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can google spot paid links???

redsy

New Member
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The advice is often build links for SEO purposes and i am certainly not going to argue against this point.

However, can google spot paid links - comments please.
 
They look for networks and then rely on webmaster spam reports. Chances are if a site is selling links then most sites connected to that site are selling/buying links too.
 
Google is really suspicious to not relevant sitewide links. If you have a few sitewide links to other sites, you could be in trouble.
 
I have no paid links and no sitewide links which are not mine.

I suppose i am asking more about buying links than selling them. What is thoughts towards that aspect as it is very common place at present.
 
Buying links is/can be risky but if you know what your doing it's perfectly ok. The fact is that to get good quality and solid back links they need to be paid for in this day and age.

The top link builders in the world pay for links.

KP
 
I believe google can. I read somewhere before that paid links that are placed beside (or under) the texts/words like "sponsors" or "featured" are considered by the bot as paid links... But not so sure about in-content paid links, mostly they are detected when the outgoing links are unrelated to the content.

Or maybe when some webmaster reports it to google :p
 
If you are look on the source code and see two exactly identical links - can you say if one of them is paid???

Same with Google - unless you tell them ("sponsored", "featured" etc...) or like stated above it meets some of the common patterns for the paid links - there is no way to recognize link as "Paid"...
 
Buying links is/can be risky but if you know what your doing it's perfectly ok. The fact is that to get good quality and solid back links they need to be paid for in this day and age.

The top link builders in the world pay for links.

KP

Would you or could you expand on how to do it correctly. I read your blog with interest.

I have used information from your blog to help me get my site where it is. have included thanks to you here.
As you can see this is not in the nature of my blog but felt it was right as i had learnt so much as a newbie from the info you have written and other blogs.
 
Hi Redsy,

I honestly couldn't go into detail because I don't know everything about link building. It's not really my thing and I outsource to a professional.

KP
P.S., My blog is currently offline and will be coming back very soon ;)
 
I think in some cases google can recognise paid link, but not in every case. For instance if somebody is not enough smart and place a direct html link to a payperpost.com or any other related service i guess Google will think that here is something which must be ignored, but must of the bloggers can be negotiated to write review about your site with contextual links and nobody will know about the deal behind the curtain so this kind of links are far not so easy to recognise. Of course these posts must be ordered only for the traffic benefit:rofl:
 
My observations of late though have been there are many people who are willing to pay good money for unrelated PR6+ links. They seemed to be uncorned about it being related to their niche.

I know google is smart but how do they know that say a property services sites is relevant to say a mortgage site. Is it the latent semantics i have briefly read about??
 
Of course (as I think) if the site is engaged in selling links only. But if you are purchasing links from your industry relevant sites it does not matter.
 
So that is my point how do they tell if they are industry related? many industry related sites have paid advertising - so are we saying they have no PR and SERPS benefits!!??

I think, yes some sites it is very obvious that the links and site is set up for paid links but others well managed, not so easy. And who is to say that even though the site may not be directly relevant to the link it doesn't hold value to the reader.

This is why i started the thread and was hopefully looking for someone to maybe come up with maybe a list of dos and donts, anyone??
 
Not sure how I have missed this thread :(

Google have smart sub algorithms. if you think that G has just the one size fits all, then you are wrong. Why do you think Google is now (and has been for 18 months or more), spidering FAR more pages than it indexes? WHY?

If you are to understand SEO then these are the questions you need to ask yourself. Google uses MASSES of amounts of processing power and it is well known that a year or two they were struggling with capacity. So Why do you think at this time, when they are struggling for capacity, that they start spidering more pages than they intend adding to the index?

The only answer is to evaluate more pages, and check on a larger spread of pages, but for what?

Moving on. people have the wrong idea about how Google does things, why do you believe that Google looks at each LINK individually? it doesn't really do that.

Google is an algorithmic beast, it 'best guesses' things based on mathematical probability. EVERYTHING comes down to mathematical probability. this site is the best because 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 etc all add up to say so.

Onwards and upwards we go. Here are some things to consider. :~
Don't link to bad neighbourhoods as this may harm your site.
Don't participate in schemes designed to increase your page rank
Don't buy links

3 little things, so look at it.

A blogging network gets found out.,people have been reporting various sites, and the Google link-mapper has found that they cluster into a neighbourhood. BOOM you have a dodgy neighbourhood. This scenario plays out hundreds of times a day in Google.

So how does this affect you? it doesn't :)

BUT you go out buying links, you buy 50 links, 30 of those are from suspect or known bad neighbourhoods. You have no heavy duty links, in fact you have absolutely no links of any consequence! and many of the links you have are reciprocal links.. hmmmmmmmm

Can this site be trusted? let's cluster around this site and see if we can pull any other sites into the cluster.

Where do you buy your links? Do you REALLY think that Google doesn't have an army of people who spend time on forums like DP, etc tracking down link sellers? Why do you think you have enquiries that don't come through?

DAY after DAY after Day Google are building bad clusters. because if you remove the crap your relevance gets better.

Back to Algorithms
What are the CLASSIC characteristics of paid links?
1. small text
2. placed in blocks
3. placed to the side or in the footer.

Microsoft patented a technology called Block Level Link Analysis. they did this a few years back, have Google licenced it. What it does is lay out pages in visual format for Google to work on. Not sure if this can be done? how do you think Google produce heat maps?

By now you might be getting an idea of how, if a simple uneducated chap from Wales can work out how to find pockets of spammers. What can Google do with their hundreds of PHD's and unlimited resources?

Google do not and can not differentiate between two link on a page in the example that livetech gave, but that is the beauty of it all you see. THEY DON'T HAVE TO!

Google will decide whether or not to trust a SITE, Google uses trust as a MAJOR factor in its algorithm. IF Google decides a SITE is untrustworthy, then ALL outbound links will be affected.

So what is the answer? the answer is to do what the pro's have been doing for a while, and that is to buy links from people who do NOT sell links!

Think about it ;)
 
This is one of the best posts i have read for a long time!!! Thank you.

So in effect, obvious paid links are worthless!!! And even if they are the lifespan could be very short if they are not in the cluster already!!??

So just because i site has links from a a paid links selling network it doesnt mean that site is penalised? unless it links to them.

I had done reciprocals with a couple of directories, though they have now gone. I only link out to related, good, none link selling sites.

So the key to link building is make a quality site that people will want to link to; And........................
 
If all or a large majority of your links are from worthless sites, then your site will be seen as worthless.

"How many times have you heard "it isn't his fault, he just got in with the wrong crowd" And then thought to yourself "yeh" I bet ALL the parentssay exactly the same thing" ;)

"So the key to link building is make a quality site that people will want to link to; And........................"

promote it well, work harder on getting fewer but better quality links.

Another real world analogy.

2 headlines in competing garage windows. You are looking to get your expensive car serviced, but save a few bob.

1~ 1,00's of people get their cars services here every years

the other

jeremy Carkson, & Lewis Hamilton get their cars serviced here.

Which garage do you go to? :)
 
I did warn everyone i ask alot of questions in my welcome intro.
Just keen to learn
If all or a large majority of your links are from worthless sites, then your site will be seen as worthless.

OOO. I have submitted to a large number of directories though in the relevant sections, of course. Are they viewed as worthless?? one is sitewide as i reciprocated link(though not site wide)

However, i have managed to get some great links from industry online institutes, magazines and what i feel are other related trusted sites.

Please tell me my site is not seen as worthless.:cray:

"So the key to link building is make a quality site that people will want to link to; And........................"

promote it well, work harder on getting fewer but better quality links.

So in regard to this, as i am not scared of hard work i have done.
1. submitted blog part of site to loads of rss feed sites.
2. claimed blog on technorati
3. tried to get a squidoo lens going
4. posted ezines articles
5. had articles published on others blogs
6. posted on relevant industry forums with my site links as signatures
7. written to loads of sites asking for reciprocals (trusted reputable sites)
8. submitted to social media sites

phew!!!!

What do you reckon. What next and where should i focus my SEO time??
 
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