| No, they aren't. Google is using FUD to scare sites into requesting links be removed that they never built on legitimate sites. No one can possibly guess which links an individual Googler will think "might" be paid. I assure you they guess wrong most of the time. As Google penalizes the best writers and blogs, one of two things happens: 1) Entire sites are being nofollowed - removing links to deserving sites. 2) The site refused to nofollow, so they stay penalized with PR0 no matter how good the site may be or how high the PR once was. The end result will be that even more black hat spammy MFA sites will rank. Sites that deserved to be written about and linked to will drop and be invisible. It is high time people stop defending Google when they are destroying small businesses and costing much needed jobs. Now Cutts has declared war on bloggers who often make a living writing. Google wants to destroy any site that enables advertisers and businesses to connect with sites where their target audience already is by forcing publishers to decide whether they want to risk losing organic traffic and being branded with a scarlet PR0 or to nofollow everything they ever write. Nofollow = NOT TRUSTED. We do not invest time writing about anything we do not trust. (On the VERY rare occasion we do we do not link to them.) We do not publish content that does not fit our audience. Every link is a potential risk. Nofollowing links may damage the sites we link to so what is a writer who already cares about what they write about supposed to do? Google has a monopoly on search because the wealthy elite who own the media handed it to them. People use it because in many cases they do not even know there is an alternative. Many use whatever is installed on their computers without even having any idea what it even is. People who are trying to clean up unnatural links penalties are not SEO experts. They rely on tools to tell them what links to remove. These tools are not very accurate. I've had them flag DMOZ, Best of the Web, and Business2Community as "toxic". Finally many remove and/or disavow every link in desperation. How does all that disavowing affect search results and individual sites? How many verify that requests to remove organically given links are from the actual site and not their unethical competitor. (Hint: almost none.) Many businesses fail waiting for recovery. Others get penalties lifted, but having removed links they no longer get any traffic. "Google didn't "force" sites into using the nofollow attribute by scaring them into thinking that their rankings would drop." YES, they most certainly DID! |