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It’s the weekend and so it is time for the fires of our boredom to be stoked by some conspiracy theories. Ted Murphy of IZEA (PayPerPost) is mad at Google; Duncan Riley of Techcrunch is mad at IZEA and MML (Make Money Online) bloggers and blogging moralists are mad at just about everything. Here’s the story.

Google purportedly dropped the PageRank of many sites that use services like PayPerPost to zero.

Duncan is saying that PayPerPost deserves this because they do not require in-post disclosure (though with SocialSpark, they will).

Commentators the web over are either maligning Google for manipulating the PageRank Happy Hammer ™ to suit their ethical position, or praising Google for finally “cleaning up its index.”

For once, I think everyone is correct. Let me explain.

Remember Folks, Google Is A Business

First, my disclosure per forma. I know one of the IZEA investors and have spoken to several people on the PPP team. I have nothing against their product but I don’t use it on any site that a write for. Now back to the show.

Google runs a business that is based almost exclusively on having tight control over how search engine rankings are arranged so that they can sell premium spots to advertisers. PayPerPost made the mistake early on of not playing nicely with Google and putting a “rel=nofollow” tag on all sponsored links. Had they done this from the beginning, none of these problems would have occurred.

Do I think Google is firing up a crusade against sponsored links? Yea, sure they are.

Do I think I think it’s a reasonable business decision? Yep, it’s their SERP and they will do what they want.

Do I think that it is “fair”. Not hardly, but what is?

Can Something Be A Conspiracy Theory If It’s True?

Duncan thinks that Ted has a conspiracy theory going. The upshot is that he is upset that Ted compared TechCrunch’s “Thanks To Our Sponsors” posts to paid advertorials. What I think that they are both missing is that from Google’s standpoint, it’s all the same thing.

The reason that TechCrunch hasn’t been hit is nothing less than luck mixed in with the fact that their “Sponsored Posts” are much harder to track down algorithmically. My humble suggestion is that Techcrunch should start adding “rel=nofollow” to those links. I would take that opinion all the way to the bank. As for the conspiracy.

Do most monetized blogs, TC and PPP sponsored bloggers alike, do things for money that they might not otherwise do without? That they do.

Is this wrong in any deeply ethical way? Not really. If it was, print media would have been out of business years ago.

Will talking to our government, as Ted suggests PPP bloggers do, make any difference? No. Our government can’t even get behind Net Neutrality. Trying to explain why SERP manipulation is wrong and expecting them to care, let alone fix it, seems naive.

Ethics Versus Capitalism: The Eternal Debate

Now for everyone else. The party line in the blog commenting community is either that we should all fear Google’s power to cripple businesses or we should all praise Google for acting proactively against Search Engine manipulation (which is what they call PayPerPost’s business model).

Is Google cleaning its index for the betterment of all of us? Doubtful. Google has its own advertisers to please. They are doing what they have to do in order to maintain growth.

Does Google have too much power? Probably. Though lets all remember that if you are relying on organic search results for all of your traffic, you are hitching your star to an out of control bullet train.

Can you do anything about it? Certainly. Evolve your business to not require Google as your exclusive source of traffic. Especially for bloggers, there are entire worlds of other traffic sources to tap.

Web 2.0 Roundup

The final question, of course, is whether PayPerPost is getting what it deserves.

PayPerPost is filled with bloggers who play nice and do their best to disclose as well as those who shirk all the rules, just like all ad networks. They are no worse than an ad network that knowingly sends a ton of its inventory to publishers who might not even speak the advertisers target language. Stringing PayPerPost up when other sites like ReviewMe, TLA and even networks like Adbrite are directly selling links seems unfair. Like I said earlier, what ever is?

My suggestion is that anyone who spends a lot of time worrying about PageRank, do yourself a favor and use “rel=nofollow”. If you want to get in line to sue Google about their unfair listing practices, be my guest but chances are the only thing that will get Google to change its listing (and delisting) practices is if advertisers ask for it.

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