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An interesting WebmasterWorld thread discusses whether a paid run of site link (ROS) is benefital or not. The thread points out some variables that may impact how the search engines will react to the ROS link.
- Age of site
- Size of linking site
- Percentage of links from trustworthy sites
If paid ROS links can hurt a site's search engine ranking, than this could make it very easy for competitors to sabotage others. As mentioned in the thread it seems more likely that the search engines will not penalize but rather discount the link benefit.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Comments:
Barry Schwartz
03/13/2007 02:08 pm
Nice first post Greg!
Chris Beasley
03/13/2007 02:13 pm
Search engines do not have access to your bank statements. They do not know if a link is paid or free. A human could look at the link and take a guess certainly, but that is all that it would be. So the discussion shouldn't be if a paid ROS link helps, but if a ROS link in general helps. Here is my opinion. It is better to have 1000 links from 1000 different sites than 1000 links from a single site. However it is still better to have 1000 links from 1 site than it is to have just 1 link from that site. Ergo a sitewide link is better than no link at all or just 1 link, and it certainly will not hurt you, but it is certainly not as beneficial as the same number of links from a diverse selection of sources.
greg niland
03/13/2007 05:18 pm
hi chris, search engines may not have access to your bank account (at least until google releases gbank) but there are algorithmic ways of finding paid links. for example if the words "sponsored link" appears right before the link it is easy for the search engines to figure out that it is a paid link. i do agree with you that there are multiple variables that need to be discussed like paid vs. organic and ros link vs. single link. cheers
gabs
03/14/2007 12:42 pm
greg I know what your getting at with the text close to the links but not sure the algo could cope with that.. More likely is whats the relation between the sites.. are both of similar theme ? Are blog rolls counted? Must high PR/traffic (i know this isn't about pr) blog are on many a blog roll all site wide passing value..