build a website that ranks higher for their keyword and then the listing will eventually just fade away. Well, if that doesn’t work, try suing the publishing company instead. And as a last resort, even try sending a DMCA.

Anything would be a better resolution than trying to sue Google [with the deep-pockets].

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Tags: lawsuit, google+legal, google+lawsuit

Blogged on Google News by Jonathan Dingman © Fireside Media

Google Lawsuit Over Search Rankings

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Post tags: Google Legal

There has been a lot of chatter among the SEOs and the search industry about whether or not PageRank is here to stay or not. The idea behind PageRank has created a huge market for the search industry. Buying, selling, and marketing text links to manipulate the search results, which is based on PageRank.

There hasn’t been any actual news update on whether or not Google is even seriously considering that they might drop PageRank, but it has been the clamor among everyone lately.

I took a moment and caught up with Adam Lasnik about the issue. He didn’t have a whole lot to say, as I expected, but he did have this to say.

PageRank continues to be one of many important signals for us (and one of over 200 signals, actually!). We’re always refining how we crawl, index, and rank webpages… but I expect PageRank to be around in one form or another for the forseeable future :).

It’s nice to know that Google isn’t wholly dependent on PageRank, but it’s simply one of the many factors of Google search. I do find it slightly ironic how freaked out people can get about PageRank sometimes though. But at the end of the day, I personally do not care all that much about PageRank. I care about search results. PageRank is indeed part of the search results, but it’s the public value of PageRank that people are so worried about.

People need to calm down, focus on content, and the Google search algorithm will do its job just as it has been for the past 10 9 years.

Blogged on Google News by Jonathan Dingman © Fireside Media

What Will Happen to PageRank

© jonathandingman for Google News, Inside., 2007. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Google PageRank

The judges ruled. Google’s algorithm ranking with PageRank has no legal binding of public service that Google has to support. Google has the right to delist and de-PageRank any site they want to for any reason they want.

What it all comes down to is that what Google provides to the public, Google Search and the other bajillion services and products, is free of charge. There is no warranty, there is no guarantee, there is no policy saying it will last forever. What Google offers to everyone is for free use and a … well, a nice gift. Google sends thousands upon thousands of hits per day to my sites … FOR FREE!
(...)
Read the rest of Google: 1 Kinderstart: 0 (83 words)

© jonathandingman for Google News, Inside., 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Google Legal, Google PageRank

Search engine decisions to reject ads is protected by 47 USC 230(c)(2) as a legitimate decision to filter “otherwise objectionable” content. The court concludes that “Section 230 provides Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft immunity for their editorial decisions regarding screening and deletion from their network.” I’m expecting the KinderStart judge to protect Google’s ranking choices under 230(c)(2) as well. (In case you’re wondering, we’re still waiting for the KinderStart ruling that was promised by the end of 2006.)

In the case of Langdon vs. Google Inc., Langdon tried suing the three major players in the Internet advertising industry: Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Google. What was he fighting for? He was suing these major players because they would not place his “gripes” and “attacking” ads in their networks.

From an outsider perspective, search engines and any company has every right to what they accept and reject. If let’s say, Google, chose to decline his ad proposal (which they did), everything would continue just as it was.

But what if they had lost the case and were forced to display his ad on the AdWords/AdSense network? That would open up a whole can of worms because then Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft would be forced to accept mature ads (pornographic), gambling ads, and anything that they had previously ruled out as acceptable ads in their network.

Search engines purposely have rules and regulations to what the ad quality is to be acceptable. If the courts had chosen to press Google and the other players on letting Langdon actually pursue his ad placement, the entire industry would have crumbled and fallen to the knees of the consumers.

The court decision is, I think, the reason that these major players are still in business today.

Not to say that this is the sole factor, but I think it’s an important one.

Tags: legal, court, google, advertising, first-ammendment

Blogged on Google News by Jonathan Dingman © Fireside Media

Search Engines Rights to the First Ammendment

© jonathandingman for Google News, Inside., 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Google Legal

We had a December review, but this is going to be the overall year review for 2006.

Disclaimer: this year in review is only going to be for June to December because that’s when I started this blog.

06/27/2006 - Google and Adobe become partners

07/03/2006 - The start of legal issues for Google
07/21/2006 - Gmail adds a virus scanner
07/27/2006 - Analytics upgrades the amount of profiles available

08/15/2006 - Google acquisition of Neven Vision
08/16/2006 - Analytics opened up to the public (non-invite)
08/16/2006 - Google opens free WiFi in Mountain View
08/22/2006 - Gmail adds Google Talk

09/02/2006 - Google Apps for your Domain is announced

10/09/2006 - The big news that Google acquires YouTube.com
10/12/2006 - Google Docs launches

11/20/2006 - Sitemaps become universal
11/29/2006 - Google to become the third largest tech company

12/04/2006 - Google Stock to reach $600?
12/06/2006 - Google partners with broadband BSkyB
12/14/2006 - Google announces their employee stock exchange program
12/21/2006 - Blogger comes out of beta

Here are some of the major happenings that occurred during 2006. It has been an awesome year and I expect for even greater things to come for Google in 2007. It’s going to be a very exciting year to come.

Blogged on Google News by Jonathan Dingman © Fireside Media

Google 2006

© jonathandingman for Google News, Inside., 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Google Highlights

Google, fresh from its $90 million settlement, is being sued for click fraud in another class action lawsuit, this one filed in Pennsylvania federal district court, Google Watch has learned.

The proposed class action — the third this year — was filed on behalf of several hundred Pennsylvania and New Jersey residents, and accuses Google of exposing publishers to click fraud following a breach of contract, negligence, unjust enrichment and unfair business practices. eWeek.com

Looks like Google isn’t having that good of a year with the lawsuits. Seems like everyone wants a piece of the action just because they “can.” Both publishers *and* advertisers are in this together against Google. While some publishers feel they are being mistreated and not getting the full profits of all their clicks, it’s happening in the same respect to the advertisers for fraudulent clicks. Pay-per-click is a tough industry to be successful in and make everyone happy. Apparently you can’t make everyone happy because everyone wants that “free lunch” that we all talk about.

Seems that Google has to be fighting off in almost every direction with their Kinderstart.com lawsuits over PageRank and now they’re having to fight off the PPC side of things with AdSense and AdWords.

Blogged on Google News by Jonathan Dingman © Fireside Media

Google Being Sued … Again

© jonathandingman for Google News, Inside., 2006. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Google PageRank

Often I will find a sale or purchase happening based on just a PageRank of a specific site, but when all is said and done, PageRank can go from 8 to 0 in the matter of a few months if it wants to. PageRank is something extra for the Search Engines and for sites. When Search Engine Optimization gets down to the bare bones, you just needs links, more links, and even more links, from quality sites that are trusted.

Blogged on Google News by Jonathan Dingman © Fireside Media

Struggling to Fight Off KinderStart.com

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Post tags: Google PageRank, Google SEO