Foreign Perspectives

Google’s widespread dropping to zero of the pagerank of sites that accepted payment for links has kicked off quite a debate on the issue on various sites including their own webmaster blog.

For technical reasons, they would much prefer that all links between sites on the Internet are purely for altruistic reasons with no payment or other persuasion used. That was, to some extent, the case when Google Inc started up and when the initial university research project that led to the creation of Google Inc began but that’s eons ago in Internet time.

As we all know, the Internet is full of commercial sites these days with numerous sites selling everything from books to bookings for holidays. With this in mind many personal sites are approached by commercial ones asking for a link and offering money for it. Sure, there are commercial sites that ask for a link with no money on offer, but they don’t usually get too far unless they particularly stand out from the crowd in some way.

And then there are various types of directories that abound these days. I have a particular interest in the accommodation directories in that I run several of them myself. Much as I never considered these as selling links (and my sites don’t) it would seem that in Google’s eyes even the likes of Gites de France is selling links. After all, they charge something like EUR 1000 per year for a listing and isn’t that just selling a link?

Sure, GdF and the many other accommodation listings sites have a lot of text around that link but at the end of the day, how is that different from a blog that accepts sponsored posts?