From Matt Cuts Q and A:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/q-a-thread-march-27-2006/

Q: “If one were to offer to sell space on their site (or consider purchasing it on another), would it be a good idea to offer to add a NOFOLLOW tag so to generate the traffic from the advertisement, but not have the appearence of artificial PR manipulation through purchasing of links?”
A: Yes, if you sell links, you should mark them with the nofollow tag. Not doing so can affect your reputation in Google.

Sounds like sites will penalized if the nofollow tag isn't used.

Also will there ba another PR update so soon?

Q: “Now that Bigdaddy is out, will there be a new export of PageRank anytime soon?” and “Will the deployment of BigDaddy stabilise the rolling PR issues we are experiencing at present?”
A: I’ll ask around about that. If there aren’t any logistical obstacles, I’ll ask if we could make a new set of PageRanks visible within the next couple weeks. I’d expect that as Bigdaddy stabilizes everywhere, the variation in toolbar PR for individual urls is more like to settle down too.

What will happen if the nofollow tags aren't in the links of my advertisers? Will it hurt my ranking? What if I add the nofollow tags and my advertisers are unhappy? It's a doubled edged sword. What to do???

I'm not entirely certain about this, but I would think that when Matt said it can affect your reputation that it wasn't an absolute. I would think that if the advertiser on your site wasn't reputable or you advertised your site on a less than reputable site then your site might be considered to be in a 'bad neighborhood' and lose some trustrank with Google.

However if the ads or sites in question were trusted sites I can't see how the link would hurt. It's hard to see how having an advertisement for apple.com or microsoft.com would hurt or cause any problems with Google. Of course if the advertisement was for "Larry's Link Farm' then yeah add that nofollow tag.

The nofollow is just for search engines so if your advertisers are only advertising on your site for the backlink then they would object. If they're advertising on your site because they want traffic specifically from your site it shouldn't be a problem.

I think as long as you use caution in who you let advertise on your site and on what sites you place advertisements you're ok.

I think as long as you use caution in who you let advertise on your site and on what sites you place advertisements you're ok.

That's pretty much why my signature is for Links to other Shopping Sites...Don't get me wrong, I like pharmacy sites, mortage sites, and the like, but I need to keep google liking me more than those, so I have to give what google wants.

-Brian

I don't believe this whole thing about not selling links, or adding nofollow attributes to links you sell. How the hell would google know what links have been purchased and which are links to other quality sites that the webmster think their visitors would like?

If google don't come out with something concrete regarding this soon people will end up putting nofollow attributes on every link out, and it will render pagerank completely useless.. (well, more useless than it is now)

Good point StOx. I think that's why it's more about the link and less about whether it's sold or not. However linking to 'bad neighborhoods' can get you in trouble and I think that's all Matt was really meaning in his blog.

If you sell ads you tend not to be as concerned with where they go as you are with how much they pay. A site you might not link to on your own you might if they pay you to add the link. It's easy to be less disciminating about the quality of the link when there's money involved

you don't have to give google what it wants at all.

What gives anyone the right to tell you how to link???
Especially when this stupid linking frenzy is Googles fault in the first place??

It's their job to work out how to fix the issue NOT leave it up to the webmaster to sort out their crap.

the rel=nofollow attribute was created to tell the engines that the link was not placed by the site owner, had not been verified and should not be trusted. NOT it's a paid advert for another site so shouldn't pass value.
It is arrogance in the extreme of Matt Cutts to come out with such a statement and expect anyone to jump through hoops.
It's your site! You have the right to sell paid adverts on it or to buy adverts for it. If Google want to be able to pass or not pass credit for the link it's up to them to sort out how it's done, not to come out with a veiled suggestion that anything you do will in some way cause problems.

Let them drop the (over)weighting they have on links, maybe then these stupid link exchange requests and schemes will disappear and we'll all get back to linking for the right reasons!!!

<end of rant. thank you for your patience>

Originally Posted by chrishirst

you don't have to give google what it wants at all.

What gives anyone the right to tell you how to link???
Especially when this stupid linking frenzy is Googles fault in the first place??

It's their job to work out how to fix the issue NOT leave it up to the webmaster to sort out their crap.

the rel=nofollow attribute was created to tell the engines that the link was not placed by the site owner, had not been verified and should not be trusted. NOT it's a paid advert for another site so shouldn't pass value.
It is arrogance in the extreme of Matt Cutts to come out with such a statement and expect anyone to jump through hoops.
It's your site! You have the right to sell paid adverts on it or to buy adverts for it. If Google want to be able to pass or not pass credit for the link it's up to them to sort out how it's done, not to come out with a veiled suggestion that anything you do will in some way cause problems.

Let them drop the (over)weighting they have on links, maybe then these stupid link exchange requests and schemes will disappear and we'll all get back to linking for the right reasons!!!

<end of rant. thank you for your patience>

It does appear google are trying to fix this mess they have created with thier "off site factors".
When they came out and said "PR is based on what sites link to you" did they honestly believe that people wouldn't start buying and selling text links?

It's such an easily corruptable method of deciding what sites are worthy of high pagerank,, they must have been drinking stupid juice when they thought people wouldn't exploit it.
Now they are trying to make you sort the mess out for them by suggesting that not adding nofollow attributes to text links may be damaging..
And like chris said, the nofollow attribute was desingned to be added to user submitted links that the webmaster can't veriify or vouch for, not links that are hardcoded into the site by the owner.

"We have created this amazing thing called 'pagerank', but for it to work we need every webmaster on the internet to play fair and and not sell text links, and if you do sell them we have to ask you to add a nofollow attribute to the link so we know it's been sold, we also have to ask you not to spam your link or use link baiting tactics,,,,,,,, apart from that it's completely flawless and a good way of knowing how good a site is"

Good point's all, and I had already decided shortly after the post to leave the adveriser links be and not care about it.

One of Google's main goals is to provide relevent content, plain and simple.

Take an example of 2 sites. One site sells links to businesses that match the content on the site and the other sells links to anyone.

Google wants the searcher to be able to get relevant information even in the ads that are placed on the site. This is what they do with adSense. So basically it all comes down to relevance. Is the page relevant, are the sites you link to relevant, are the ads you show relevant. I believe he's more saying if it's not a relevant ad put in nofollow. Just a thought and my opinion.

Originally Posted by WebcyteDesign

One of Google's main goals is to provide relevent content, plain and simple.

Take an example of 2 sites. One site sells links to businesses that match the content on the site and the other sells links to anyone.

Google wants the searcher to be able to get relevant information even in the ads that are placed on the site. This is what they do with adSense. So basically it all comes down to relevance. Is the page relevant, are the sites you link to relevant, are the ads you show relevant. I believe he's more saying if it's not a relevant ad put in nofollow. Just a thought and my opinion.

Good points, but I disagree with the statement of relevancy when it comes to selling advertising. I have every right as a webmaster with a webmaster related site to sell ads to other webmasters reguardless of the relevancy of their site. In other words, webmasters use my tools and some choose to support my site by becoming a sponsor. I don't care if they run a directory or a marriage counseling site. It's just webmasters helping webmasters.

Originally Posted by WebcyteDesign

Google wants the searcher to be able to get relevant information even in the ads that are placed on the site. This is what they do with adSense. So basically it all comes down to relevance. Is the page relevant, are the sites you link to relevant, are the ads you show relevant. I believe he's more saying if it's not a relevant ad put in nofollow. Just a thought and my opinion.

If that's what google want's then that's something they should do on thier own site and with thier own advertising program, but i don't see how they can ask everyone else to do the same.

If i own a site about cats and my friend owns a site about fire extinguishers, why shouldn't i link to him if i want to?
If google wants to give that link less weight then thats something they should do, but asking others to do it for them by adding nofollow attributes to link is out of line,, and to be honest none of thier business.

I agree that you have every right and I guess the point I'm trying to make is that relevant links to other sites make a difference. You have all the rights in the world to advertise who you want but I believe that a site with relevant advertising will get a bit of a nudge in rank over others that advertise anything. Similar to when someone links to you. Doesn't hurt to have a lot of links going to your site but it's much better if those links are relevant to what you do.

If by having advertising it hurts your ranking I believe that that is wrong and should be fixed, but I don't believe that is the case.

I really think the only way the ads could hurt you is you sell the space to spammy sites. I think it's all about trust rank and how if you link to untrustworthy sites they look at you a little more supiciously. I don't think advertisng in general is going to hurt you.

By the way, funny Chris. Made my friday afternoon.