A different take on the Google update

Posted by Tim
October 24, 2007

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There’s a lot of "I never sold links" statements from A-listers after Google’s pagerank update. I won’t point them out publicly. But, allow me to play Devil’s Advocate for a moment.

Your ads run through an ad server, so they don’t pass link juice. Cool.

At the end of every month you post a "thanks to my sponsors" post, complete with links. Uncool, according to Google.

Mind you, I’m on your side. But, Google and the rest of the blogosphere aren’t stupid - part of the decision for your advertisers includes these "thank you" links you’re so disciplined about posting. While it might never be stated directly between you and the advertiser, it is still clear that they received the link because they paid for an ad on your blog.

"Hey, thanks to these companies that have had nothing to do with the success of my blog"? Come on, let’s keep it real, guys. We all knew the risks, some people tried to find loopholes, and Google closed those loopholes. Go back to the drawing board, or just remove those "thank you" posts and go back to Google with hat in hand, prepared to sin no more.

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As for Google, this is all about COMPETITION FOR ADVERTISING DOLLARS, not search result relevancy. I have a poker blog that took a hit with every other poker blog last spring. Pageranks went down across the board, but SERPs were unaffected. I repeat, SERPs were unaffected. I’d wager this round of penalties will be the same.

So, the search results are still relevant and clean, but we’re all bad boys and girls… why?

Oh yeah, we took advertising dollars that might otherwise be spent on Adsense. Google’s primary job is protecting it’s revenue model.

Follow-up: Google Lies

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Comments

I agree with you 100% on all points.

Comment by Jules (4 comments.) on October 24, 2007 @ 2:22 pm

Thanks, Jules. The competitive aspect is something people seem to be ignoring. If one considers just the blogs listed in Andy Beard’s post took, that’s millions of dollars per year that might otherwise have been spent with Adsense. After today, that money may flow back to Google. Matt Cutts and his engineers earned their pay over the past year.

Comment by Tim on October 24, 2007 @ 3:29 pm

Interesting take on it… Never thought about it from the AdWords point of view :)

Comment by Mohan (1 comments.) on October 24, 2007 @ 4:24 pm

[…] said it several times: Google’s motivation is to protect it’s revenue model.  Now, someone with some weight in the blogosphere is […]

Pingback by PageRank vs. RealRank vs. Something Else? | Bloggerista.net on November 16, 2007 @ 11:45 am
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