pagerank

Malcolm Coles:

Google says it has "taken action" and no longer trusts links from a major UK newspaper group – apparently referring to the Daily Express website.

In April, an Express Group email was made public offering links in online "SEO editorials" from £1,000 – with the aim of improving search engine rankings.

Such paid links are against Google's "terms of service" – and the Express (and OK) site initially suffered a page rank penalty in Google's toolbar (ie not much of a punishment at all).

But Google has now gone further, according to an interview with Google's search quality team at Digital Inspiration.

[…]

The only incident I know of recently in the UK is the Express case – so Matt Cutts appears to be saying the Express site (and presumably OK site) are no longer trusted.

Whatever your views on outing SEO tactics, this would be a fairly severe penalty for not using nofollow on paid links if carried forward.

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Del.ici.us tags: malcolmcoles google dailyexpress seo advertorial pagerank termsofservice

Google’s Cohen: Make Sure User Experience Comes First, Not Search Engine Visibility – Poynter Online

Charles Yoo writing at Poynter Online:

"Google News chief Josh Cohen says a key to success in online publishing is this: Focus on "creating a more engaging experience for the users so that they spend a longer period of time per visit."

But, if Google cares so much about journalism, why not tweak PageRank and give more weight to news sites? (AP, which has been negotiating its contract with Google, reportedly wants its content ranked higher.)

"One person's branded or 'high quality' information isn't necessarily going to align with another's. So having some human come in and say, 'Well, this is good journalism and that is bad journalism' isn't consistent with our approach of trying to show unbiased results," said Cohen, product manager for Google News, in a phone interview."

Del.ici.us tags: googlenews google journalism pagerank usability poynter joshcohen charlesyoo