Just call rel=nofollow “GoogleTagToHelpMeRankBetter”-and it would be much more popular—a white hat way to rank better!

There are a lot of other things you can do to attempt to manipulate PageRank, and all you hear about them is “If you do that, just don’t get caught!” Everyone knows what’s “wrong” with manipulating PageRank—if it gets out of hand, the index is devalued. Google has put the most impressive collection of brainpower ever gathered in a public company to keep the index clean and of high value. Search is not a trivial problem to solve, and Google does it better than it’s ever been done.

People are also mad that Google added to the purpose of rel=nofollow over time. Fine. Use an robots.txt blocked intermediate page instead. No one is forcing use of rel=nofollow—it’s a convenience.

And it’s always been the case that some of what you do to optimize for one search engine will not help/may hinder optimization for another search engine.

And, frankly, if you’re aware of the problem, and you can’t think of a way to make your paid links look “natural,” optimization isn’t really something you should be messing around with.

My problem is that sometimes it’s nice to make something look like a paid advertisement and have it pass page rank, when it isn’t paid. Remember all the “ads” to help people donate after Katrina, or the tsunami? I had no problem “recommending” (passing PageRank) to the Red Cross at the time. (Now instead of an ad, you have to do a sidebar column article, or text link, or some such.)

Google has shown that giving great search results is rocket science, and I’m grateful for what they’ve done. The quality of their search results is what has made the internet such a life-changing part of modern culture. Giving savvy webmasters who buy and sell ads the opportunity to improve their placement in search results by adding rel=nofollow to paid ads really seems pretty straightforward to me.

“How does google make the differnece between a natural link and a paid link?”

None of us know for sure. I assume they try to do it algorithmically maybe by looking for html text that marks the links as sponsored (e.g. sponsored links, advertisements, etc.), run of site links, links to sites that are irrelevant of site that is linking, etc.

They also rely on tattle-tales and having access to inventories of sites that sell text links such as text Link Ads, who I might add now hides their inventory from public view.

Wikipedia (may not be the best source) does say that the nofollow attribute is a “non-standard HTML attribute.” So now one company is requesting people make their code not up to the agreed upon standards. What if another company creates a search engine and says that the “nofollow” tag violates their webmaster guidelines? Suddenly people are forced to choose sides? That doesn’t seem right.

I don’t have a problem with hidden links or text since it’s 99% purposeful. It’s also 100% provable that it’s “hidden.”

I have a blog that’s in a certain niche. However, I have friend that run websites in a separate niches. So I have a blogroll for that niche and then I have another section of “Friends” for those websites. I can easily see why Google might think that these are paid links. Google can’t also assume that every webmaster knows what a “nofollow” is.

This is what it comes down to… Google can PROVE that hidden links and text exist. They CAN’T PROVE that money has exchanged hands.

And yes; you will then tell me that Google should not “control” us or the internet.

Google is NOT controlling anyone, nor are they “telling” anyone what to do. You can do as you damn well please. At the same time, Google can do as she damn well pleases as well. It’s fairly easy to understand.

Google states to not use hidden text or links in your content as well. It seems that some SEO types are saying that Google should not be stating anything at all as that would be “telling” webmasters what to do.

Websites have always had the choice on whether or not to abide by stated search engine guidelines. That hasn’t changed since day one.

Google shouldn’t tell how to code their websites. Google is a little arrogant thinking that links are made just to thwart their system.

I’m wondering why people “just now” are surprised that Google is Finally cracking down on search engine spam? I know that we, (the forums) have been discussing this for at least 3 years now or so… maybe longer… since the Massa fiasco, I think.