Google’s Matt Cutts Regrets Not Acting Faster On Paid Links & Content Farms

In Google’s Matt Cutts latest video, he answers a question I personally asked about what he regrets, what decision he regrets making in the past related to webspam. My question specifically was:

Was there a key moment in your spam fighting career where you made a mistake that you regret, related to spam?

Matt answered it in than four minutes explained he regrets not acting sooner on (1) paid links and (2) content farms.

Google’s Paid Links Regret

Matt explained that several years ago at a search conference in San Jose, a well-known SEO told him that paid links are too common and there are no ways for Google to fight against it. That is when Matt said he realized that Google has made a mistake and they allowed paid links that passed PageRank to go too far. So in 2005 or so, Google cracked down heavily on paid links and now at this point, Matt said “most people” realize paid links are against Google’s guidelines, possibly against the FTC’s guidelines, that they have algorithms that fight against it and also manual actions around paid links. But Matt regrets not taking action sooner and waiting too long.

Source:http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-regrets-acting-faster-paid-links-content-farms-191146