Matt Cutts again asked webmasters to report paid links to Google in his blog. And, as usual, webmasters whined and complained about how Google is asking webmasters to be snitches and that they are arrogant for asking webmasters to do this.
Well, I adamantly support Google doing this and applaud everyone who has report a paid link that violates Google’s terms of service. Every reported paid link helps Google understand how webmasters are manipulating their SERPs and helps them to filter out the garbage and chaff. The quality and relevance of content should determine how a page is ranked. These rankings should not be bought like popular banners.
The outcry every time Google asks webmasters to report links appalls me. What it seems they don’t understand is that Google isn’t cracking down on paid links in general. In fact they acknowledge that buying links is a good way to promote your website. What Google is cracking down on is buying links to manipulate their algorithm. When someone buys links for PageRank or to otherwise improve their rankings directly through that link (e.g. for the anchor text) they are violating Google’s terms of services which forbids the manipulation of their SERPs.
Making purchased links acceptable to Google is as simple as adding the ‘nofollow’ attribute to the paid links. That prevents the link from directly affecting Google’s SERPs as you won’t get any PR from it and the anchor text won’t help your rankings but you still get all of the exposure and traffic that link will provide. If that is unacceptable to you then you are clearly buying the link for the sake of manipulating Google’s SERPs. There’s nothing wrong with Google Advertising your website. Just be sure you are buying the links for advertising’s sake and not for Google’s sake. Once it is for Google’s sake then you’ve got a problem.
What it all boils down to is simple: if you want to be in Google’s index and potentially receive millions of free visitors to your web pages then you have to play by Google’s rules. If you don’t want to play by their rules then you simply don’t have to be in their index. Being indexed in Google is not a right.
Many webmasters need to get over their sense of entitlement. Google is well within their rights to enforce their terms of service and it is very, very fair. I hope they continue to call on webmasters to report paid links as I feel it continues to level the playing fields between those who climb to the top of the SERPs with quality content and those who climb to the top by grasping and clawing at straws.