"As a publisher I refuse to nofollow any links, outside of banners and advertisements. I compel you to do the same." I believe you mean "implore."
Maybe he's just really powerful?
Google is Breaking the Internet
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Re: Google is Breaking the Internet
#22I talked about this phenomenon recently on This Week in Google with Leo Laporte and Gina Trapani: http://twit.tv/show/this-week-in-google/248 Skip to 4:15 in to listen to the discussion. Note that there are two different things to keep in mind when someone writes in and says "Hey, can you remove this link from your site?" Situation #1 is by far the most common. If a site gets dinged for linkspam and works to clean up…
Matt, this does not address whatsoever the point being brought up. And in case you missed it, I will try to cite it as clearly as possible here:
This is a case where google wants people to mold the internet according to what their current incarnation of their algorithm says the way it should be.
Rather than google trying to mold its algorithm to understand the internet, natural links vs. spams, and their respective authority and value.
Google here is saying that all links from this site are suspect, even when the link in question is 100% valid, quality and relevant.
Instead of going back to the drawing board and trying to fix the algorithm, google has discovered that since they are so big now, it is easier to play the "benevolent" dictator and dictate to the whole internet, how and what they should be doing.
And to mete out knuckle raps when they get out of line.
Do you see the point now?
The model (google's algo) should fit reality. Rather than forcing reality to fit the model.
I believe this is what the author is trying to communicate by saying "google is breaking the internet" - what he means is that the internet is becoming a 'google' version of itself, rather than what it would naturally be.
Re: Google is Breaking the Internet
#23I own http://ihackernews.com which reformats HackerNews for mobile phones. I had a DMCA takedown notice sent to me on behalf of a website owner who didn't want me linking to their site. My hosting provider gave me 24 hours to remove the link or else they'd cancel my account. The owner of the link claimed that their Google rankings were dropping because my site, iHackernews, linked to their site. With this, they were…
Interesting. Good to know how to deal with this problem should it arise.
In your case obviously it was unjust though.
Re: Google is Breaking the Internet
#24> Site owners and publishers are now afraid to link to each other because they don’t know how Google might respond to that link. For example, Wikipedia and the New York Times have added the “nofollow" attribute to most of the links outside of their editorial control.
I'm a little confused why he cares about nofollow links--if Google doesn't "own" the internet, what does nofollow matter? It's certainly better than not having a link at all.
Furthermore, the "credit" he so desperately wants publishers to receive is only a thing because of Google Page Rank in the first place.
Re: Google is Breaking the Internet
#25I talked about this phenomenon recently on This Week in Google with Leo Laporte and Gina Trapani: http://twit.tv/show/this-week-in-google/248 Skip to 4:15 in to listen to the discussion. Note that there are two different things to keep in mind when someone writes in and says "Hey, can you remove this link from your site?" Situation #1 is by far the most common. If a site gets dinged for linkspam and works to clean up…
Situation #1 happens fairly regularly - do you have/can you do a video that can be sent to the company asking for links to be removed which clearly explains what is happening? We have had clients such as a small bathroom fitting company where the company that made the showers that they fit demanded that our client remove all links to them. There was a degree of bad feeling, as our client fit a lot of showers from that company - the links were because they genuinely were endorsing them.
A video from Google would be useful to help explain what is happening here for all parties involved.
Re: Google is Breaking the Internet
#26I own http://ihackernews.com which reformats HackerNews for mobile phones. I had a DMCA takedown notice sent to me on behalf of a website owner who didn't want me linking to their site. My hosting provider gave me 24 hours to remove the link or else they'd cancel my account. The owner of the link claimed that their Google rankings were dropping because my site, iHackernews, linked to their site. With this, they were…
Why didn't you challenge the takedown notice as being fraudulent? As far as I know, DMCA does not prohibit linking to web pages; it's only about hosting someone else's copyrighted content on your site (or maybe posting links to pirated content).
Re: Google is Breaking the Internet
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Google considers his links low quality because they are. So what? Why should I have to care that Jeremy Palmer (or any other person) is linking to my site? The point of the article is that webmasters are going around trying to get links to their sites removed because it might get them penalised by Google. That is not natural or desirable behaviour. Site owners shouldn't have to care about that. Many have resorted t…
If you've got bad links, just disavow them. Wikipedia has to nofollow links because anybody in the world can add a spammy link to an article. NYT nofollows links because they're old media, and don't understand the web.
People use nofollow because they believe (rightly or wrongly, none of us know for sure since it's a secret) that if you link to a site that later turns out to be a link farm you can be punished for it because it appears to Google that you are part of the paid links scheme. 'Turns out' meaning either it was a link farm all along and you didn't notice, or didn't think it mattered, or because the site got bought/hacked and now is just a link farm. (I'm using 'link farm' in the broadest possible sense here since I'm not familiar with all the various ways a site can be deemed to be engaging in paid links and I believe there are quite a few and it's intentionally vague).
Even if Google isn't penalising you for that today, they may well tomorrow. So using nofollow seems like quite a rational thing to do for any individual site as there isn't any downside as far as I know, only potential benefits.
Additionally, manually disavowing links hardly seems like a scalable solution. As somebody with a small website that I spend very little time maintaining, I don't want to have to regularly be checking some Google console for 'bad links'that I have to manually disavow to prevent getting delisted.
Re: Google is Breaking the Internet
#28Jeremy Palmer is a SEO marketer, who also appears to be doing some scammy affiliate thing. Google considers his links low quality because they are low quality.
Yep. http://www.newspapergrl.com/affiliate-marketing-training-wit... It's hard to cry when justice is served.
It is really sad that instead of discussing the merit of his argument, we are debating the quality of OP's site.
It is ridiculous that I have to police my site for low quality inbound links or risk getting banned (even more so for mom and pop webmasters who are more susceptible to link penalties). Lastly, if you are penalized, try recovering unless you are big brand like Overstock or JCPenney with millions per year in Adwords spend.
Re: Google is Breaking the Internet
#29In some regards I agree. The rules are constantly shifting and they are unevenly enforced in a way that favors large, established sites which is frustrating for smaller players. Good examples here:
http://nenadseo.com/big-dogs/
At least the person mentioned in this article received an unnatural link notice. In other cases Google will just sink your site into oblivion overnight with no explanation or recourse.
At the same time, they have to deal with an entire industry that exists to exploit the very metrics they rely on to rank results so I don't blame them for just saying screw it, let's just float up our own content and well-known brands for every search and call it a day.
Re: Google is Breaking the Internet
#30This has happened to me too. A client who bought ads on my site wanted the links pulled so as not to make Google mad. That Google would think me a spammer is very very broken.