There’s been some talk lately from an ex-Googler [Pedro Dias] about how Google loses trust for a link, once its been altered.

I wanted to go over this with you, to shine some light upon the topic.

Pedro Dias no longer works at Google — he now runs his own SEO agency.

As an SEO, he’s now more interested in gaming his old employer, rather than kissing their a$$. That’s why he’s spilling the beans.

Pedro Dias updated his Twitter account, saying:

You can find more of the Tweeting that occurred between +PedroDias, +BarrySchwartz, +DavidNaylor and a few others (in the comments section) by reviewing the original source via the first link that I’ve embedded into this article.

My current interest is in explaining what all of this means. To shed light on the matter.

I’ve speculated this for years and to hear it from an ex Google employee, well, that’s all the proof I need to believe that edited links lose trust.

What are some of the more popular link building strategies that would cause a webmaster to alter or edit a link?

Let’s look at some of those strategies below

  1. Editorial Link Building
  2. Broken Link Building

Without going overboard and listing hundreds of the best link building strategies, these two strategies should be enough of a reason for you to become interested in at least considering what this once reputable Google employee, has to say.

Before you jump to the comments section below with all your questions, let’s first take a look at some of the questions I’ve seen over on Google Plus

Feel free to join in on the Google Plus conversation by commenting on the Google Plus post above. Simply click near the bottom of the post, to open up the commenting section!

What Would Cause a Link to Lose Trust?

Obviously, if you create an article and publish it online today and then go in and edit the article tomorrow by altering a couple of links, no one will care. But when an article has been sitting (ageing) for quite a while and has gained some trust from Google, and you start altering the links of that article, Google will lose trust in that entire piece of content, not just the links.

You might want to think twice the next time you consider paying someone to give you a link via editing another.

What if the Site is a Reputable Site (i.e Wikipedia)

The truth is, Wikipedia is no longer considered a credible site.

And for good reason. Because of links being edited by non-trusted sources.

Once again, too many Blackhat SEO’s (and spammers) have took advantage of Wikipedia, for far too long. Like all other link building strategies, they’re all eventually spammed and taken advantage of, until they no longer work.

What would you expect when all these strategies are posted hundreds of time on the public (forums) web?

What About CNN? What if they alter/edit links?

I would assume that authoritative domains similar to CNN would be given a bit more trust than your average site.

Again, keep in mind that this information came from a reliable source. Now that Pedro Dias is an SEO consultant, would this cause for him to take advantage of his past knowledge and experiences from working at Google? My guess is yes. Of course he would take advantage of what he knows.

What’s your take on all this?

Have you found that you don’t receive the ranking boost that you normally would from a high quality backlink, when you receive it from an editorial process?

We would love to hear your thoughts on all this. In the comments section below, give us your honest feedback. As a community, let’s try and work together to get to the bottom of this.

After you comment, make sure to stop by Matt Cutts blog and say goodbye to him. He will taking a 90 day leave from Google!