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Right on..
If Google isn't downgrading sites with paid content I didn't know about it. Am looking into that now. IMO they should be.
On the links on TechCrunch, you make a pretty aggressive statement "Techcrunch for as long as I can remember have sold PageRank passing links as part of their advertising packages." Please show me evidence of that.
Having a link in an ad to MediaTemple, or whoever, that links to MediaTemple, isn't a search scam. It's just linking to an advertiser. Now if the keyword was "hosting" or something like that I'd agree that it would be inappropriate. But its just a site name being linked to a site name. A search for Media Temple on Google that shows Media Temple's site is a good thing, and I don't think our ads are designed to create any deception there.
If i'm missing something please let me know. Would be happy to continue the conversation. I'm at editor at techcrunch, please email me if you follow up here so I can come back.
I really want to have a constructive conversation on this issue.
Google doesn't say that you should only sell links to good companies, or that you should pass page rank to the site if you don't optimize the anchor text. If the link is paid for, Google wants it to be nofollowed.
Also, your author claiming ignorance to Google's policy on paid posts is unacceptable. Do even bother to fact check the crap you put out? Or do you leave that for the 'real' journalists?
And last but not least, you've still not addressed the fact that your blog frequently publishes posts that have been paid for, and yet you hypocritically continue your crusade against paid posts for other bloggers.
You need to return to reality and realize you've allowed your site to take a nose dive in terms of quality & credibility.
Most of the time unfortunately you just seem to link website to your own Crunchbase profile, which is more than annoying!!
But I am from the Netherlands and links and backlinks are not as important as in the US.
However, I kind of get the feeling that they don't care for them either. Google is going to have to make a policy change if they are going to start downgrading paid reviews.
Fortunately that is a long way from the truth. If Google downgraded not only the links, but the content as well, they would have to do it with all content that has some kind of commercial intent.
In theory Google has algorithms that could potentially select content based upon commercial intent, so for different queries they could return information, reviews or purchase options.
Very strange.
Information is already overloaded. For the majority webmasters or bloggers out there, nofollow and do follow don't make any sense to them.
The question is this. Will Google change AdSense code to use nofollow, if search engine can index the result rendered by Javascript?
Regardless paid or not paid link, if the quality of the content is good, the page rank should not matter.
Adsense doesn't need nofollow, it is javascript that pulls content from a remote site - fundamentally different.
Nofollow should make sense to Michael Arrington, because Techcrunch has probably covered paid links and paid reviews 50+ times over the last 3 years
In the beginning it boosted my on Google SE, within weeks i even lost my earlier SE position. I was just doomed. Buying links is the most non-sense thing i ever did.
Though, Thanks Andy to for your post.
However, once you build a system entirely around paid links, the power shifts directly to those with the money. It sets a dangerous precedent.
It'll be interesting to see how Google navigates these waters.