How does Google determine if a link is paid or not?

[jampaper]

We are currently doing some outreach to bloggers to review our products and provide us with backlinks (preferably followed). The bloggers get to keep the products (usually about $30 worth). According to Google's link schemes, this is a no-no. But my question is, how would Google ever know if the blogger was paid or given freebies for their content?

This is the "best" article I could find related to the subject: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2332787/Matt-Cutts-Shares-4-Ways-Google-Evaluates-Paid-Links

The article tells us what qualifies as a paid link, but it doesn't tell us how Google identifies if links were paid or not. It also says that "loans" or okay, but "gifts" are not. How would Google know the difference? For all Google knows (maybe everything?), the blogger returned the products to us after reviewing them.

Does anyone have any ideas on this? Maybe Google watches over terms like, "this is a sponsored post" or "materials provided by 'x'". Even so, I hope that wouldn't be enough to warrant a penalty.

[WhoWuddaThunk]

I haven't reviewed all of the comments on this post thoroughly, but I thought it was imperative to mention this.  If you are paying someone to review your product they are required by law, at least in the U.S., to acknowledge that.  Not doing so would be violating FTC guidelines, and bring on potential fines.

Source:

http://www.business.ftc.gov/documents/bus71-ftcs-revised-endorsement-guideswhat-people-are-asking

[DanielFreedman]

Agree completely with the above responses.

Bottom line: Google has some of the smartest people in the world working on these issues. In the end, they will prevail.

The idea that can can fool Google or game the system is...well, foolish.

At best, you might be able to score some temporary gains by disregarding the guidelines.

And then the hammer will fall.

[ShaMenz]

Hi Jampaper,

Just to preface, I spend my days wading through the unnatural links sewer looking at the mess people have gotten themselves into because they thought they were smarter than Google or had that "how would Google ever know" thought in their heads.

EGOL is spot on with his response.

The criteria for undesirable links is not "how would Google ever know it's unnatural?", but "is it unnatural?"

On the "How", here are some things to consider:

1. Google's reach and ability to mine and interpret data (accurately or not) is so far outside our comprehension that it is probably better we don't even think about it.

2. Reviewers have a habit of unitentionally sharing information or creating patterns in the way they do things that are a clear red flag for orchestrated reviews

3. "These reviews always point to inner pages" ...Ooops! There's a pattern

4. "We're obviously targeting authoritative sites which do do reviews" ...Ooops! another pattern

5. Unnatural links on "Authoritative sites" would be more likely to enrage me if I were a member of the Webspam team than those on less influential sites. Let's face it, nobody ever sent me an email suggesting they could sell me links on a crap site

6. (and this you should take as very tongue in cheek, but perhaps give some thought to implications)
   This site has upwards of 400,000 community members. One of them is a guy who is currently on leave from his job at G, but occasionally comments on Moz blog posts that interest him (that's the tongue in cheek part as while it is possible, I seriously doubt he or any of the other Googlers who might be members spend time combing through this site looking for extra work!)

   However, it doesn't take much imagination to think there may be other people out there who could be made aware and if they were a certain kind of person might be likely to look into a backlink profile and perhaps lodge a report. Once the manual review process comes into play, the cleverness of the algorithm is irrelevant.

When you have a great product your customers will always be your best sales force! Do things that make THEM want to tell people how THEY feel about you. If you do that enough, even those Authoritative sites will be checking you out for themselves and gifting you natural links

Hope that helps,

Sha

[jampaper]

I will amend what I said. It's never sudden when we get a review, there's plenty of communication between both parties first. It takes a while. These reviews/backlinks always point to inner pages as well, so it's not like one product page has a lot of review backlinks.

Thank you for your help!

[EGOL]

We're obviously targeting authoritative sites which do do reviews.

OK... same crappy product getting no authentic reviews.  Suddenly a ton a reviews appear on "authoritative" websites.  Somebody did something to make that happen.

So Google has real people just combing the web for these types of cases? No algo?

They have a really simple algo that catches this stuff.

[jampaper]

That's what I thought. I believe the point of the article above was to more or less scare SEOs away from attempting to get paid links.

[jampaper]

We're obviously targeting authoritative sites which do do reviews.

"Engineers not required" is interesting. So Google has real people just combing the web for these types of cases? No algo?

[EGOL]

Product A exists for years and nobody is sayin' anything about it.  Then, BAM, a ton of crappy reviews appear on a bunch of crappy sites..... Somebody did somethin' to make that happen - especially when those reviews appear on sites that do not make a practice of reviewing products.   Engineers not required.

[Kingof5]

Google probably doesn't know. There are probably some incredibly convoluted methods they could use to determine it, but in general they don't know. This is why Penguin causes collateral damage and they haven't updated it again - they can't really differentiate between a spammy link / naturally placed link / negative SEO / etc.