Say you've been reading a blog that has really good writing, and a lot of good info, maybe 70 % of the posts are very good and the other 30 % are that pay per post cr*p. You know, where they talk about refrigerators and women's undergarments for 200 words just so they can get some anchor text in on a link that only seems halfway retarded to the people who read it. Anyway, I just skip those posts, and actually benefit from reading the good ones.

If I wanted to link to one of the useful posts on this blog, and not to nofollow it because I'm not getting paid or rewarded, just pointing my readers to what I think is generally a good source, will that get me in a bad neighborhood, or make me an accessory to link dealing? (The blog does occasionally talk about link buying.)

My question is this. Can I stay on the sidelines for Google's beef with certain techniques and sites? Do I really have to shun (ever linking to) a site because they do something that's probably none of my business?

Interesting question that, I'm not really qualified to answer but here's my take anyway.

I don't see Google "punishing" any sites for the paid linking thing, they just don't pass PR. So if the blog linked to your site you're not going to get the PR benefit, I would assume that linking to the blog would be fine and PR from your site would pass to the blog post.

Does the Blog "nofollow" the paid posts? If they do that they're within Google' guidlines. Personally I link to anything I think is worthy and could'nt care less about Googles guidlines.

I look at it like this, John: if there are 30% of the posts on the blog that you don't trust with a clearly defined reason (i.e. that they're paid posts), that means that you don't trust or endorse the blog. You might believe the quote from the blog is valid, but you might not believe the blog itself is truly trustworthy.

For example, let's say I found a comment from Aaron Whine...er...Wall to be valid. Most of the time, he's a Louis Farrakhan clone (perhaps even with the same calypso background past) whose opinions and thoughts can only lead to trouble. So I don't endorse his site. But I may endorse an opinion and link to it because I feel it's valid.

In that instance, I'd use nofollow coupled with some CSS and/or possibly descriptive text indicating that I don't trust the site as a whole and why.

Look at it this way...there's no punishment that seems to come from using it, and there may well be some that comes from not using it.

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

I look at it like this, John: if there are 30% of the posts on the blog that you don't trust with a clearly defined reason (i.e. that they're paid posts), that means that you don't trust or endorse the blog. You might believe the quote from the blog is valid, but you might not believe the blog itself is truly trustworthy.

This is a whole other question I've been wanting to bring up. The idea of trust, either applying it to a individual site, or a bigger than half slice of a site, to a person on the other end of a network connection somewhere, a internet news outlet, ebay dealer, whathaveyou. In ebay people use the feedback system to decide to buy something or not, but all that really means is instead of this one guy, you're trusting the 100 people that gave him good feedback. They're all still strangers, though.

That's gonna be a future blog post after I've had time to look at more angles, but since you mention it, it sort of does get to what I'm asking here, doesn't it?

Hey John, since when you start worry about Google?
Please stop doing that. Next you start worry about Alexa's ranking and who knows what

Haven't you said once that you obligated to your site visitors only


fastreplies

I'm only obligated to visitors who run 5 copies of the Alexa Wonderbar when they visit my site and then turn them off for the rest of the internet.

No you wont get punished for that, google can stop the PR of a site but he does not have a right to punish any site for this. So dont you worry about it.

Don't think you would be punished, website doing paid reviews doesn't make up the kind of neighborhood which would get you punished for linking to but if you care so much about google punishing you use no follow.

Originally Posted by devilsmaster

No you wont get punished for that, google can stop the PR of a site but he does not have a right to punish any site for this. So dont you worry about it.

I never knew Google was a boy. I always thought it was a corporation. Now it all makes sense...big G is a bossy child with a toy trying to tell the other kids what they have to do in order to play with the toy.

I can't wait until Google's mom finds out about this. He's going to be sent to his room without any supper, I betcha!

That's an interesting point about trusting strangers that you bring up...I'm not sure what that does in respect to nofollow, but it definitely adds reason to the idea of explaining things to your users.

Originally Posted by dman_2007

Don't think you would be punished, website doing paid reviews doesn't make up the kind of neighborhood which would get you punished for linking to but if you care so much about google punishing you use no follow.

Review isn't really what the posts are. Ever read Consumer Reports? They destroy lots of cars every year just to find out what's the best gasoline and why. Then they write a 15 page print article about the chemistry of gas additives, the residue that gets left behind in your engine, how Shell's gas burns so much hotter than the cheap stuff that the residue is burnt away. Even if standard PC benchmarks are crap, you won't read a computer review that doesn't include several of them.

But when you see the 20th blog post that says something like "ever hate your bank? i'm so tired of high fees and this and that and boy did my check bounce and i don't like it so i tried a new bank account and its great", that's not a review. That's a concerted effort to Google Bomb some bank to the top of Page 1. Especially when scores of low-rate blogs have the same crappy text about nothing at all, that's only there to set up a half believable context for a link to be in.

I have no idea whether Google considers this a bad neighborhood, but I do. There are a lot of people who aren't gang members, but have a toe in the pool, as they say. With our meth epidemic, there are people who don't consider themselves meth users, but occasionally dabble in the stuff. It's strange to me, that there are blogs that have very good, legitimate content, but also do cheap tricks like this. For me, I can tell right away if any given post seems trustworthy, but I also want to be aware of the associations I create for myself.

Originally Posted by devilsmaster

No you wont get punished for that, google can stop the PR of a site but he does not have a right to punish any site for this. So dont you worry about it.

yes i am agree with @ devilsmaster

Well you may agree with that, but Google has "the right" to do absolutely anything they want with any site / page in their index they wish.

It's strange to me, that there are blogs that have very good, legitimate content, but also do cheap tricks like this.

It used to be strange to me too, until I realized that people are capable of absolutely anything at any time for any reason (or sometimes no reason at all).

That's what inspired my "think like an idiot" philosophy. If I think like an idiot, I might understand some of the things an idiot can come up with and block them.

Naah!
Thinking like an idiot just won't work. The real idiots can come up with something far stranger than the average person could ever imagine.

Hence the reason I said some of the things. The depth of society's stupidity is far greater than the depth of the collective intelligence of the two of us.