In his post on hidden links Matt gives some details of links that were clearly designed to fool the search engines. However at the end of the post he slips this extra bit of information in:

To make sure that you’re in good shape, go with both human-readable disclosure and machine-readable disclosure, using any of the methods I mentioned above.

Further down in response to some comments he elaborates on his position as follows:

… paid links should provide some form of machine-readable disclosure (e.g. redirect through a url that is forbidden by robots.txt) so that search engines aren’t affected by the paid link.

This change in policy is exactly the opposite of Google’s published webmaster guidelines which state:

Make pages for users, not for search engines … Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”

Matt further states that Google will be looking at paid text advertising more closely and that they are now actively seeking reports from people willing to turn in other web publishers. This change in policy amounts to a virtual witch hunt where one publisher can turn in anyone whether they know the facts or not. One of the members of SEO Class Rae Hoffman writes:

My general opinions on paid links aren’t important and neither are yours. This isn’t about whether or not paid links should or shouldn’t have value. What matters is that Google is going to decide whether you’re good or evil based on a guess they know full well has a coin flip toss chance of being accurate in the case of paid links done well. What is important is that Google stands up and admits their own weakness and finds another solution to their issue that doesn’t involve penalizing me or you, based on their “best guess” to a problem they themselves created when they based their entire algorithm on links.

You may wonder does this really happen, does Google look at reported text link advertisements, and is this really something to be concerned about? In 2005 the well known and respected tech industry blogger Jeremy Zawodny was attacked on multiple fronts for selling text link advertising which caused Jeremy to respond:

Well, judging by the reaction to my sponsored links post I’ve struck a nerve. And I have to say, it feels like there’s a lot of unanswered questions and a lot of FUD out there. I’m still trying to digest everything. But so far I’ve found that there are at least three sides to this issue

While the issue did eventually die down, it seemed to coincidentally coincide with Jeremy’s announcement that he would stop selling advertising.

So the question remains; does Google have the right to tell you how to run your website and dictate how you are allowed to make a living? Andy Beal, internet marketing expert, has this to say:

I don’t like to impose on others, my thoughts on disclosure (I personally disclose any relationships in our disclosure policy), but I think Google is going too far with this “best practice”. What business does Google have in dictating the disclosure of any business relationships on others?

Some argue that would should accept and embrace Google’s policy because it makes the internet a better place. However I point out the naive nature of that belief on my blog:

… if you’re one of those people who think Google is in to make the world better, let’s remember Google is a for profit company. Their interest in keeping the organic side clean and spam free, is really governed by their need to maintain a spot people are willing to visit for them to put paid advertisements on.

This sentiment is echoed by Robert Scoble, a pioneer in the blogging world:

If Google’s result set isn’t the best Google’s market share will start to go down as people figure out there are better engines out there. That, in turn, will hurt Google’s advertising business. Not to mention that if advertisers know there’s a cheaper way to get onto Google’s search engine than by buying an ad, they’ll go with that system.

Jason Calcanis, former owner of Weblogs Inc now with Sequoia Capital, agrees this step is really about search engines protecting their business model:

SEO folks are going wild–as expected. 90% of SEO (yes, I made that % up) is going to end soon as a practice because Google/Yahoo/MSN and the other search engines are going to need to eliminate it in order to maintain the integrity of their indexes.

Over at Threadwatch, known for it’s critical views of the search engines and their motives this opinion emerges:

Google sells AdWords ads for companies selling text links. If they don’t like the practice why not start the cleanup at Google.com

Reactions are coming from all across the web in reference to what some feel is Google’s real intent. For example Jack of All Blogs says:

Now I’m not one to question Google’s methods, but this sounds like discrimination to me. And it sounds like Google is admitting that their algorithm still cannot match human intelligence when it comes to filtering content.

Tony Hung agrees and he asks:

Personally, I’m beginning to wonder whether or not if Google will EVER be able to meaningfully track paid links if they’re not overtly notified as such on your blog.

Chris Winfield from 10e20 wonders if this will be an effective tactic someone could use against you:

You want to knock off your fiercest competitor and have been trying to find a clever, new way. So you buy a few links on a bunch of different sites for your competitor and then go on over and fill out the link spam report with all of the juicy details. Your competitor gets banned from Google and you move up a spot in the SERPs.

This is the view shared by James Robertson:

I think Google needs to be careful about enforcement here, or a lot of innocent sites could get snagged.

And for those of you who thought you were earning an honest living selling advertising on your websites, Quadszilla of SEOBlackhat offers a wake up call of what Google now thinks about you:

It’s a war. Google has cast you as the enemy. Make sure you are prepared.

Some publishers aren’t at all happy about Google’s new position which they feel is dictating how you should run your website in a way that doesn’t inconvenience them:

The arrogance of Google knows no bounds – what right have they got to dictate to webmasters how they use their page space?

Commerce360 agrees that it’s not Google’s place to govern your business:

But shouldn’t you own your sliver of the value, and be able to monetize it? Both legally and morally in terms of the relationships between websites and the Google index? Why should they keep 100% of the value? And if sharing in that value is confusing to their algorithms, is that really our problem?

Over the years Google has shown a preference for working around problems in an algorithmic fashion because as webomatica points out:

You simply can’t scale humans looking at every link and determining if it was paid or not, especially when some of the sites are intentionally not disclosing financial relationships and keeping them hidden.

I’m sure the people at Google would fully endorse Markus Urban’s tongue in cheek solution of forcing publishers to label their links with their intent:

Hell, maybe we just need to create new linking standards since rel=”nofollow” is a little lacking these days. How about:

rel=”pure_and_organic”
rel=”paid_for_with_cash”
rel=”paid_for_with_googlecheckout”
rel=”as_a_favor”
rel=”I_own_the_parent_company_stock”
rel=”affiliate_link”
rel=”indirect_benefit”

Lastly Phillip Lessen points out that Google itself is not without fault when it comes to looking for ways to profit from web advertising:

The thing is: some paid links are intended to game the web and reap revenue without added value to end users. But you know what? Some AdSense too are intended to game the web and reap revenue without added value.

While Google may be the start page for the internet, they aren’t a body of elected officials appointed to protect our interests on the web. They are a public company who need to show growth and profit to their shareholders every quarter. If you agree that people should be able to build, publish and advertise on the web without Google acting as an ad hoc, defacto, regulating board that serves their own interests you need to help spread this information. Send a link to this post to friend via email, bookmark this post on social bookmarking sites like Digg, Netscape, and Delicious or write about it on your own website.

The more people that you can educate about Google’s intent to monopolize, rule and govern the way advertising is done on the internet, the better. We like Google and we feel they generally are a good company. What we don’t like is them telling anyone, including you, how you should run your business and why you should change it. There’s no need for you to sacrifice your profitability because their algorithm is unable to determine the intent of a link.