I had to go to Google.gov to check and make sure it wasn’t true. What’s going on with the Google algorithm lately? Google has recently stated that they don’t like paid links which is fine, everyone can understand that Google’s algorithm is flawed, in that it doesn’t currently account for paid links. The problem is that many high powered relevant (and picky) directories are being devalued because of the type of advertising they have chosen to use, or at least that’s what the buzz is. There is a conversation going on about this very topic over at sphinn titled “Google Manually Penalizing Directories”.

The thing is these directories are not even ranking for their names and it looks like they have had some of their pages de-indexed. For a directory owner this could be a nightmare, missing out on that sweet Google traffic that is. The question that everyone has to ask is; can Google end up hurting their own search results by devaluing highly relevant directories? I would say there is a strong possibility of this happening. Even if a directory owner buys valid links to advertise their product should their raking be taken away? There could be some interesting arguments from either side on this one. This is very similar to what recently happened to John Chow and Text-Link-Ads when they were recently also devalued by Google.

The fact is, Google doesn’t mind you advertising but they think you should slap a condom on your link in the form of “nofollow.” The problem with this is that they won’t come clean on the effects of “nofollow” on search results, so people continue to use the old standby, the natural “follow” link. Will directory owners remove their paid links or will they start using Yahoo? It will be interesting to see if Google or Matt Cutts will have anything to say about this topic in the coming days. I have a question for you Matt? If you buy a site (already having links) from an individual and then change the domain to something you prefer, does this constitute as paid links. There are many ways you could stretch this conversation, one thing is for sure, clarity and openness would help the situation a bit, but then Google would be revealing trade secrets and that’s no fun for anyone.