My view is the usual thing. I think this new rule proves that their PR thing has failed miserably and in order to avoid admitting that they (as every major corporation) are going to pass the buck on the “small guy” (us). Like You I don’t think they ever will develop such an algorithm as it is very much impossible. Why? If a human cannot distinguish between a paid link and a normal link than he will not be able to program a computer to recognize that. I think what will end up happening is that they will start punishing everyone. Virtually every webmaster is paying for links. (those that do not have an unknown websites). Sooner or later they also are going to start doing that to forums and so on. After awhile places like the biggest directories and forums and Text-link-ads and so on are going to start loosing money as many will not be paying to have their link shown somewhere without any effect. I know that most of the links that I have bought and sold will not get any hits ever, but their number does help in that same stupid PR and the sites search popularity. If those links are going to be marked as “nofollow” and put into the supplemental results then they are useless and I am sure as hell not going to pay Yahoo $300/year for a listing.
To me this is simply another way that Google is helping to put a nail into their coffin.

Share This