Google Updates Link Schemes Guidelines, Hates on Footer Links

Google has updated their Link Schemes Guidelines – which to be honest – I think has made things that much worse. If you really read through the new guidelines – you’ll find that linking, in general, is really hard to do now. I guess the big problem here is that with terms as vague as “various sites” – you can interpret the guidelines in many different ways. Here’s some of the examples Google say’s violate the new guidelines:

• Links embedded in widgets that are distributed across various sites, for example:
  Visitors to this page: 1,472
  car insurance

• Widely distributed links in the footers of various sites

• Forum comments with optimized links in the post or signature, for example:
  Thanks, that’s great info!
  – Paul
  paul’s pizza san diego pizza best pizza san diego

Now, sure – there are widgets out there that have an abundance of pointless and irrelevant links embedded within them, much like the example, however there are also many that feature the link back to where you can get this widget yourself; along with those with relevant and beneficial links embedded within.

Furthermore widely distributed links in the footers of various sites – hurts every web designer, web developer, and anyone that has ever distributed something online that featured a link back. Think about it – every free template you’ve ever seen or downloaded had a link in the footer for the themes designer. Most websites these days feature a designed by/managed by xyz. Every blog template available on WordPress.com.

Moving on. Forum signatures are fairly well monitored on the majority of communities – so now we’re just removing people that register on Web Hosting Talk – with their hosting company and quick contact info posted in their signatures – allowing you to tell, at a glance, who is posting. Think about it – on communities such as that – the username “JoshK83” doesn’t really tell you that it’s Josh from XYZ Hosting. This same example can be used across all fields – an automotive community and it’s vendors; a service business and it’s staff, etc.

So really, these guidelines can become more of an inconvenience for the end-user, than a benefit; and isn’t Google always going on about how building and running your website should be done in an effort to make things better for the end user, not worse?