Why webmasters are Afraid to give out any links, even merit based links

By: Tom Forrest
email: tomforrest@htpcompany.com


The paid link controversy just keeps on going. Everyone wants it to end and it just keeps on going. So why are webmasters afraid to give out any links at all, even for merit based links with no compensation involved?

Simple, because Google is not perfect and can make mistakes just like anyone else and if you give out no links at all then even though this is very sad, at least you know you are safe from any Google penalty.

I have this exact feeling myself, and many thousands of webmasters feel the same way. How do I know this? As part of my job my company does Google approved link building. That means you try to have other web sites link to your clients site based on merit only with no compensation involved. This is tough enough, and now with Google enforcing so many penalties the negative side effect of that is webmasters are afraid to give out any links at all. I sincerely believe Google has good intentions and is trying to do the right thing, or at least what they believe to be the right thing. However there are just issues in life that are not easy to solve and trying to solve them can cause very bad side effects. This is one of those cases. I am sure Google does not want webmasters to be afraid to give out any links at all. Yet this is what is happening today. Now I do not have any scientific study, however I do have data and I will share that with you. If my staff has contacted 3371 webmasters over the last six months to talk to them about merit based link building, and 37% of all the people we contact are afraid to give out any links at all, and say it is "against our company policy to give out any links" and when asked why they say "we are afraid Google will think they are paid links and we do not want to risk any chance of being penalized" then that is a data point that is telling me something. Again I know it is not a scientific study, yet my knowledge of this industry makes this a clear and undeniable factor to me.

 

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So will this change any time soon. I do not think so and I think it may even become more of a problem over time, with more and more webmasters afraid to give out any links at all. Even if they are merit based and there is no compensation involved.

Furthermore I have uncomfortable feelings myself where I force myself to give out merit based links on my web sites and I know I am doing nothing wrong yet I am still afraid that Google will unfairly penalize me. Why do I have this fear? Because about two years ago Google did unfairly penalize one of my web sites. I will tell you this Matt Cutts of Google did have it fixed for me quickly and the penalty was taken off in just a few days. So this is why I know that at least in some cases Google will fix their mistakes. However that fear still stays with me to this day. I was very glad when I heard that Google laid off all of their contractors, because even though I was not sure, my believe was that these contractors were incompetent and made too many mistakes letting evil guilty sites get away free and clear and innocent good sites were being unfairly penalized. Now I would say 70% of the evil sites that are clearly violating Google guidelines are being penalized by Google and they deserve it. However about 30% of web sites are perhaps in a grey area, I can study them and think they may or may not be on the take for their outbound links. This includes some of the most powerful sites in the world. I will give concrete examples of what I mean by the grey area. http://www.w3.org/ one of the most powerful sites in the world, they have a corporate policy not to give out any links that pass link juice. However some of the editors on their site do give out links. I am not going to give the exact page here, as I have written this exact example up in another article. Anyway how do I and or anyone know if they are taking money for their recommendations?

All I know is there is a clear question regarding this, if you had control of a PR9 page and you gave out links and it is against your companies policy to give out links and you did it anyway , would you not wonder if these same people were taking bribes to decide who to link out to?

Again I am not saying anyone is selling paid links on http://www.w3.org/ , I do not know this for sure. I just wonder about it.

Then one of the sites http://www.w3.org/ links to creates a PR8 site. And I am not going to out anyone here, yet I know for sure people that bought and sold this site just for the link juice.

It is still working very well for them today. I beleive this is a violation of Google guidelines.
If I was a competitor of the company doing this , I know I would think that it is unfair.

In summary I just wish there was a simple and easy way for Google to enforce their guidelines without making 37% of the webmasters out there afraid to give out any links at all. Besides just seeming very wrong to me, Google is also putting a bias on their results because of this. Google wants webmasters to give out merit based links freely and without fear. That is the normal freedom of the web, that Google PageRank was developed to detect.
So if a large percentage of webmasters are afraid and do not give out any links at all, this definitely causes a bias and affects Google results in a negative way.

Please feel free to email any comments to me at: tomforrest@htpcompany.com and I will post them here. Even if you totally do not agree with me I will still post your comments, as I am into freedom of speech, one of the greatest benefits of being an American.


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