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Reporting Paid Links - Still Mixed Feelings
By Scott Boyd
Expert Author
Article Date: 2008-01-16
David Wallace has a nice write up about reporting paid links to Google this week, which is based on the back of a poll by Blogstorm.
Both posts have some interesting comments on them and while I don't agree with some of them, the articles are well worth a read.
The key areas that grabbed my attention were comments like "it's not my business" and "I don't taddle tale" - I find it incredible that in this day and age there are still businesses out there that still feel that somehow Karma will come back and bite them on the rear end if they do something like reporting paid links!
Why is reporting paid links to Google any different from reporting spam elsewhere?
Sphinn has a "report as spam" button for each post and only today they introduced a "Desphinn" button. Why is using that any different from reporting a competitor for buying paid links?
The Sphinn spammer is just another business trying to market their product or services - they just choose to do it a different way than you might agree with.
How about using the Digg bury feature? Lots of people use that, including many businesses who also use Digg to promote their business in one way or another.
Askimet then? Comes as default in Wordpress and loads of people use that to stop spam. But the same people also promote their blogs by commenting on other blogs. OK, you may do it by leaving good comments and not just what we would call "spam", but the principle is just the same - you are commenting to promote your business.
Perhaps forums are different? Maybe every person who has run a forum and deleted some link spam suddenly doesn't have the right to post on other forums using their signature or profile to promote their sites?
Maybe some offline examples? Would you report a company dumping rubbish outside your premises? Or a competitor flaunting ASA guidelines in their adverts? Or a competitor using sub par materials in their products?
What about some extremes?
Perhaps your own personal ethics won't let you report paid links to Google, but where do you draw the line with your "I don't taddle tale" / "It's not my business" philosophy?
Would you report a business to Trading Standards if they were ripping off their customers? I would (and have). Not because I particularly want to interfere with their business, but because MY BUSINESS can be negatively affected by their actions. If dodgy Internet marketing services are ripping off customers, then the industry gets a bad name and it makes it tougher to convert new sales. Even that aside, I do feel some responsibility to take action in certain (extreme) cases - could you sit back and do nothing while you know someone is about to be ripped off?
There is no hypocrisy in marketing!
One of the core arguments against reporting paid links is that it makes you something of a hypocrite if you buy paid links, but also report competitors for doing the same.
That's nonsense. Why? Re-read the last line and pick out the keyword - "competitors" - people you are in competition with. If you are in business or marketing then your are playing the game to make money.
Yes - do that within the realms of the law and your own personal (or society's) ethical guidelines, but I think people really need to take stock of what exactly falls within those "rules" and what doesn't.
Competitive business is about leveraging what you can to succeed. On the whole that involves taking positive steps to improve your situation (like marketing your business or building a quality site) - but there are times where taking negative actions towards your competition can be a perfectly acceptable approach.
SEOs have one thing in common…
…we all want to be number 1! :)
We do that within the rules of whichever battleground we happen to be competing on. On social media type sites that means ensuring your submissions meet their guidelines (and for some it means using loads of fake accounts to get to the front page) - there are no ethics involved there - it's just down to your personal preferences.
Google has many more fronts to fight on and each offer a number of options for us all. Reporting paid links is just one of them.
I'm not saying that we should form some kind of "Google paid link brigade" to police the web - the people that comment saying that Google should sort out their own algorithm are completely right. But the reality of the situation is that we have the option to wait (possibly for a long time) for Google to find our competitors trying dodgy techniques, or we can make a move to speed up the process.
I don't know about you, but I prefer to have as much control over the success of my business ventures as possible - waiting for Google to catch the competition when I could give them a hat tip doesn't really make business sense to me.
Bitterness towards Google
I get the impression that more and more SEOs view Google in the way that people used to (and still) view Microsoft. Perhaps they have been burned by past Google updates or maybe they are just getting sick of seeing dodgy SEO techniques win over good old fashioned "white hat" techniques?
Our industry has been so focused on Google for so long, I think we're losing sight of how that relationship should really fit into our business models. Google isn't the enemy regardless of how badly you may have been burned in the past. Google is a source of a lot of business, sales, exposure and opportunities for us all. I'm no Google fanboi - the ‘plex has been as big a source of pain for me as it has any other SEO out there! :) I just think we need to step back a little and take stock of the situation.
We have no problem reporting spam on Sphinn. We don't ignore it and say, "well that's Danny's job to clear all that up". We don't look at it and think we will be considered a hypocrite if we report it (yet we are probably closer to the people spamming Sphinn than we are to competitors in Google SERPs). Same goes for any forum, blog or social media site we come across.
The exception to the rule
The one argument I can understand is that if you are buying links yourself and you don't to report competitors just incase it brings a little too much attention to particular SERPs. Fair enough. That's a sound business decision - you weight up the risks and make a choice based on that - no more could be asked of a savvy business person. I think more of us need to make decisions based on solid business risk assessments and not some odd view of ethics or bitterness towards Google.
Do I, don't I?
Just to clarify, I'm not presenting myself here as some champion of paid link reporting - I have reported a handful in my time, but not a particularly large amount. Mostly sites with strong rankings who are pushing the paid link thing a little too far (thousands of links - in one case over one hundred thousand!).
I still prefer the strategy of building a good site so I'll leave you with a quote from David Wallace's article as I don't think I could possibly word it any better: "Do I think paid links should be a site's only strategy? No I don't. The bottom line really comes down to this - if we would spend more time making our sites the very best they can be, we might not have to worry about what the competition is doing because we will be so far ahead of them to even notice them in the first place." When does it become your business and why does reporting paid links fall outside that category? Are you worried that Karma will end up reporting you? Sorry to say it, but I really think you are kidding yourself if you think that closing your eyes and hoping it won't happen will remove the risk of it actually happening. If you are doing something that carries a risk, then whether or not you report your competitors for the same won't increase or remove that risk. It just might give you a competitive advantage for a while though.
Comments
About the Author:
Scott Boyd (aka Marketing Guy) is an Edinburgh based online marketing consultant with over 6 years experience in the industry. He is the founder of SEO agency eFlaunt, where he mixes a
blend of traditional marketing and SEO.
Scott's musings relating to the marketing and SEO industries can be found on his blog - Fused Nation.
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