Google Penalizes Paid Links

Posted by: Josh Walsh in Design.

The past few days changes could mean a dramatic change to the way professional SEO’s build links. Especially those with deep pockets. Many of the webs most popular websites and blogs watched their Google PageRank drop dramatically yesterday after the most recent Google Dance.

Paid Links

Websites like Text Link Ads will match advertisers with publishers. These publishers (usually Blogs) are paid for the placement of a text link, and this price is usually determined by their google PageRank.

Big Blogs were Targeted

Aral Balkan discusses the impact it had on his blog on his recent post Google is an Angry God. His site dropped from a PR8 to a PR5 overnight.

Other blogs that were affected include Engadget (PR 7 to 5), WashingtonPost.com (PR 7 to 5), Forbes.com (PR 7 to 5), Andy Budd’s site (PR 8 to 5), and Tuaw.com (PR 6 to 4).

Identifying sites with paid ads is difficult to do programmatically. I believe that Google hand-picked these major blogs for punishment to make their point.

Does it Matter?

PageRank isn’t dead, but it’s definitely on the way out. While these blogs have seen their pagerank drop dramatically, their SERPS have gone unchanged.