The news that Google is penalizing blogs and websites that are selling text links is everywhere. According to reports, John Chow and Andy Beard’s visual Google page rank have gone down although their ‘actual’ page rank have remained intact. If you are using Firefox and has installed the ‘search status add-on‘, the visual page rank can be found at the lower right hand corner of your browser positioned next to Alexa traffic rank.

Is penalizing blogs and websites that sell links GOOD? Absolutely YES!

Google and Links

Google invented page ranking to aid it’s system in ranking blogs and websites in the result it returns to its users. Generally, those blogs or websites with higher page rank are ranked higher in the Google search results. Because of the potential traffic that blogs and websites can derive from Google, bloggers and webmasters invest time and resources to improve their page rank.

In ranking blogs and websites, Google relies on links. A blog or website with a high page rank are those that have high number of external links pointed to them. Google considers links as votes to the blog or website where it is pointed at. With the system in place, bloggers and webmasters tried all possible link baiting techniques to lure other bloggers to link to them and ultimately increase their site’s external links. Due to the high demand for links, link buying has become available to those who are willing to pay. Buying text link from blogs and websites with good page rank has also become a perfect alternative to earning links the natural way.

Search Engines, Page Ranks and Links

In an ideal Blogosphere, great blogs and websites should have the highest number of links. It also follows that those great blogs and websites have high Page Rank and that they should appear on top of search results. Unfortunately, the Blogosphere is not an ideal place. Especially when innovative, creative and deceptive bloggers and webmasters are around.

How many times have you tried using Google and was disappointed with the search results? How many searches have you made with Google and found out that the best link to your query was placed at the third or at the fifth page of the result? And how many times have you been pissed off by the irrelevant search result that Google returns? Who’s to be blamed for these irregularities? Blame it all to the flawed ranking system that Google uses to evaluate blogs and websites? Or should we also blame link buying and link selling?

Because of link buying and link selling, blogs and websites can easily increase their page rank, hence, appearing on top of Google search results. All it takes is a bounty financial resource for your blog or website to rank high. Unfair? Unfair.

Protecting Google’s Interest

Google thrive from netizens who use Google’s search engine to locate or search information around the web. You don’t need to study marketing to understand that you need to satisfy your customers. As for Google, the best way for them to do that is to refer their users to quality information that is most relevant to their queries.

Imagine creating a post for your readers where a link you’ve created using the anchor text ‘Make Money Online’ was directed to a ‘Pornsite’. What damage could it do to your blog’s reputation and your credibility as a blogger?

Google and Link Exchange

Despite the fact that Google is not an advocate of link buying and exchange links, it did not penalize blogs that exchanged links. There have been reports however that some blogs and websites have been penalized for turning their blogs or websites into a link farm.

Google and Blog Monetization

Blog monetization is a good thing. I’m sure that Google is not against Blog Monetization, otherwise, it shouldn’t have introduced Adsense, Google Referrals etc.

One of the ways to monetize your blog is to sell links to other websites or blogs. This practice however does not please Google for the simple reason that it compromises the quality of the results returned by Google to their users. That explains the recent move to Google to penalize link selling websites.

I am not against selling links and this post wasn’t created to persuade you to stop from selling links. This post was created in defence of Google’s move. If you perceive Google’s decision as power tripping then power tripping it is but I personally believe that there is a valid and good reason for Google to do such a move beside that fact that it is just protecting it’s own interest.

Anyway, Bloggers can still continue to sell links. Google can’t stop you from selling links or can’t dictate you what to do on your blog. Unfortunately, Google is sooo POWERFUL and INFLUENTIAL that I’ve decided to play by it’s rules.

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