Jan 18
2008A Letter To Mr. Matt Cutts!
Filed Under (Personal) by Manish on 18-01-2008
Tagged Under : matt cutts
Dear sir,
This is to bring in your kind notice that, I’m Manish Pandey from India, an Electronics and Communication Engineer by profession and an SEO by passion. I wanted to take your notice to a recently published article by Laura Melahn, of Google Analytics Team, who has linked out to Databazaar.com here in this post without the “nofollow” attribute. Now what I wanted to point out here is that, isn’t that link passing the PageRank of Google Analytics Blog, which happens to be a PR7 blog. That link alone would have made the site outrank 1000s of sites in their niche.
Quoted from your post:
There’s no disclosure inside these entries whether these posts are paid, nor do the posts use the nofollow attribute or some other mechanism so that search engines aren’t affected.
With all the paid links penalty, and sites getting removed from the index I’m unable to understand this act. Well if only writing a few paragraph about Google Analytics (which is really an awesome tool) could bring me a link from that blog, then I could write a whole lot, for all my websites, and benefit the power and authority of Google’s Blog.
So kindly look into this matter as soon as possible.
Thanking you,
Yours sincerely,
Manish Pandey
Popularity: 17% [?]
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Why don’t you post it on Matt’s blog to solicit more direct response from him?
Umm…I don’t find a place on his blog to post about this letter.
Am I missing something here?
Why WOULD the link be nofollowed? It’s not paid for? By your logic, every link on every blog should be nofollow-ed.
Hey Dave,
You didn’t miss anything here, what I’m pointing is that Matt has pointed on his post that bloggers should not link to a site which passes it’s pagerank which would give them search engine rankings benefits. If ever you write about a website you must use “nofollow” or tell that it was a paid review so that google could refrain any benefits to that site. That’s what I’m trying to point out here. On the analytics blog, you will see that it’s a live link which is passing the google’s PR. And that’s not my logic, that’s the logic of Matt.
Manish, I think you have completely missed the boat here. The nofollow attribute is to be used to when a link is in some way paid and there for the specific purpose of passing pagerank and manipulating pagerank.
There is absolutely no reason that link should be nofollowed. It was not paid and it is an editorial link. You linked to me in a previous post, why didn’t you nofollow that? Because it was editorial and it was not paid. Same as on the analytics blog.
Well Dave that link is passing Google’s PR to that site, hence helping it in many ways, improving it’s ranking, building up an authority. This is certainly not very clever.
Umm…if I link to some website in the similar way, and I don’t tell that it was a paid review, just an editorial review in the same fashion the Google analytics blog did, then why would Google penalize the blog?
This has happened in the past to many bloggers who review sites (paid or non-paid), the question here is, how in a world Google will know that a review made was a paid one or not?
Then why would Google penalize bloggers?
Manish, the point it that it was NOT a paid review. Why would the Google Analytics blog need to get paid to review a site?
Of COURSE that link is passing authority, no question there. But it is an editorial link. Why shouldn’t it? Why on earth should they nofollow the link? It’s NOT PAID.
No offense but you are way off the mark here.
Dave, looks like you are not getting my point.
Well what I’m trying to put here is that, if Google analytics blog could editorially review a site then why can’t any blogger?
Why Matt Cutts has to say that when ever you “get paid” put a nofollow or tell Google that it was a paid review (so that I could cut your PR)? How could he know that the review some body made was a paid one and not an editorial review similar to the Google analytics blog? This is the point here.
He has made a fear in every bloggers mind that now I can’t review a site and get paid, because Google will penalize them for doing so. This post was made to let Matt know about the editorial integrity of a blogger. That he could review a site if he likes, he may receive money if he chooses to or not if he don’t. It just about the “editorial integrity”.
Umm…I’m not off the mark I suppose!
Hi Manish, in response to your points:
“if Google analytics blog could editorially review a site then why can’t any blogger?” - They can and that is one of the foundations of the web. Matt, Googal or Me are not saying that a blogger cannot editorially review a site.
“How could he know that the review some body made was a paid one and not an editorial review similar to the Google analytics blog?”- They don’t know for sure but tehy are doing a damn fine job reducing the pagerank of those who do.
“and not an editorial review similar to the Google analytics blog?” - So you agree that the GA post WAS editorial?
“He has made a fear in every bloggers mind that now I can’t review a site and get paid, because Google will penalize them for doing so” - Damn right and I completely agree. Why should Google let their entire business suffer becuase some bloggers want to make a few dollars. They are not saying that you can’t do paid reviews, far from it.
“Umm…I’m not off the mark I suppose!” - I think you are. If I didn’t know better I’d say you were jealous of the link. If the link was to you and you didn’t pay or ask for it would you want it nofollowed? Why not?
Dave…calling me jealous isn’t the solution to this discussion.
Well you’re not able to justify the questions that I’ve put forward, and additionally you’re saying me that I’m jealous. Well I know if I could provide good unique content then I shall get links from great places even from those big guns. I’m on the track of the list, made it to the list of toprank blog list, I know its just a matter of one fine article one day and bang!
So, I’m not jealous. What I mean is that Google penalizing bloggers to do paid reviews should not be done as it’s one of the major source of money for bloggers. Correct me if I’m wrong?
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