There’s a reason that paid reviews or advertorials are labelled as such – so as to not mislead the reader. Remove the labelling and all you’re left with is a lie. Plain and simple.

Law or no law, legislation or no legislation, directive or no directive – if you’re going to conduct yourself in such a way as to purposely mislead others, then I think you at least deserve to be publicly exposed and shamed. Happy days if you can be fined/prosecuted, but lets be honest, what are the actual chances of that happening? In Ireland – slim, in my opinion.

“the internet is the ultimate free information source but the reason we have so much information on it is because it is paid for at some stage or is created with the hope of being paid for it.” – Certainly, some of it is. The impression that I get, though, is that anyone producing WORTHWHILE content is either doing it because they like doing it, or can make decent money on legit. ads, or both.

“i fear if you start picking off ad networks left right and centre, you’re ultimately stunting growth, but i guess that’s my opinion.. we’re all different” – Only the dodgy ones need to be picked off. Google is doing a rather nice job, IMO, but sensible laws on deceptive advertising can only help.

but if you take out every single blog with a paid link or sponsored review on it, you’re killing business, that’s my point.

the internet is the ultimate free information source but the reason we have so much information on it is because it is paid for at some stage or is created with the hope of being paid for it.

i fear if you start picking off ad networks left right and centre, you’re ultimately stunting growth, but i guess that’s my opinion.. we’re all different

“Passing on PR/manipulating SERPS happened long before PPP.” – Not denying that; my big issue with PPP and similar is the whole deception factor. Google is beginning to deal rather effectively with link sale, anyway; searching for ‘text link ads’ no longer gets you their site.

“You could arguep link exchanges are in fact designed to manipulate SERPS” – They are, and Google frowns upon them.

“Do we ban the index:follow altogether on all links and re-jig the SERPS??” – What? No. Just link to things for sensible reasons, not because you’re being bribed.

“Blogs are a very powerful, rapid way of getting at consumers for advertisers.” – How nice for them. I honestly couldn’t care less about the ‘needs’ of advertisers. Bribing journalists to mention them positively on the front page of national newspapers would be very powerful, as well, but it is _frowned upon_.

“Most sites aren’t blessed with instant traffic or publicity…” – Anything good will become popular pretty quickly. Have you noticed that it’s generally horrible crap which uses underhanded advertising of this sort?

“On the flip side, bloggers get to earn cash doing something they love.” – Where ’something they love’ is deceiving their readers, eh?

“You can of course argue the toss that readers must come in to it and of course come before all business…” – Indeed. When did blogging become a get-rich-quick scheme? I blame ProBlogger and other such tripe.

“But as a reader of blogs myself, i much prefer sponsored reviews over pop ups/ebooks/landing pages or flash graphic ads.” – I’d never trust any blog which had any of these things, except POSSIBLY graphical ads. In particular, real blogs never have ebooks; ebooks are the domain of get-rich-quick gits. I’d also never trust a service advertised through PPP. I can sort of excuse people who fell for TLA when it turned up; I flirted with it myself, though got cautious at the last minute. I don’t think people were really aware it was a Google-manipulation racket.

I mean, blogging doesn’t cost you anything, really, these days. There are adequate free services. It’s about writing about things you’re interested in, not making a fortune out of pedalling pointless crap.

“I do agree the review tone should be left up to the reviewer… but i have to say most ads are labelled as buzz or neutral in tone; in other words they don’t *have* to be positive, advertisers just want to raise awareness and get traffic.” – It’s called astroturfing, and it’s generally frowned upon in decent circles.

Do we ban the index:follow altogether on all links and re-jig the SERPS??

Blogs are a very powerful, rapid way of getting at consumers for advertisers. Most sites aren’t blessed with instant traffic or publicity and from an advertisers point of view, blogs are a good place to start. On the flip side, bloggers get to earn cash doing something they love.

You can of course argue the toss that readers must come in to it and of course come before all business…. But as a reader of blogs myself, i much prefer sponsored reviews over pop ups/ebooks/landing pages or flash graphic ads. Perhaps i’m in the minority, i don’t know.

I do agree the review tone should be left up to the reviewer… but i have to say most ads are labelled as buzz or neutral in tone; in other words they don’t *have* to be positive, advertisers just want to raise awareness and get traffic.

damien: according to Matt Cutts, you can report this sort of thing by going to Google spam report, and using the ‘word’ ‘paidlink’ in your description. (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-to-report-paid-links/)

It might be useful to compare them to schemes like Amway, where people are influenced by the possibility of making money to overhype a product to their friends.

Basically, if I’m reading a blog I trust, and I see a review there, I am inclined to expect the review to be truthful, not paid for.

PayPerPost, in practice, is also often used to buy PageRank-passing links; that is, it is a mechanism to degrade search results for the general public, so that someone can make money.

In fairness, PayPerPost has made some improvements lately; they (kinda) require disclosure that the reviews aren’t real reviews, but I don’t think they’ve gone far enough.