Bounty Campaigns & Google Guidelines about paid links

[Hedonie]

I have seen people being paid for adding links to their signatures....

These Peoples should add rel="nofollow" to the link, to follow google guidelines.

please read https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/96569?hl=en

Paid links: A site's ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to it. In order to prevent paid links from influencing search results and negatively impacting users, we urge webmasters use nofollow on such links. Search engine guidelines require machine-readable disclosure of paid links in the same way that consumers online and offline appreciate disclosure of paid relationships (for example, a full-page newspaper ad may be headed by the word "Advertisement"). More information on Google's stance on paid links.

exemple of suspicious links found :
<a class="ul" href="https://fortunejack.com/">
<a class="ul" href="https://ethex.bet/?utm_source=bitcointalk.org&amp;utm_campaign=sign_camp">

if no distinctions are made between paid and free links that could cause penalty to bitcointalk on google, which should be at least not a practice to promote in the  "Newbies - Read before posting" topic imo :-P

Ok, the forum can't get 100% clean, but I think it can improve. first by showing good exemple. if fortunejack want link without nofollow they should them self contribute to forum (employees, friends, their community, ect...), not buying links (otherwise the links need to be nofollowed).

I like this forum, because of what people here did, and also for the decentralised spirt, giving voice to the devs and opportunity to get visibility for the project.
Thanks !!!

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[hilariousandco]

Referral links are allowed in signatures.

[Hedonie]

Hi guys !

Yes
I don't see any problem with the bounty campaign it self, the only concern is that you got is a lot of these links around the forum, therefore they better be nofollowed...

Some forum added a specific BB code https://24x7forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=26 and look like that [nofollow={URL}]{TEXT}[/nofollow], and asking people organising bounty campaign to use it...

Adding nofollow bb code would be in the same vibe as these posts.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3312998.0 [SMF Bulletin Board Code (BBCode), Help post for beginner]
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5136703.0 [GUIDE - Bitcointalk forum etiquette]

Inviting users to respect etiquette, teaching newbies how to improve the quality of its posts, using BB code, ect...

[Thirdspace]

please read https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/96569?hl=en

Paid links: A site's ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to it. In order to prevent paid links from influencing search results and negatively impacting users, we urge webmasters use nofollow on such links. Search engine guidelines require machine-readable disclosure of paid links in the same way that consumers online and offline appreciate disclosure of paid relationships (for example, a full-page newspaper ad may be headed by the word "Advertisement"). More information on Google's stance on paid links.

you left something from the end of that quoted section, I took the liberty of adding it back
they are referring to paid link schemes which has intention to manipulate page rank
that's what I understand from reading google's explanation on "paid links"
so I don't think what we have in our paid signature in this forum constitutes that "paid link schemes"

[Hedonie]

Hi thirdspace !

Thanks for your edition, i updated my post to add the link.

I don't agree, with your interpretation of  https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en&visit_id=636962366717273320-2046469719&rd=1

The following are examples of link schemes which can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results:

- Buying or selling links that pass PageRank. This includes exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links; exchanging goods or services for links; or sending someone a “free” product in exchange for them writing about it and including a link

To avoid risk penalty, the bounty campaign link should be nofollowed i think.

the Page Rank of Bitcointalk, is extremely high, it can afford such penalty, and still rank super well, but why not trying to do even better ?

Bitcointalk provide Free announcement opportunity for altcoin projects, it free canal of communication for the cryptosphere, I very appreciate this forum because of that.

Now-a-day you need to pay to publish on most major cryptocurrency news website...