Thanks for the hand job google

Posted by stuart as ,

Been bitch-slapped by the goog in the latest hysteria filled gnashing of teeth over the paid links penalty?

I got lucky, google gently blew in my ear as she slowly slid (…oops, wrong blog!) me up from a 3 to a 4 here, and a few other increases at various assorted blogs and sites.

I’ve given my thoughts previously on the whole paid links and google rankings thing, they haven’t changed.

You can bet your sweet ass that the folks at Payperpost and ReviewMe are pissing themselves laughing now that all the smart advertising money is moving away from paid links.

So what’s next on the hitlist for the rampant megalomaniacs at the ‘plex?

Blog comments.

Here’s something I prepared earlier:

Yet we persist with this fantasy that Google’s not smart enough to work out that those little bits at the bottom of blog posts with links where the names are have been left by the person who’s blog they point to?

By the definition of pagerank, a link is considered by Google to be a “vote” for the site it points to. For Google to allow people to vote for themselves would be just plain stupid.

So even if Google’s allowing these links to count for something now, you’d better believe that the day is coming where blog comments will be devalued as a source of pagerank.

Seriously people, it’s coming - don’t say I didn’t warn you…