What are your views on recent statements regarding "advertorial" content?

[ontarget-media]

Hi,

Recently, there's been a lot said and written about how Google is going to come down hard on 'advertorial' content.

Many B2B publishers provide exposure to their clients by creating and publishing content about them -----based on information/ content obtained from clients (for example, in the form of press releases) or compiled by the publisher.  From a target audience/ user perspective, this is useful information that the publication is bringing to its audience.  Also, let's say the publishers don't link directly to client websites.

In such a case, how do you think Google is likely to look at publisher websites in the context of the recent statements related to 'advertorial' type content?

Look forward to views of the Moz community.

Thanks,

Manoj

[MatthewBarby]

Hi Manoj,

You have to be really careful here, Matt Cutts came out and said:

“If a link in a paid post would affect search engines, that link should not pass PageRank (e.g. by using the nofollow attribute).”

If you're paying for an article to be placed then make sure that you nofollow the link because, like with the big InterFlora case, you will get punished.

Matt

[ontarget-media]

Thanks, Matt.

Yes, this issue with advertorial content is two-fold

a) With links and flow of PageRank --- which I suppose is more straightforward and a no-no. However, what's the likely impact on services such as PRWEb, PRLeap etc.?

b) Content that may have been generated and published as a result of commercial arrangement between two parties, but without any links and flow of PageRank. Need to consider this in the context of a supposedly a better understanding and reliance on entities-associations for ranking purposes.