Comments on: If you can’t beat ‘em, report ‘em … or join ‘em

By: Brad Blogging

Brad Blogging — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 00:01:07 +0000

I think that the webmaster tools are terrific, and think that reporting links is a great new feature..

Trouble is – I have a hard time clicking the “Thumbs Up” button for Stumbleupon.. So theres little to no chance that I will report a link

By: Ramona Iftode

Ramona Iftode — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 14:52:22 +0000

I see these paid links as I see the link exchanges. The moment people realized this is a good way to “fool” Google, they started with: “Hello, My name is x. I would like to propose a link exchange with your site about y product. I have already placed the link. Thank you in advance.”

Do you think most of these people ask for exchanges (normally with a better positioned site) because they are already filled with eternal love for that site? Or did the 3 way link exchanges come up because we just wanted to play?

Let’s be serious. Some exchange links, some pay for them, others just wish they were invited to the “game”. And as long as Google knows to show me SPAM sites (really spammy sites), MFAs and all kinds of crap in the first results I assume it’s not my problem anymore. Not to mention the pleasure when you find your unique article stolen by a splog and weird enough it shows BEFORE you. I assume Google needs to work a tad on that famous algorithm. And these are issues more important than a link. When the stolen content fares better than my article that was posted BEFORE, we do have some issues

Love your blog, anyway .. thank you for a good read

By: Bill

Bill — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 23:14:06 +0000

Look in the mirror?

It isn’t like they are kicking puppies or beating the homeless here.

Melodramatic just a bit I think.

By: Promotional Dude

Promotional Dude — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 03:39:46 +0000

I don’t report them, like the previous commenter said: eventually it will catch up with them. Also I think that paid links are natural and were going on before it made a difference- Some called it (wait for it) ADVERTISING! It’s googles job to algorithmically figure out what is relevant advertising instead of asking you to do it for them. The acronym for SPAM is:
S ites
P ostitioned
A bove
M ine
So I am sure plenty of people will be doing reporting.
It won’t be me. That being said I think it is wrong to buy totally irrelevant paid links, but Google already said that they can spot those easily, so why ask us to police this?

By: Ben Holmes

Ben Holmes — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 17:45:35 +0000

I’ve always been of the opinion that you have to look yourself in the mirror. Long ago, I decided that if I couldn’t explain it to my mother with a straight face and no guilty conscience, I simply wasn’t going to do it. I think that in the long-term – search engines will continue to improve – meaning that these black-hat methods will only work until search engines figure it out – and if you’ll recall, so many of the older tricks no longer work. Honesty is still the best policy. (and you sleep well at night too!)