What Is A “Paid Link”?
Matt Cutts describes “what is a paid link” in his video on youtube. Matt and Google sides with the FTC. Transcript of his video below:
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Hi, everybody.
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Today I wanted to talk about paid links, and specifically,
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what are the Web Spam Team’s criteria for paid links?
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Now, this is kind of interesting,
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because the vast majority of the time, things
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are incredibly clear.
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People are paying money outright for links based on page rank,
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flowing the page rank, trying to get higher rankings.
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So here’s an example spam email that I got.
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“We are offering our high-quality, genuine PR
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five-to-nine sites for selling text links.
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We maintain these quality with our sites.”
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And they talk about unique content
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with maximum of five outbound links.
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They’re selling these no fake PR, no drop domains,
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that sort of thing.
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So 99.9% of the time, it’s abundantly clear
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that these are links that are being bought and paid and sold
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and all that sort of stuff.
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But every so often, people like to split hairs
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and they’ll ask questions, like, OK, Matt,
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but what about if I don’t give the guy money,
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but maybe I buy him some beer and some pizza,
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and then he happens to write about my site?
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Those sorts of things.
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So I wanted to walk through the criteria
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that we use when we assess whether a link would be paid
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or not.
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And the main thing that I want to say up front
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is, these are some of the criteria, but just like the web
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spam guidelines, basically say, look,
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anything that’s deceptive or manipulative or abusive we
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reserve the right to take action on.
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It’s the same sort of thing.
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If we see a new technique that people
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are trying to exploit people’s trust or something like that,
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we’re willing to take action on that as well.
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But if you look at it in a pretty clear lens,
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you can see that people like the Federal Trade
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Commission, the FTC, have actually defined, what does it
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mean to have a material connection if you
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are compensated?
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And so if I don’t cover the criteria or the examples
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that you’d be interested in, I would actually
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encourage this check out the FTC’s guidelines
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on that, or similar guidelines from other governmental
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agencies, because we actually hew pretty closely
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to the spirit behind those.
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So first off, what is the value of what you’re getting?
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Even Google’s Code of Conduct recognizes that if you get
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a $1.00 pen or something like that,
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that might not change your behavior.
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And so if you go to a conference,
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and you pick up a free t-shirt that’s probably
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pretty low-quality, that’s probably not
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going to change how you behave.
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That’s not going to change your behavior.
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On the other hand, if you someone pays you outright $600
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to link to you, that is clearly a lot of value.
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And so on the spectrum between a pen and a t-shirt,
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all the way up to something of great value,
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that’s one of the criteria that we use.
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Another good one is, how close is something to money?
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So, again, the vast majority of the time, people
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are actually giving you money.
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Sometimes people might say something
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like, hey, I’d like to send you a gift card.
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Well, you know what?
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Gift cards are pretty fungible.
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You can convert those to money and back and forth not too
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easily.
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On the other hand, something like,
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I’m going to give you a free trial of perfume,
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or I’m going to buy you a beer, or something like that–
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that’s less of a connection.
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But we do look at how close something is to actual money
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whenever we’re looking at those kinds of things.
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If somebody goes in buys you a dinner,
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and then you write a blog post four months later,
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and the dinner wasn’t some huge steak dinner with 18 courses,
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or something like that, that’s probably not the sort of thing
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that we would worry about as, as you would guess.
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Another criterion that we use is whether something
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is a gift or a loan.
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So imagine, for example, that somebody loaned out
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a car for someone to try out for a week versus giving them
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a car.
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There’s a big difference there.
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Because if you’re loaned a car for a week,
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you still have to maintain the insurance on your car.
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You still have to make sure you’ve got a place to store it.
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Whereas if someone gives you a new car,
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that is it something of a completely different nature.
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And so if somebody’s giving you a review copy
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and you have to return it, that’s a relatively
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well-respected thing where people understand,
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OK, I’m trying this out.
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I’m a gadget reviewer, or whatever.
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I get to see whether I like this camera or whatever,
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but I do have to send it back.
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Whereas if someone sends you a camera and then says,
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oh, you know what, just keep it, that’s
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going to be something that’s much closer to material
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compensation, in our opinion.
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We also look at the intended audience.
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And it can be hard to judge intent, but bear in mind
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that the vast majority of the time, the intent
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is crystal clear when someone’s giving you actual money
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to buy links.
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But for example, suppose someone went to a sales force
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conference?
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So they’re at Dreamforce, and they represent a nonprofit.
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And so they manage to say, OK, I’m a nonprofit.
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I’d like to try out your service.
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And so, at sales force conference, or Dreamforce,
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they got a year’s free use of the service.
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Now, the intent there was not to get someone
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to embed paid links within an editorial blog post.
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The intent was to try to sign somebody up, see how they liked
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it.
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They can be someone who could tell other people about it.
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Maybe it’s a subscription or a trial where
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they get six months free, and then
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after that, they have to either convert
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or start paying money, or something along those lines.
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That is something where the intent is not
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trying to get links for SEO value.
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It’s so that people can try it out.
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Similar sort of thing if you go to a conference, right?
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And it’s intended for programmers,
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like Google I/O. And you’re giving them a Nexus 7,
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or something like that, because you
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want them to write more Google Apps for tablets,
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or something along those sorts of lines.
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The difference would be, we have encountered
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people who are supposed to be reporters, who would say,
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if you give us a laptop, then we will write a nice story
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about you.
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And it’s giving me a laptop, not borrowing a laptop.
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I’ve certainly dealt with a few consultants who said something
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like, if you make sure that I get a really nice monitor,
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I’ll make sure that your report from this consultancy
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looks really good.
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And that’s not the sort of thing that we do,
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and it’s not the sort of thing that we
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would want to– you would want that to be disclosed.
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So another thing to consider is whether it would be a surprise.
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So if you’re a movie reviewer, it’s not a surprise
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that somebody probably lets you into the theater,
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and maybe you watch the movie for free.
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That’s not something that’s going to be a surprise.
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If it was a reporter for a tech blog,
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and they said, give me a laptop, and I get to keep it,
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that would be a surprise, and it was
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something that was not reviewing the laptop.
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It was just like, I’ll write about your startup
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if you give me a laptop.
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That would be the sort of thing that
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really should be disclosed.
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So when you’re looking at the criteria,
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first off, it’s how close is it to money,
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and how valuable is it?
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Because it’s normally money, and it’s normally
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the amount of money they’re paying to get links.
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We look at whether it’s a gift, whether it’s
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a loan, the intended audience– if somebody’s
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trying to get you to try out the product versus trying to get
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you to write about it, sponsored blog posts,
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and we’ll give you a little bit of free merchandise,
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but we really want you to write about it–
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those sorts of things.
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And then criteria like, would it be a surprise?
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Would people expect that as you’re writing a review,
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or you’re trying out some product?
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Or is it something that’s completely off-topic
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that is really not germane to writing
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about in a particular blog post, or something like that?
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So that gives you a little bit of the idea
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of the sorts of things that we look at.
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Again, most the time, it’s really clear
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because money is changing hands.
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But, in general, those are the sorts
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of things that we look at.
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If you have more questions, I’d encourage
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you to check out the FTC’s guidelines.
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They’ve got a lot of different examples,
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and most of the stuff that we view
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falls right down the same principles as the FTC.
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Hope that helps.
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