Secrets out – It’s Trust that Google kills for paid links

by Patrick Altoft on / 12 responses

My presentation on Saturday at Think Visibility is about link building and the idea that there are three types of links – links for PageRank, links for TrustRank and links for keyword rankings.

People seem to worry about whether paid links and paid blog posts are passing PR or if they pass anchor text for keyword rankings but the actual issue is that paid links don’t pass Trust.

Makes sense when you think about it that way, doesn’t it?

Because Trust isn’t something that can be tested, unlike PageRank and anchor text, not many people really talk about whether a link passes Trust or not.

We’ve been focussing on building natural links for years and the thought that Google blocked Trust on paid links was one of the key factors behind that focus. Now Matt Cutts has blogged about it everybody else might catch on too.

The Forrester report discusses a recent “sponsored conversation” from Kmart, but I doubt whether mentions that even in that small test, Google found multiple bloggers that violated our quality guidelines and we took corresponding action. Those blogs are not trusted in Google’s algorithms any more.

Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Branded3, a Leeds SEO & Digital Agency specialising in SEO, Web Design, Development & Social Media.

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Comments

Read the 12 comments below, or add your own!

March 4, 2009 at 12:35pm

hi, Patrick, how’re you doing?

Interesting post – I always think of ‘Pagerank’ as being google’s ‘Trust’ algorithm & thus ‘links for trust’ & ‘links for pr’ would be the same thing. Would’ve been interested to hear you at ThinkVisibility & find out where you feel the difference lies. Sadly can no longer attend! Are you planning to stick your slides on slideshare or anything?

dan

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March 4, 2009 at 1:25pm

“links for PageRank, links for TrustRank and links for keyword rankings”

Totally agree Partick, although I also use links for non seo effect traffic generation and muddying/varying the link profile too if the link profile can me easily duped.

Looking forward to hearing you speak at TV and hope to catch a beer with you too:)

Shaun

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March 4, 2009 at 1:36pm

Dan – can I have your ThinkVisibility ticket if you can no longer attend? I was on holiday when the event was announced thus missing out.

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March 4, 2009 at 3:23pm

Google page rank is important but some people make it into first priority to only comment on blogs with high PR.I know of sites with PR zero that are ranking very well in the search engines and get loads of targeted traffic.My point is, Google looks at lots of things besides PR when deciding search engine ranking.

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March 4, 2009 at 4:49pm

I think you hit the nail on the head. Pagerank = link popularity but trustrank is far more valuable because once you get a degree of trust from google, you can do far more things in regards to building links.

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lee
March 4, 2009 at 6:09pm

Paid links still pass trust, pagerank or whatever you want to call it, provided Google don’t catch on that it was a paid link in the first place :)

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March 4, 2009 at 9:23pm

If we think about trust at human level we can get some variables that can be converted to the internet.
To trust someone you need time and interaction. Hardly any people will give relevant links and not talk about it.

If a like has been on a website for a litle period of time, maybe it’s not ready to be considered a “trusted” link I say less than 6 months.

There are so many aspects you can consider to get a good trust rank algorithm

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March 5, 2009 at 2:05pm

Good post,Great thoughts and helpful informations……

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March 5, 2009 at 10:58pm

Ah Paddy “talks a good game” Altoft.
Moneyexpert.com who you made a song and dance about for the entire time still sit top of the UK serps.

Position = success.

Talk = Rubbish.

Stop talking and start doing for a change.

Waffler.

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March 6, 2009 at 8:58am

Thanks Trevor for your valuable input :D

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May 4, 2009 at 3:57pm

Like Trevor’s idea… stop talking and start working… works for me…

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June 10, 2010 at 7:09pm

There is so much fear and paranoia surrounding “paid link”. A lot of people think they will be punished or penalized for purchasing links. If this were the case, then I would purchase some links for my competitors and watch them get spanked in the serps.

Also, what if I’m legitimately buying the links for traffic. Google would say that I should then add a no follow to this link. However, I’m not going to request that. If I buy a link that I think will send me traffic, I’m not going to go out of my way to request they make it a no follow link because I’m afraid I might get spanked. That would be silly.

The bottom line is that paid links will never hurt you. They may not help your page rank or position in the SERPS, but they will never hurt you.

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