First thing first, forget Paid Links, how about this viral video?

The intent of the "Are Paid Links Evil?" session, according to the session description was "Search engines, especially Google, say don't do 'em. But some search marketers say paid links work. Are paid links subverting search quality? Or are they simply a fact of life, here to stay? We explore the issues, in this session." That said, the session began with an entertaining viral video from a rental company called "rentVine" that mocked what was likely to be found at the session:

Google's Matt Cutts Says That All Paid Links Should Be Disclosed

After the video, Google's Matt Cutts was up and he said that all paid links should be disclosed to Google in some way. You could use a no-follow tag, a special re-direct, a robots or meta tag or some other machine readable way to tell Googlebot when it is seeing a paid link. Google in turn would then omit that link from being used to improve rankings for the page that the link resolved to.

Cutts also implied that Google was pretty good at finding paid links that did not use a "no-follow" method but had text similar to "sponsored ads" near paid links. Google uses this to keep sites/pages/links that do not use "no-follow" from passing link popularity on. He also pointed out that Google can't read images, so some web masters will use an image with wording similar to "sponsored ads". These web masters are probably to pass a paid link off as a normal link. This information comes after quite a lot of controversy earlier this year when Cutts announced that Google had a new link reporting tool where web masters could report a competitor's paid links. This tool is presumably meant to help Google engineers to build a better mechanism for spotting paid links by giving more examples, but some SEOs feel that it is simply a way to "snitch" on your competitors.

Disclose Paid Links? No, We're Link Libertarians!

Presenters like Michael Gray, Todd Malicoat, and Todd Friesen were mainly on the side of web masters in arguing (with a lot of passion) that Google shouldn't be the arbiter of what is and is not allowed on the web. Malicoat went as far as saying that his views made him a "link libertarian" in comparison to Google's policy. While their presentations were some times funny or entertaining to search marketers (check out Gray or Malicoat's presentations), it was hard to get much out of the session other than entertainment from the passion that the presenters had in presenting their "side" vs. "google's side".

In Gray's presentation he said that it was difficult for a human, let alone a algorithmic search engine, to tell just what a "paid link" really was. He said that he'd like a big screen from Best Buy. Because he said this at SES with out disclosing whether he was paid to mention Best Buy or not, and he didn't say if Best Buy was a past or current client, and if this were a link on a web page, how can an engine really know if it was paid or not? Should this comment be moderated out by Google as a "paid link", and is it even Google's place to make a decision about this? In his presentation he also gave the example of this golf post on an official Google's blog. As Google has a business relationship with this golf company, should links on this page not count since they could be technically viewed as "sponsored links"?

Panelist Greg Boser asked a rhetorical question regarding the Yahoo Directory. Essentially, why does Google trust sites such as the Yahoo Directory which charge to evaluate a site for inclusion into the Yahoo Directory when they state that they don't want "paid links" to pass popularity?

Most web masters know that Google has long discouraged "free for all" link pages, some directories, link trading sites and web rings, despite the fact that many of these sites do perform some editorial review. Editorial review, is one of the reasons that has been implied in the past regarding why Google trusts sites like the Yahoo Directory and the Open Direcory Project. Although I'm unsure if it came from this session or another, I also recall a panelist saying that Google likely uses or used Dmoz and Yahoo to "seed" (hubs or authority sites) their engine's algortithm so it could begin to learn and gain some ideas on how to sort similar sites and pages based on work that has already been performed by "trusted" humans.

Andy Baio of upcoming.org (a pretty interesting networking/news site, now owned by Yahoo) was the last panelist. Although he is now a Yahoo employee, he said that he was trying to represent the common web surfer. He pretty much agreed with Cutts saying that paid links could ruin a search experience. He was a bit quiet and didn't have a formal presentation to make but I think his intent was to say that paid links can be used to manipulte the engines and promote sites that don't belong in a high ranking. Even so, he appeared to agree with some ponits that the other panelists were making but mainly asked... if you were marketing online and wouldn't buy spam email services or comment spamming services, why would you buy paid links? His take was that the good sites would rise to the top of the ranks without resorting to paid links which he compared to spam and called link buying a "shady" practice.

Summary: Are Paid Links Evil? Maybe "Evil" Doesn't Matter.

As Jennifer Laycock mentioned last year at SES, search engines are programmed to be like "Pinocchio"; in a search engine's case, they want to organize and rank data the way a human might. I have to agree with her. And whether Google wants to penalize, ignore, or count paid links, it is probably up to them and the preferences that they've programmed their engine to have. Whether paid links are evil or not, it doesn't matter, as a web master, you simply have to know and understand that despite anything Google does itself, they don't like to count paid links at this time. If you feel that paid links are the way to go, go for it. It is possible that Google may find and devalue those links, your pages, etc. from passing on any link popularity. On the other hand, you could choose to take no chances and never link in any paid fashion and hope that you are not tagged as posting a paid link. But this is unlikely to happen on most sites. Ultimately the whole discussion is fairly moot. It is up to Google to decide whether the links on your site are paid or not. Unless they add some sort of reporting mechanism to web master central or add notification to the emails that some times come out of web master central, you just never know if your site is being penalized for having undisclosed "paid links" or not. The question shouldn't be "are paid links or evil or not", it should be "what links are counted as paid or not".

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