Google's Promises to Punish for Selling Backlinks - Myth?

Today the whole community of webmasters is buzzing about Google's promises to change their policy and fight more effectively the tactics of selling backlinks.

I am not going to dispute about the morality of purchasing backlinks for SEO purposes, because this is a subject for another discussion. But let's try to answer a simple question...

Is Google Really Capable of Stopping Backlink Selling?

And this is a very good question. What Google offers to do right now is to report sites that are selling backlinks and they will find out some algo to fight it. Google is not saying how exactly they will penalize, but I think the wisest idea would be to simply not count backlinks (in terms of rank calculation) if the site is reported for backlink selling. This should make the purchase of links not interesting for webmasters and break the whole trend of buying links for the sake of SEO.

BUT...

How exactly can Google tell good links (real links) from bad links (paid links made for the sake of SEO)?

I personally know many super reputable webmasters' forums that sell backlinks. Even on home page. (!) Intermingled with real backlinks (!). And Google will not be able to invent some algo that will tell good links from the bad links for all sites if the good and bad links are coming together. Because all links look super natural.

So, if it's impossible to invent this algo, this means sites that sell backlinks in a wise way are out of threat. And Google will be catching only stupid link farms and greedy average sites that create piles of backlinks.

Most probably Google will make a big public punishment for some minors - and that's it. Big sites will be still selling the backlinks. And webmasters will be still buying the backlinks.

All this makes me think that it's highly possible that Google creates the buzz trying to threat naive webmasters and scare them away from buying links.

But there have been many examples when Google's promises have been to far from what they have managed to do in real life.

P.S. And, by the way, don't you think that all this fuss about purchasing backlinks is a good proof that Google can still be manipulated with backlinks? :)

Link Exchange and Yahoo Pipes - Going Step by Step

This is step-by-step guide to successful combination of link exchange with Yahoo Pipes technology.

As promised in the previous article published on this blog here "Link Exchange and Yahoo Pipes" today I am going to show step by step how you can use Yahoo Pipes technology to get better effect from the link building.

I have recently made a test and created special Yahoo pipe (more details on this link exchange Yahoo pipe blog) which had three aims:
- get better Yahoo exposure/indexing;
- get more traffic from visitors of Yahoo Pipes;
- get more potential link exchange partners.

Today I am going to explain how exactly I made it.

I created a special Yahoo pipe where I submitted the RSS feeds on my sites that had link building directories. The beauty of Yahoo Pipes technology is that other people, who liked the way this or that pipe can simply click 'Clone' link and get this pipe ready for their editing.

Why Editing?

Because when you clone any pipe, you get the access to edit it any way you wish. And this is where the spin-off effect starts. People see my pipe, see from having my RSS feeds inside it I can really succeed with my aims (indexing, traffic and more link partners). They want to have the same, so they clone the pipe and ... add their own RSS feeds of link directories. Now all others who see this pipe will see MY directories plus THEIR directories. And then it becomes a snowball, with more and more people adding their feeds to the base.

The results of this strategy can be amazing!

First of all, the more people clone this pipe, the more popular it is in the eyes of Yahoo - hence, the faster is Yahoo indexing to all new pages in the link directories that submitted their feeds to the pipe. And deep indexing of all directory pages by Yahoo is a great victory.

Secondly, the more popular is any pipe, the more people see it. Hence, any site has more potential traffic.

And the third advantage - the more people see the directories, the more chances that you will catch 'some extra' good link partners for the sites, because people like joining winners.

How to Create Yahoo Pipe - Step by Step.

(1) Register Yahoo Account.

(2) Go to http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/ and click 'create a new pipe' button. This will send you to graphical interface where you can play with feeds any way you like: sort them, make them searchable for keywords, filter for unnecessary elements, etc.

BUT, before you start doing it yourself, better pick a good pipe and clone it. Because thus you will get a ready made pipe that you can experiment with and see the guts of this technology.

(3) Once your pipe is made, publish it, and Yahoo will do the rest. Yahoo promotes pipes and sends people there, Yahoo indexes the sites that submitted their feeds, because Yahoo wants to push this technology, hence it is quite logical that they help a little in indexing. So this is a great chance to use this opportunity.

Yahoo Pipes technology will help not only link exchange. You can make your articles more visible by submitting their RSS feed to the pipe. Or you can make your site network more visible. Anything that has RSS feed can give you extra help in Yahoo. Use Yahoo Pipes, and you will see that they really help.