Don’t be scared about writing product reviews
In the past I have sometimes thought twice about writing reviews of products on blogs in case Google thought they were paid reviews. A couple of posts from Matt Cutts have got me thinking about where to draw the line.
Take a look at this post and this post, both are promoting products and link to them with some nice anchor text. If the writer wasn’t Matt and the seller wasn’t Amazon then I would be convinced it was a paid review. Pretty cynical I know but if I had written these on Blogstorm I would probably have felt the need to either nofollow the links or write a disclaimer that they were not paid reviews!
My point is that this review was exactly the same as a paid review, even though it wasn’t paid. So to turn things around it seems that I could write a paid review in the same manner and just not disclose that it was paid.
This would be against the Google Guidelines but how would anybody know? Is the review any less trustworthy if money has changed hands?
My view is that trust should flow through links whether they are paid or not - the trust should be based on the trust of the domain giving the link. If The Times starts selling links you can bet they are good ones and should pass trust to the target site. Note that I say “trust”, not anchor text.
If Google started ignoring anchor text from paid links but still let trusted sites pass their trust to other sites that might be a good solution to the paid links problem.
Categories: Google, Link Building
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I agree in fact I did one myself this morning:
http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2008/06/19/race-to-win-how-to-become-a-complete-champion-driver-derek-daly/
Keith Collantine June 19, 2008 2:04 pm | Reply
I’m not sure about paid link and never thought about it before. I like to the source at the bottom of “every” post and I only can see up growing traffic from google instead of penalization. My blog is still new though…
But I’m sure as long as you don’t do a advertising page stating you are selling Spot with PR as the bait, you will safe from google’s wrath..
Just my 1 cent.
Ken June 19, 2008 4:33 pm | Reply
Hi Patrick,
In over three years as a blogger, i did my share of paid and unpaid reviews. I chose my topics in the same manner though: interesting things to write about of companies who did not ask for a favorable review. I tend to say what I think and there’s always something that can be improved, no matter the field.
I believe the blogosphere needs honest reviews. If blogs are for some the main information source, this is a type of data they’d definitely need and appreciate. How to differentiate between paid and unpaid? It does not matter. What the readers will appreciate is the quality content, its usefulness.
Alina Popescu June 19, 2008 7:19 pm | Reply
Sometimes you get paid back with traffic for writing the free review, My watch-movies.net post almost looks like a review and in the last day or two it has just started sending some sick traffic to my site.
David Eaves June 19, 2008 8:28 pm | Reply
I agree with Alina about honest reviews - on my own blog I write about products and services all the time and sometimes they contain anchor text, just because it’s appropriate.
My view is that you shouldn’t worry about Google - people that read blogs for information will follow your links themselves so it doesn’t matter what sort of trust Google sees. The only bloggers that need to worry are those that are *trying* to pass on trust
Zoe June 20, 2008 9:29 am | Reply
Disclosure is important - I wouldn’t want to be the first blogger taken to court based on the consumer protection act.
If you do it, stick to B2B
Andy Beard June 20, 2008 5:27 pm | Reply