Search Engine Marketing Spot

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So we are starting to see Google removing pages of some directories in it’s index.  I figured it would only be a matter of time before Google would look at some directories and penalize them in some way or another.  At SES San Jose a big debate was that of paid links and what Google was trying to do to stop them.  These directories seem to be nothing more then a paid link farm.  There are no free listings, each listing is paid either for a regular listing or the directories featured listing.  In my opinion this is the big reason why these directories are starting to see penalties in the Google index.  Three or four years ago we saw the emergence of the “link farms” where sites were all inter linked with one another and you either got a free or paid listing.  Google then penalized these websites and the general public put a “spam site” label on a link farm site and or network.  Now that search engine marketing has changed since then, the need for links is still very important for any marketing campaign.  The Google algo loves websites that have a lot of other authority sites linking back to you, this is where your backlinks play an important role when trying to rank for your keywords.  The emergence of paid links has hit an all time high and Google is now trying to fix what they created.  If the page rank bar was not made public and Google putting to much emphasis on backlinks then I bet the paid links debate would not be as big as it is today.

Now this past weekend Google has penalized some directories from there index and removing a lot of there pages.  No reason has been made public yet as of this posting, if there has been please post here as I could not find anything.  I believe however that Google has penalized these directories because they seem to be nothing more then a paid link farm.  Take elegantdirectory.com for example, there are only two ways to get your website listed on this directory and yes you guessed it, both are paid options only.

1. Sponsor Listing (5 Free Deep Links): Guaranted 12-24 hours review, Pay $79.95 Yearly Fee and get sponsored link page listed. Your site will be listed above all other Paid listings. Individual pages of domain and sub-domains are accepted. Sponsored Listings on Top Level Categories are allowed.
2. Paid Listing: Guaranted 12-24 hours review, individual pages of domain and sub-domains are accepted. Pay one time fee of only $39.95

Look at that, 5 free deep links with a $80 per year fee and your site will be listed above all other “paid listings”.  Now we have heard that Google is starting to penalize websites that sell text link ads on there website by devaluing the link juice of that website.  Some ways that Google is determining if it is a possible paid text link or not is by seeing what other links are on that website.  If there are links to gardening, marketing, sports, gambling, adult, and other links they have no relevance on that page can raise the Google red flag.  Also if you list your text links under a category of “paid listings”, “sponsored links”, “paid links”, etc. that to will also raise the red flag.  Now that we see these directories are nothing more then “Paid Listings” why wouldn’t that raise the red flag to Google.

Paid links has been debated by many in the SEM community for the past four or five months and we are now starting to see Google try and put there foot down.  They have publicly stated they are against paid text links, they want webmasters to use the no follow tag on those paid text links (yea I wonder how many links would be sold then).  I just wonder what other directories will get hit with a penalty and which will not.