Google lies: Paid posts add to search engine relevancy, create competition
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As anyone who has ever bought or written a paid post knows, the advertiser nearly always specifies anchor text for links. This anchor text is always relevant to the page the advertiser is trying to promote. After all, a publisher of a website about mortgages isn’t going to waste his money getting ranked for ‘hot nude girls’, right?
So, how is this wrong? How is this irrelevant? Because that’s the crux of Google’s argument - these links are generating irrelevant content in their search results.
This could not be further from the truth.
What these links do is create competition within the search engine results. Google sells the Top 3 positions as Sponsored Links:
For instance, in this search for a fairly competitive keyword, Mortgages, Google has sold those top 3 positions to Lending Tree, E-Loan, and Quicken. I have no problem with this - it’s their website, if they want to sell links, more power to them.
The next "unpaid" result that is "above-the-fold" is the Google News page relevant to Mortgages. After this, you will see links to mortgage101.com, a wikipedia article about mortgages, and bankrate.com. That’s it on my itty-bitty flatscreen, but that’s enough to illustrate my point.
What’s my point?
Where are the largest banks and mortgage companies?
Bankofamerica.com is further down the page. Countrywide isn’t there. Wachovia isn’t there. Can anyone argue that these (and others) would not be considered highly relevant in a search for mortgages?
So, if Bank of America, Wachovia, and Countrywide, or even "Joe-Blow’s Mortgage Website" want to get ranked, they need to do a better job with SEO and get some authority inbound links.
Or, they can pay Google for one of those Top-3 search results.
Ahhhhh…. are things becoming more clear yet?
Google doesn’t want you, me, Bank of America, Countrywide, Wachovia, or Joe Blow buying inbound links from authority websites (or anyone else), because that helps them get ranked on the first page, above-the-fold, without paying Google.
I’ll repeat once more, this is about COMPETITION FOR ADVERTISING DOLLARS.
Period.
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Comments
I think it’s not so much a lie as Google doesn’t speak. We’ve all got to keep going what we’ve been dong so Google page rank can become less important.
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