Google Issues Stern Warning to Affiliate Sites

[Simon]

Originally Posted by PhoneMistress

...does anyone have a link or know the context of when Matt Cutts stated a few months back that Google will start focusing on porn sites?

I'll try to make it back here to talk about this more later, but I have a lot of billing and collecting work to take care of today.

In the meantime I just want to mention that it's very important to listen* to what Matt Cutts has to say. At the same time, it's also very important not to believe what he's telling you. There's usually some good information to be gleaned from his talks and replies to questions, but the good stuff is usually more in what he chooses not to say and in the way he replies, and not so much in the words that come out of his mouth.

*I mean "listen" as in video/audio of him, like this recent clip...



For instance, in this clip he hands out the clue that having nofollow links to your site will not hurt your rankings. What the clue means, and what he does not say, is that Google expects you to have a certain amount of nofollow links out there pointing to your site. If you don't, you'll have an unnatural link profile and may get slammed by some part of their algorithm.

Google will never do it, but it would be very cool if they'd add a "When Matt Cutts says... > What he means is..." option to their online language translator.

Okay, back to work and here.