Today my good buddy Brent Csutoras put up a post about digg selling text links on the site. Basically digg now has someone sponsoring the “digg dialogg” (yeah – the 2.0 spelling annoys me too). In the screenshot on Brent’s site you can clearly see that it says “Presented by Freecreditreport.com”.
Big Hairy Frakkin Deal! (I’m on season 3 of BSG – it’s killer)
What’s that you say? Digg is selling text links? Maybe. MAYBE they are just selling perfectly legit sponsorships and the first customer just happened to have a great keyword rich domain and digg didn’t bother to kiss Google’s ass and nofollow the link or put it behind a redirect. I don’t think we need to bust out the pitchforks and torches and swarm the fortress just yet. I’d like to see a second sponsor and what that link looks like. If they sell a sponsorship to an airline and the link says “cheap airfare” I’ll lead the charge.
Initially the link was followed and since the news broke digg decided to avoid a public beating for a second time in a few weeks and now they’ve nofollowed the sponsored links.
Google has us running so scared that we’re once again doing their jobs for them. The link clearly disclosed that it was sponsored. In my book that should be enough. Sure Google would like us to put that crap in javascript, use a nofollow blah blah blah. Google has a ton of pretty clever people over there. How about we make them earn their paychecks and sort out the linking issues on their own.
Google has billions of our ad dollars in the bank. Let’s make them spend some of that fixing their own problems. Can ya digg it?
knofun
April 24th, 2009 at 12:42 pmTRUE. Google is not the internet. Build your sites how YOU want to, not how Google wants you to. They are not the be all end all of web marketing… until everyone believes they are.
Disa Johnson
April 24th, 2009 at 1:13 pmI had the same non-reaction as apparently you had. It prompted a Facebook rant, and on a call this afternoon I brought this up with a client too. Widespread speculation online has really increased 10-fold over the years that blogs have come of age. Now Twitter status updates are… how would David Bowie put this… um, putting out fire with gasoline.
eddie
April 24th, 2009 at 9:53 pmyou say that in your book having the “sponsored” disclosure is enough, but you forget you are not the one writing the book: google specifically mentions it should use nofollow (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/selling-links-that-pass-pagerank/)
and yes, google already got it sorted out as far as who is going to do their job (since it is practically impossible for an algo to catch 100% of said instances). if the sponsored link doesnt use nofollow, there are two possibilities: if you are high profile enough your own community will sound the alarm OR your competitor will rat you out with there enough at stake for any of the affected parties.
Melayu Boleh
April 25th, 2009 at 3:17 ameveryone are scaring of google slap.
hoho. even digg are going to sell text link.
why shouldnt we?
Mike
April 27th, 2009 at 12:51 amDigg Dialogg?
Gimme a fraking break.
About paid links, well, this is Google’s war, I don’t see why everyone must participate in it.
commercial grinder
April 28th, 2009 at 2:24 pmto the general public, google is, well, the internet. many people don’t even know the difference between the URL box and the search engine box. To many companies SEO is the driving factor in sales. Yes, it’s getting to be too much but isn’t that what happens to all mediums once they are overused?
John Sullivan
April 30th, 2009 at 11:51 amGreat post and I know EVERYONE would love to see DIGG get a smack down to a PR2 or better yet Zero and I wouldn’t put it past Google but we all know that won’t happen.
The one thing that does disturb me is how ungrateful people are when a site makes a move to make a buck we have an opinion ? Think of all the useless people that have to get paid. I like Kevin Rose but I don’t like DIGG. I used to worship Google now they are KING but tomorrow it may be YOU
Stumbled and no I don’t like stumble LOL
Roberto Gilato
May 7th, 2009 at 3:11 pmHa, agreed. Good for Digg! I wish people would start a group to boycott google, they have more information than most corporations in the world and can track viruses faster than any health professional organization. Google holds so so much power right now that they have the power to crash so many businesses in one simple change in their Algorithm
Jeet
May 10th, 2009 at 9:22 amI noticed the link but didn’t bother to check it was not nofollow-ed. This makes me think, google indeed is so bad at detecting paid links, that’s the reason I see so many people buying and selling links on webmaster forums.
@John: I don’t care about Digg’s PR, all I care about is seeing some interesting stories in their technology section. I also follow the comics & animation section for new stories
magazine
May 18th, 2009 at 12:27 am“Google has a ton of pretty clever people over there. How about we make them earn their paychecks and sort out the linking issues on their own.”
Exactly.
i am really sick of google trying to tell everyone else what to/how to do everything. Google needs to check itself
Flug Kos
May 20th, 2009 at 5:09 amI think, that digg has to be careful. They´re not so great, that they can abstain from the traffic, google is spending.
Web Hosting ASAP
June 13th, 2009 at 4:44 amI think – so long as everything is kept on topic, google really shouldn’t have a say – linking to your website from a perfectly good (intelligent, well thought) comment on another person’s blog and such should be well worth it…
Dave
June 14th, 2009 at 3:35 pmI agree. Digg should just do what they want. It’s their site, and they’re big enough now.
Amazon Gift Cards
June 15th, 2009 at 12:57 pmBetween the “Digg Bar” and them selling links like that, I agree…they need to be very careful. I think there are much more creative ways to monetize a platform like they have.
Jaime Suplee
June 18th, 2009 at 1:33 amGoogle gives best results, Most relevent results rather then any search engines thats why google is used by 70% users and 13% user goes to yahoo and then other. try to think as a user, When google is giving exactly what user seeks and for that if he follow some rules like “no site can sell links etc” Its right. I also think sometime that google do monoply but always think once as a normal user now a webmaster.
Bertholemeuw
June 18th, 2009 at 4:36 amEvery social site have ads.
Eiweiss
June 23rd, 2009 at 3:34 amMy opinion is, online-marketing is not google alone.
Text-links can bring good positions AND visitors!
Jay
June 23rd, 2009 at 2:42 pmactually, Google IS the internet and it will take a lot more thank thinking otherwise to change it. hope it happens soon.
Ryan v.
July 1st, 2009 at 3:39 pmUndoubtedly, if you don’t obey google, you don’t rank. I don’t see what is so wrong with google’s idea of the web. It’s all based around trust. Trustworthy links are worth more. Trustworthy sites rank better. If you try and scam the system, well, you simply aren’t trustworthy in googles eyes so they take you out of their system.
Seems all to fair to me.
Stay trustworthy and stay on top.
Henal Patel Carmine
July 3rd, 2009 at 9:12 pmI agree with the above comment, Google is all about weeding out the imposters and having reputable informative websites online. if they didn’t do this we would have to wade our way through a lot of useless sites to find anything decent.
lxg
July 21st, 2009 at 11:08 amI had the same non-reaction as apparently you had. It prompted a Facebook rant, and on a call this afternoon I brought this up with a client too. Widespread speculation online has really increased 10-fold over the years that blogs have come of age. Now Twitter status updates are… how would David Bowie put this… um, putting out fire with gasoline.
Dawkey
July 21st, 2009 at 11:09 ami had the problem to .
Dawkey
July 21st, 2009 at 11:10 amI agree with the above comment, Google is all about weeding out the imposters
SEM Business Blueprint Review
July 22nd, 2009 at 8:05 amThis also annoyed me a lot. However, Its their website and they’re free to do what they think best for Digg.