WebProNews

Give yourselves a hand, folks.  In Google's fight against webspam and paid links, you've apparently played an important role, and in the future, the company's hoping you'll participate even more.

Remember those webspam and paid links reporting options in the Webmaster Help Group?  They're not black holes.

 The Webmaster Help Group

On the Webmaster Central Blog, Google's Reid Yokoyama instead reveals, "Over the last year, users have submitted thousands and thousands of paid link reports to Google . . . .  These reports are actively reviewed, and the feedback is invaluable to improve our search algorithms.  We also are willing to take manual action on a significant fraction of paid link reports as we continue to improve our algorithms."

All in all, "[T]he hard work of users who have already reported paid links has helped improve the quality of our index for millions."

A similar story has formed around the topic of webspam, with users' reports being responsible for at least some of the 450-plus improvements made to Google's algorithms last year.

It's too bad the company's not offering shares of stock or cash in return, but by documenting problems, it looks like you're making genuine contributions to Google and its search community.