Free links to your site…from google.com
I can’t believe a new feature from Google isn’t getting more notice, because it gives you quality links from a PR10 domain, for free.
Dave was rooting around in Google’s robots.txt file one night last week (as you do) which led him on to their sitemap, which eventually leads you to around 150,000 static URIs for Google user profiles. Most are content- and inlink-free as profiles haven’t seen much use across the Google platform as yet, but some profiles have picked up a couple of links and toolbar PR of their own. If you buy into the idea that domain authority is as large a factor as that of the specific page you receive a link from (and we do) free links don’t get much better than this.
Get them while they’re hot. Looks like we’re not the only ones who have noticed.
Google has a certification program for pharmacies? Who knew?!
Don Draper 1673 days ago
http://promote-my-site.comAdd a link and watch what happens. Google figures our who you are and proposes links to all the social media sites you’re a member of. This is proof that they’re building a huge social graph.
Patrick Altoft 1673 days ago
Even when they add nofollow then the profiles will still be full of spam.
Daniel Mcskelly 1673 days ago
http://www.bronco.co.ukIndeed. Bebo’d before they even get the profiles thing off the ground.
SEO Blog 1673 days ago
http://www.seonews.itGreat find
However I bet that in a couple of days, rel=”nofollow” will appear ..
Pablo 1673 days ago
http://www.pablogeo.comThis has been out for a lot of time.
I remember i added a link of mine many months ago.
But i think that if you don’t link your profile it doesn’t even get indexed. Mine at least is not.
Ben M 1673 days ago
http://www.justmeandmy.comJust checked it out and I don’t seem to have the same ‘privileges’ as what’s been suggested.
Unsure why but better luck next time!
Ben M
Daniel Mcskelly 1673 days ago
http://www.bronco.co.ukBen, do you have your profile set to public?
I’ve tried it from both my work and personal profile and works fine for me…I can add links using the “short bio” editor and the “Add links” form.
Patrick summed it up perfectly on twitter: “Rule 1 of the internet: If a big site lets you edit their pages then they will get spammed”.
Joe Hall 1673 days ago
http://www.jozsoft.com/blog/I just wrote about this, my blog has a screen shot.
http://www.jozsoft.com/blog/?p=17
Rae Hoffman 1673 days ago
http://www.sugarrae.comIt’s not like BBG having a Google profile was a secret dude, it is and always has been since we made it, right in our “social media” section in the sidebar of the site along with all the *other* social media profiles we have. But thanks for sticking us in with a bunch of shit spam sites. As for PR… our profile page is less than two months old and we didn’t see any boost in toolbar PR or ranks as a result of it, as an FYI, least not yet.
Daniel Mcskelly 1673 days ago
http://www.bronco.co.ukRae, I wasn’t trying lump BBG and the other profile I linked in with the spammers, I mentioned them purely because they were the first couple of profiles I came across that had toolbar PR. I didn’t even look at the actual site…if I’d known it was someone in the biz I’d have picked a different example!
Mike 1673 days ago
http://www.mercurythread.co.uk/Nice catch. Cant see how to make up a profile – I musn’t have the rights or something.
Daniel Mcskelly 1673 days ago
http://www.bronco.co.ukWorth mentioning that the only profiles we’ve seen with toolbar PR are those with links in from external sites, but imo the links alone wouldn’t account for their high PR so believe they’re also benefiting from authority trickle down.
Melanie Phung 1673 days ago
Not only isn’t this exactly new, but I could have sworn this was even on Sphinn a while back (where useful secrets go to blow up).
But now that everyone is pointing out how it can be abused by spammers, wait for this to become worthless in 5…4…3… 2…
TheMadHat 1673 days ago
http://www.themadhat.com/…1
I was using it for quick indexing. Had a few new sites I tested get indexed in a couple hours.
Now I guess I’ll use it to….send DaveN the bird.
Sam Freedoms Internet Marketing Controversy Blog 1672 days ago
http://controversialmarketing.blogspot.comThere may very well be some clever ways of gaming this. Thanks for this promising clue.
Adam Boulton 1672 days ago
http://connect.icrossing.co.ukWe picked up on this too, it might be an example of Google trying to compete with Facebook and linked.in for name and employment searches.
http://connect.icrossing.co.uk/google-compete-facebooks-public-profiles_827
Nick Wilsdon 1672 days ago
http://nickwilsdon.comPeople are forgetting though that Google doesn’t *need* nofollow to be added. They can quite easily achieve the same effect with an internal rule. They’ve been zapping links for ages now – how much juice are the followed footer links at the Standford Daily passing these days?
Nofollow is there to indicate to Google how you want the links treated. They especially don’t need this communication for one of their own sites. I would be shocked if this is passing any juice.
The only reason they would add nofollow now is as a PR move. In the current state, other UGC sites can point to this and ask why nofollow is absent (and ask why Google suggested *they* add it). I don’t think it would make any practical difference.
Nick Wilsdon 1672 days ago
http://nickwilsdon.com>the links alone wouldn’t account for their high PR so believe they’re also benefiting from authority trickle down.
@Daniel
All due respect but are you sure we’re not doing a re-run of the “Google Knols inherit authority” argument here?
Matt Cutts 1672 days ago
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/“If you buy into the idea that domain authority is as large a factor as that of the specific page you receive a link from (and we do) free links don’t get much better than this.”
Trust me, these profile links don’t benefit sites in that way, so: no, they don’t.
Daniel Mcskelly 1672 days ago
http://www.bronco.co.ukHah! My cunning plan to weasel information out of Matt paid off
Thanks for the clarification!
> All due respect but are you sure we’re not doing a re-run of the “Google Knols inherit authority” argument here?
Dunno, I didn’t pay much attention to knols Nick…just as you pointed out about these profiles I assumed there’d be something in place to prevent them from passing good vibes.
The thing I found most interesting about the public profiles is that the ones we’ve found with toolbar PR seem to have that out of all proportion to their inbound links, which *would* seem to add weight to the idea of inherited authority, even if links from them have been neutered to stop it being passed on to third party sites.
Another thing is that Patrick’s “Rule 1 of the internet: If a big site lets you edit their pages then they will get spammed” is just as true whether links are helping or not.
If there’s an invisible mechanism to stop them acting as a vote from Google that spam is going to be pretty high volume. If there’s a visible clue such as a nofollow you’re still going to get a ton of spam from the more clueless end of the black hat spectrum.
Nick Wilsdon 1671 days ago
http://nickwilsdon.com>out of all proportion to their inbound links
Yes but are you sure you’re seeing all their inbound links? That seemed to be the crutch of the Knol debate. People were only seeing a few of the available IBL and concluding that the unseen juice was coming from the domain authority itself.
Just throwing that in there though, we seem to be coming from the same place on the juice value
Thanks to Matt though for clarifying that point although now he’s got me wondering about the ways profile links *do* benefit sites. Just traffic I guess but you never know. Being in Russia has made me way too cryptic
Daniel Mcskelly 1671 days ago
http://www.bronco.co.ukBy no means sure I’m seeing all their IBLs – who can? – though I am using a mix of tools to scope them out. The paucity of links in across different profiles with PR2-3 would seem to back up the idea they’re link poor but have a high toolbar PR, relatively speaking.
» Randfish on the Roof | seoFM - der erste deutsche PodCast für SEOs und Online-Marketer 1671 days ago
[...] Kostenlose Links von Google.com – aber wohl nicht mehr lange [...]
Kevin Gibbons 1671 days ago
“Trust me, these profile links don’t benefit sites in that way, so: no, they don’t.
”
@mattcutts If that’s true why have the profiles now been removed? All of the profile links in this post are now 404′s.
Nick Wilsdon 1671 days ago
http://nickwilsdon.com@Kevin
Why wouldn’t Google manually remove obviously spammy material from their profiles section? They are doing this for Knols too, so I’m guessing the same quality check people are involved.
Personally I don’t think nofollow really deters many spammers from dropping their links anyway – so the benefit in adding it is marginal. At most, it’s a visible sign that Google will limit the juice but other engines don’t to the same degree. There is also that persistant rumour that *some* juice gets through anyway.
The only way to balance a link based algo seems to be large scale manual moderation. Whether it’s paid links or cleaning up UGC. No wonder Google are looking around at alternatives.
Kevin Gibbons 1671 days ago
http://www.seoptimise.comNick, I agree with what your saying but large scale manual moderation would be a huge job, is it really worth the effort?
I would have thought the best way would be to devalue all profile links, either by nofollow or
Kevin Gibbons 1671 days ago
http://www.seoptimise.comNick, I agree with what your saying but large scale manual moderation would be a huge job, is it really worth the effort?
I would have thought the best way would be to devalue all profile links by adding a nofollow attribute. If this isn’t used and links are automatically devalued internally by Google, surely this isn’t good as they’ll still have value in Yahoo and other SE’s?
Matt Ridout 1671 days ago
http://www.seounique.com/blogGood find – I also found another way to get a follow link on Google:
http://www.seounique.com/blog/how-to-get-a-text-link-on-google/
(Hope you don’t mind if I share?)
Nick Wilsdon 1671 days ago
http://nickwilsdon.com@Kevin
From a business case, it hardly hurts Google’s market position for the other indexes out there to be more spammy
Agree on the other point, it’s not scalable and not worth the effort. I’m sure this is why Google are looking for alternatives. Largely though you don’t need 100% moderation to be effective. Ban 500 sites for selling links and the news will stop another 5000 doing the same.
steve 1670 days ago
http://wallbrawl.comgone now
rickwang 1663 days ago
http://www.donglimotor.comI wanna make my website to be easily find when potential customers search products through the engine,can you tell me some free search engines ,especialy related to motors?
Thank you.
martin 1271 days ago
http://www.adastraseo.comRick Don’t go submitting your site to hundreds of worthless directories, It won’t make a difference. Great points made in this post. But when the masses jump on an Idea it turns sour pretty quick so Shhhhhhh is sometimes better? Thanks
albert 683 days ago
http://www.softnwords.comtrust me .the content you want to highlight will be sold in an unique portal of articles