Looks like Rentals.com has entered the practice of buying links.
I just found a blogger that got paid for reviewing rentals.com. Of course, this practice is not something that Google likes to see. The following is from Google.
“If you want to sell a link, you should at least provide machine-readable disclosure for paid links by making your link in a way that doesn’t affect search engines. There’s a ton of ways to do that. For example, you could make a paid link go through a redirect where the redirect url is robot’ed out using robots.txt. You could also use the rel=nofollow attribute. I’ve said as much many times before, but I wanted to give a heads-up because Google is going to be looking at paid links more closely in the future.”
The link from the paid blogger does not have a machine readable disclosure (nofollow tag).
I like to keep my good karma intact and not fill out a Google spam report on this issue.
Rentals.com is buying links because they just got rid of RentClicks, and in a week or so when RentClicks is gone, the Rentals sites traffic will drop like a rock and they need links to push it back up.
I think this is a poor long term strategy. If I paid millions of dollars for RentClicks, RentalHouses and HomeRentalAds, I would have my whitest hat on when doing SEO on my sites. CSI could lose all that wonderful traffic all by putting on a black hat and paying for links and those purchased sites would be worth zero.
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14 users responded in this post
Dave,
What blogger are they buying links on?? I missed this one…But as usual…I’m always two steps behind you
Robbie,
If you like I can send you up to 6 links of people that I gotten paid or do a search on Bloglines or Google blogs for rentals.com or RentClicks and you will see them.
Looks like there are close to 100 bloggers they are paying and there is not a single no follow attribute.
Looks like they are using payperpost.com to broker the deals.
Also, seems very misleading that bloggers are talking about how they rented out their property so fast and they use all of the marketing buzz words like 3 million visitors, 30-day money back guarantee, 4 step sign-up process, etc
http://wuching.blogspot.com/2007/07/property-rental-made-easy.html
This Blogger is from Melbourne, AU. I didn’t think Rentals.com was in Australia.
The bottom line is they are not sponsoring these bloggers to get more traffic to their site directly. They are trying to manipulate the Google algorithm to increase page rank to get more traffic indirectly.
Google has been notified.
Jason,
I find it interesting that they are gambling with a multi-million dollar site buy purchasing links – I guess their SEO (perhaps the one they hired) didn’t tell them what can happen if Google finds out if Rentals.com is buying links.
Writing 100-200 words and getting paid $11 to $14 bucks just doesn’t sound right to me.
Hello, Dave
I found you on MyBlogLog after you failed to leave a clickable link on your comment at my blog, Advertising for Success. I was going to join your neighborhood.
Then I read this post and saw that you were not visiting to be neighborly, but rather to gather data on your competition.
If a reviewer is saying they used the service or they sold a house, etc.,using that service and they did not, that is a violation of the program rules and blogging ethics.
We are paid to write a review, not to lie. However, you could ignore the posts if you want because they are tagged with disclosure (the graphic above).
I have a disclosure on all my sponsored posts, I have site-wide disclosure policy, I adhere to the WOM Marketing Ethics, which I have posted on all my blogs and websites.
If you want to report your competition to Google, that is your right. You are also entitled to your opinion.
I have decided to be paid for mine. That is my right.
Eileen
Eileen,
Thanks for stopping by. The issue I have is you are getting paid to artificially inflate Rentals.com rankings by not placing a nofollow on their link to the site.
I understand you want to get paid, but why not do it by not passing credit?
Dave, if you paid me to review your website, would you want the link back to your site to be “no follow”?
Most advertisers and the programs emphasize they want the “follow.”
It is something I do for people who comment and for my advertisers.
You can get the no follow too, just develop relationships with bloggers of a like mind and soon you will be passing page rank too.
To your success!
Eileen
Eileen,
If I paid you for a link then I would like you to use a nofollow because if I didn’t Google might penalize me for it (and you too).
Most advertisers want the “follow” because they don’t care about the traffic from your site, they just want to artificially inflate their rankings.
I appreciate your debate on this issue. Can I ask how often you write posts for money on your blog? I am trying to understand where you are coming from.
I find it really impossible to believe all of these bloggers use rentals.com, especially in australia ????
They are all “inflated” and “bogus” end of story.
Over on the PPP (Pay for Post) forum they are discussing my view point about noFollow tags if anyone is interested.
http://boards.payperpost.com/viewtopic.php?p=90671#90671
I invited them to come over here so I can understand more about what they do. (One of them really didn’t like my offer that much and said that it has been debated to death). I thought it was a pretty friendly offer. They said “I didn’t get it” so I wanted to understand why I didn’t get it.
Just an update, I checked to see if Rentals.com is still providing that offer still and it appears they have pulled it. The point of this post was to stop Rentals.com from this black hat practice – it appears that this post has served its purpose.
Boy…This post sure got quiet….Knock…Knock!!
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