Blogger decries mixed messages

Where a website places in search engine results has a lot to do with how many other sites are linking to it. These external links pointing to your site are called “backlinks.” But, you are supposed to accrue these links naturally, not buy them. That is considered by Google to be “manipulating” their system. However, it seems to many people that in a free market you should be able to sell or buy anything that you want to if it is not against the law. If Google can’t figure out a better way to rank sites, that’s their inadequacy. But they don’t see it that way.

If you enter the search term “backlinks for sale” in the Google search engine, you will see a page full of paid Google AdWord ads along the right side column of the page placed by companies that sell links. If you enter “links for SEO,” you will see still more, including an ad by Google themselves for their AdWords product which is, in essence, paid links.

So, Google will gladly promote the efforts of folks who would like to sell backlinks, as long as they get their cut. As a reasonably conscientious citizen of the Blogosphere, however, I think that we need to recognize the conflict inherent in publicly stating that paid links will be punished in terms of page rank when the entity doing the punishing is profiting from the practice.

Sometimes earnest and honest enterprises with different departments wind up with aims that are at odds with one another, and they may not even notice it because there is no “central eye” seeing an overview, but I think that the point that is being made here is very simple to understand and rather irrefutable. And I doubt that Google just doesn’t notice the mixed message.

I think there is a line that needs to be drawn somewhere, but it certainly is confusing when you are trying to optimize a website for a search engine that forbids the purchase of links simultaneous to providing a vehicle for selling them.