Buying Inbound Links And Seo-00-1571

By Author: lori
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“Google has been very clear that selling such links that pass PageRank is a violation of our quality guidelines. Other search engines have said similar things. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has also given unambiguous guidance on this subject, where they said: “Consumers who endorse and recommend products on their blogs or other sites for consideration should do so within the boundaries set forth in the FTC Guides Concerning Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising and the FTC's guidance on word of mouth marketing,” as well as “To date, in response to this concern, the FTC has advised that search engines need to disclose clearly and conspicuously if the ranking or other presentation of search results is a function of paid placement, and, similarly, that consumers who are paid to engage in word-of-mouth marketing must disclose that fact to recipients of their messages.”

“The reality is that accepting money to link to/promote/market for a product without disclosing that fact is a very high-risk behavior, in my opinion.”

The whole comment made it quite obvious ...
... how Matt Cutt, and apparently Google on the whole, is more than just displeased by this tool and its functionalities. But what seemed particularly surprising was Matt stressing on FTC's (Federal Trade Commission) 'guidelines'. Surprising because these quotes are 'FTC's suggestions and in no form guidelines or requirements and moreover, no where in these 'suggestions' can we see a single word on the aspect of 'paid links'.

As far as Matt's seemingly morally perfect stand on how 'promoting a product without disclosing that fact is quite unacceptable' goes, it just does not seem in sync with Google's own methodologies. How come then Firefox is not required to display that Google is paying it billions of dollars to be the default search engine on every search? In fact, Google has been so discreet about the same that even many Firefox developers aren't aware of the same.

Such hypocritical statements from Google's top executives really show the reputed company in poor light. Google really can't talk about ethics and morals in advertising on the Internet, when it has itself indulged in some of the most deceptive advertising methods ever seen. One can point out that there's been no dearth of Google Adsense advertisements that have not been labeled as advertisements.

The problem for Google is that there's absolutely no way it can detect inlinking advertisements if they are done properly and Matt Cutt's statements concede this fact. If it would have been any different then Google would not have called for the help in the form of paid link forms that were meant to catch hold of people who pay for their links. It seems unlikely that Google wants to itself live in accordance to FTC's 'guidelines'. Matt's comments seem anything but a ridiculously lousy joke to cover up for their helplessness.

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