Posted Wednesday, July 30th, 2008. Filed under Google.
Eric Enge did an excellent interview with Priyank Garge, the director of product management for Yahoo Search Technology (YST).
The interview was almost exclusively centered around the topic of "links", and Eric did a great job of asking the right questions, and Priyank gave some great honest insights into his/Yahoo's view on links.
Here's what Priyank said about paid links:
There's no black and white policy that makes sense in our mind for paid links. The principle remains value to the users. If a paid link is not valuable to the users, we will not want to give it value. Our algorithms are being organized for detecting value to users. We feel most of the time that paid links are less valuable to users than organic links.
Eric adds more of his thoughts and analysis on his SearchEngineWatch article called Google vs. Yahoo on Paid Links. It's a must read.
This saves Yahoo from fighting a difficult battle, a battle that has led some to say that there's an arms race between Google and spammers. Certainly if this battle is inherently unwinnable, the Yahoo approach may be a pragmatic one.
It's nice to see how Yahoo treats different types of links. The Yahoo method seems pretty reasonable.
Do you agree with how Yahoo acts towards links that may appear to be paid, or how Google acts towards links that might appear to be paid?
Gregor: That's the most articulate and reasonable response I've yet heard about paid links. Forget (or at least, don't worry too much) about whether the links are paid for or not - focus on whether they're giving the user value, whether they're relevant and whether they're in a sensible neighbourhood.
Tony Tellijohn: At least someone in the SE world gets it. I always thought Google would have been the one to figure that route out, given their love of using technology to try to determine everything.
Amin: When I'm looking for information I don't actually care whether a link is paid or organic. I care whether it will take me closer to what I want.
Eric Enge: Thanks for the commentary on the interview and article Jim. I have to admit when I spoke with Priyank that I was a bit surprised at the response.
Joe Hunkins: Jim thanks for this insight. I'm hoping we'll see some breakthrough info on paid/traded/organic/whatever linking at SES this year.