On Friday, Google took to multiple company blogs to lay out a few “best practices” for bloggers and companies when it comes to the ladder giving the former free products, and the former reviewing them. These are to keep you…
Report Suggests Google Bought Links For Chrome Again [Updated]
A few years ago, Google kind of got caught violating its own webmaster guidelines. Specifically, a third party was doing some marketing for the company to promote Chrome, and they reportedly paid bloggers with gift certificates for sponsored posts. The…
What Have Google’s Biggest Mistakes Been?
Do you feel like Google makes many mistakes when it comes to trying to improve its search results? Do you think they’ve gone overboard or not far enough with regards to some aspect of spam-fighting? In the latest Google Webmaster…
Google Expands Link Network Crackdown Across Europe
Google has been cracking down on link networks like never before in recent months. That continues with a couple more announcements from head of webspam Matt Cutts. In January, Cutts said Google was taking action on French link network Buzzea.…
Here’s How Google Determines Whether Or Not Your Links Are ‘Paid’
Google put out a new 8-minute video about paid links. Matt Cutts talks about the various things that the search engine takes into consideration when determining whether or not links are “paid”. 99 percent of the time it’s abundantly clear,…
Cutts: PageRank Drops For ‘Thousands Of TLA Linkselling Sites’
Back during Google I/O, Google’s Matt Cutts tweeted that Google “took action on several thousand linksellers in a paid-link-that-passes-PageRank network”. Cutts didn’t provide much in the way of detail, other than also saying, “It’s safe to assume webspam will continue…
Google Warns: You Better Adequately Disclose Paid Content
Google has been enforcing its policies on paid links for years, but the search engine is really cracking down on advertorials and native advertising these days. Google’s Matt Cutts has been talking about the subject a lot lately, so if…
Google Just Took Out Thousands Of Linksellers
Earlier this week, Google’s Matt Cutts ran down a bunch of new stuff Google’s web spam team is working on. Cutts tweeted an extension of that today, noting that Google will continue to tackle link networks, and that in fact,…
Matt Cutts Answers A Good Question About Paid Link Penalties
The latest Webmaster Help video is once again about the topic of paid links, but this time it’s about the effects of a paid link penalty on an innocent site that happened to be linked to by a site that…
Google: That Paid Links Thing Goes For Google News Too
After the whole Interflora paid links fiasco, Google took to its Webmaster Central blog to remind webmasters about the no-nos of paid links and advertorials. Today, Google took to the Google News blog to remind bloggers and publishers that the…
Google: If We Mistakenly Penalize You For Paid Links, There Would Be A ‘Ton Of Collateral Damage’
There has been a lot of talk about Google and paid links in the news lately, so it’s only fitting that they’re the topic of the latest Webmaster Help video from the company. In this one, Matt Cutts responds to…
Google Appears To Be Busted With Its Own Paid Links AGAIN
It appears that Google has been caught doing paid links again. We’re still waiting for Google to provide an explanation, but the evidence makes it look like this is the case. Our friend Aaron Wall at SEOBook has found some…
Major UK Flowers Site Interflora Gets Slapped By Google
Update: While Google hasn’t named Interflora, the company seems to have confirmed the situation with an out of the blue post about paid links on Google’s Webmaster Central blog today. There’s nothing new. It’s just Matt Cutts reminding everybody that…
Google Explains Basics Of Paid Links In New Video
Google put out a new Webmaster Help video today about paid links. There’s no new information, and most of our readers can probably skip this one, but essentially, Cutts is just explaining to the uninitiated the difference between a paid…
Senator Tells Matt Cutts About Paid Link Schemes Google Is Missing
Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, Jay Rockefeller, sent letters to Google’s Matt Cutts, Yahoo’s Shashi Seth and Microsoft’s Qi Lu about moving company scammers using paid links to game search results. The committee is…
Matt Cutts Has To Explain Paid Links To Newspaper
Google’s Matt Cutts has a new blog post up about paid links. He says he was contacted by an unnamed newspaper who saw its Pagerank drop from a 7 to a 3, and wanted to know why. The reason, as…
Google Removes Parts Of Penalties If You Make Changes
Just as you can recover from a Google algorithm update like Penguin, you can bounce back from a penalty as well. In fact, you can even partially bounce back, even if you’re unable to bounce all the way back at…
Google: We’re Starting To Enforce Paid Links More
Google’s Matt Cutts has been making light of paid links all week, but in reality, Google isn’t joking when it comes to enforcing this part of its quality guidelines. According to Google, it’s cracking down on this more than ever,…
Google Seems To Be OK With Paid Inclusion These Days
We know from the countless instances of paid link penalties that Google doesn’t like it when you buy your way into organic search results, but Google has other financial transactions that influence some of its search results. Last month, Danny…
iAcquire Gets Rid Of Paid Link Offerings Following Google De-Indexing
Blogger Josh Davis recently put out an investigative report exposing the marketing firm iAcquire for engaging in paid links for clients. Once Google caught wind of it, iAcquire was de-indexed from Google’s search results. Now, the company has openly admitted…