Is Matt Cutts Talking for Google?
So this weekend I was reading a post that Matt Cutts posted to his blog discussing the validity or (the lack there of) for paid links, PayPerPost and review sites. Pretty much he called all of them spam and even suggested ways people could report these links as he was, “excited about trying some ideas here at Google to augment our existing algorithms”.
After I read that sentence I prepared for the blogosphere to EXPLODE! When anyone who is involved with SEOÂ hears Matt Cutts or Google use the word algorithm, you immediately move into a code red situation. People is SEO companies across the world start worrying, planning, posting on discussion boards, chat rooms and blogs. Guys are chain smoking and others have those full body signs on with them reading, “THE END IS NEAR!”.
Ok, that might be a wee bit of an exaggeration, but just by a little. So there is all kind of articles being written on this. So far my favorite is Andy Beard‘s where he calls out Matt Cutts and Google. That’s right folks, when Beard gets done with them, Matt Cutts and all of Google will be Andy’s bitches.
Technorati Tags: Matt Cutts, PayPerPost, Google, blogosphere, SEO, Andy Beard
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In my opinion I think that all of us should remove every link to Matt. I do not imply a simple no-follow, I indicate that we totally remove every last link that we have to him.
Why should he have any link juice pointing to him. As I see it, yahoo does not abide to the no follow and in many cases MSN as well.
Whether the search engines like it or not, paid links are here to stay. I’ve been talking this up some on my own blog, but the point is that popularity is always for sale and, without any way of regulating behind-the-scenes dealings, Google will be at a loss to determine which links are paid and which are natural. The whole paid blogging thing pretty much clinches it. Google will either have to find a way to determine a site’s value without links (unlikely) or suck it up and deal with the fact that their ranking algorithm can and will be tampered with.
Maybe Big Brother (I mean Google) will have to reinvent their approach. How about a weighted average of the top 50 keywords as a site ranks naturally without the link in factor. Then they will be back to rewarding real content (like humans do) not link love.
They could have an additional term next to listing that seperately states the authority ranking (similar to Technorati). This term would be computed only from links in.
That listing could be sorted by natural or linkin ranking. Google users would then have the choice and implicitly endorse whichever method they prefer.
What do you think?