I can't see why they'd show those donating 100-999 but without links unless they intended it as selling links.

Not good for a website thats supposed to set an example to us all.

The trouble with supporting a site just to get PageRank-carrying links is that you don't always get what you might want.

why not just put rel=nofollow on them? this IS the w3c after all.

OMG, one of the links there go straight to doorway page! lol
I am talking of the "Druckerpatrone / Tintenpatrone" link..

Smart move, dude... I am sure Matt is always very happy to get so many linkbuyers at one spot...

well that's the end of that for those guys then....... none of those links will count come monday morning....

(amazed to find at least two of the sites were under construction)

> why not just put rel=nofollow on them? this
> IS the w3c after all.

But remember the W3C never acknowledged the nofollow value in any official way (to my knowledge). In fact if you search for nofollow on w3.org you'll find mostly discussion of alternatives... they'd probably have named this rel="unknown" or so.

>> The trouble with supporting a site just to get PageRank-carrying links is that you don't always get what you might want.

Matt, so should I understand that W3C.org has it's PR transfering ability disabled ?

I don't think Google does things like that manually. Probably Matt wants to say that there are a lot of (unrelated) external links on that page, so they won't get too much GoogleJuice.

I'm reffering to another issue:

>> Reputable sites that sell links won’t have their search engine rankings or
>> PageRank penalized–a search for [daily cal] would still return dailycal.org.
>> However, link-selling sites can lose their ability to give reputation (e.g.
>> PageRank and anchortext).

Ionut wrote: they won't get too much GoogleJuice.

Define GoogleJuice.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_juice

Irrelevant.

What Matt probably means is that sites that have PaeRank 8 or above are monitored closely by Google and nofollwed from the other side.
I do not support this measure in many cases as I explained here thoruoghly: http://blogoscoped.com/forum/41263.html
But where the text link ads are totally out of place it may be the appropriate one.

quote from Google,
"Google does not sell placement within the results themselves (i.e., no one can buy a higher PageRank)."
well, your friend W3 does.

<total-guesswork>
Maybe a site that links to bad neighborhoods, like doorway pages, collects penalty points itself. This W3C page didn't connect enough points or else it wouldn't still have a PR9. Google won't manually penalize the domain W3.org for obvious reasons (it's a PageRank 10, well-linked site). But collecting penalty points devalues the page somehow. Penalty points are collected for such things as overlong titles, keyword repetitions, white-on-white links, links to bad neighborhoods, unnatural (tight) backlinks network, unnatural backlinks timing (no backlings for months, then 100,000 backlinks from one site all of a sudden, hinting at massive bought text links), etc. Collect too many penalty points and have a low PageRank and your site is blocked...
</total-guesswork>

Just got an email from the Google Community,
"Just a short email to say a few things.

There's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Google Community to support the W3C and help ourselves at the same time:
http://www.googlecommunity.com/about12895.html
..."

"The trouble with supporting a site just to get PageRank-carrying links is that you don't always get what you might want."

[I wonder what he meant by that ...]

[But do you get what you need? ...]

>> The trouble with supporting a site just to get PageRank-carrying links is that you don't always get what you might want.

I think (altough I just hope I'm right) that Matt was trying to say in a detour mode, that :

>> link-selling sites can lose their ability to give reputation (e.g. PageRank and anchortext).

Sorry, didn't mean to be cryptic. Cristian said it well.

For a site like W3C I would imagine that Google probably could block the ability to parse link authority on a per page level. The odds of Google getting a net gain in relevancy by blocking the W3's ability to pass authority across its entire site would be pretty low, IMHO.

> For a site like W3C I would imagine that Google
> probably could block the ability to parse link authority
> on a per page level.

That seems to be it, especially considering Matt confirmed Cristian's question.

Another thing that I bet Google does is look strings such as "sponsored/paid/etc. links" in the text and perhaps devalue those on a "per-block" section of a page. It maybe also look for not-so-obvious signatures such as footer text of blocks of 4 links to external web sites.

All part of the arms-race ... ironically, this probably penalizes folks who are more up-and-up about paid links by clearly defining them (which is easy to find on-page) such as major media organizations that sell links. For example, look at http://www.denverpost.com/ which has a "Sponsored" section of links (lower right side) which is cleary keyword driven.

If Google broadly supressess reputation passing from sites such as these mainstream sites (this practice appears to be wide-spread), and word "got out", it would have a pretty big impact.

look in ebay USA – pr7 link for 5 dollar per month ;) the w3 link is old and some of the sponsors are okay, or want you say that adobe.com is pr-seller?!

stupid discussion ... ;)

Even before Google existed it was common practice for sites to have steeper requirements of supporters in order to have live links. I've seen this in the not-for-profit world time and time again.

Of course, Google can do with their GoogleJuice that which they want, but to automatically assume that anyone that offers live links from their site as an added value for premium sponsorship is trying to game PageRank seems to contradict longstanding behaviors on the Web.

Well said, Mblair.

It's one thing to devalue the W3 page so that it doesn't pass-the-googlejuicy, but it's another thing altogether to assume that everyone on there advertised to squeeze the juice, per se.

Granted: tons of gamblers, pharma folks, whatever, but there are still some legit supporters there that shouldn't deserve to get penalized.

It's W3's own fault for doing something they should've known would attract so many link buyers. They should take any heat, not the advertisers or the actual supporters who got caught in the middle.

  

I don't think the advertisers are penalized in any way. You can (mostly) only get penalized for *linking* to a bad neighborhood (that is, the W3C could get penalized) but not for *being linked* from a bad neighborhood. Otherwise, everyone could kill other sites by creating bad neighborhoods, then linking to them, aka googlebowling.

Google says "There's almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index" ("almost" hinting at an interesting subtle exception here):
http://books.google.com/webmasters/facts.html

W3C have earned their karma. Let them burn it however they like. A link to a sponsor's site is no worse than a link to an advertiser's site.

I must admit that I am discusted to see some of the sites that are listed there next to mine.... The fact that they were approved by W3C is unfortunate..... I'm glad to support them, but I may not do it next year if my link is going to be amoung this same list.....

Unfortunetly, It grew for the worse and seemed to be promoted mostly for link sales... That's actually how I just found this topic here......