Branding Rant

I was recently invited to be a guest author on Freya Bletsoe’s business blog over here. She asked me to write about something pertaining to internet business so I figured it was a good chance to get something off my chest about Google’s stance against paid links.

Basically, I think people are making too big a deal out of the whole issue. When Google slapped some of the big names in the internet business industry, among them Yaro Starak, Darren Rowse and John Chow with PageRank penalties, their jaws dropped. Some more than others… Which is quite understandable, given the majority of their incomes and credibility depend on a healthy assortment of paid links and high Page Rank.

What I believe, is that it’s in the best interest of publishers, advertisers and browsers that Google slap penalties out there. Ultimately there are other ways of generating an income and there are other ways of promoting a business, this will help those parties to do that and it will make the web a better place to search for users.

Go on and read my article over at Freya’s blog here.

PS. I’m also upgraded to a PR 4 now. Hah! Feels kind of nice to hold this above some A-List bloggers out there. Although I know a link from my site is still probably not as valuable given the few pages I have here.