Google's crusade against paid ads has been in search engine marketing news a lot lately. Search engine marketing folks starting talking about this back when no follow was suggested for links. I wrote an article about no follow and text link ads back in 2005. In the end numerous businesses online will be penalized because they didn't realize there was a problem with paid ads. Not every webmaster is up on what's ok to do in the search engines.
Its one thing for Google to tell users what will happen in Google's search results if spammy techniques are used for ranking. It is different when Google starts telling webmasters what to do with their websites and how to run their businesses. Paid banner ads and links were around long before Google existed. How do you close Pandora's box after Google's PageRank opened it? Google can't, but that's their problem. I don't think webmasters should be responsible for fixing Google's paid link problem.
Search Engine Watch
Google Goes to War on Paid Text Links
johnon.com
Google Buys DoubleClick, Announces Penalties for Non-Google Advertising
Threadwatch
The Real Reason Google Doesn't Like Paid Links
Matt Cutts Blog
How to Report Paid Links
Matt Cutts Blog
Hidden Links
Matt Cutts Blog
Text links and PageRank
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Google's crusade against paid ads
