There’s no shortage of opinion on the topic of bloggers getting paid to post reviews. I won’t add another view on whether or not the system breaches some kind of blogging code of ethics. ‘Cause I really don’t care.
Bloggers have conflicts. If I’m talking about Interactive Agencies, guess what? I’m going to speak more highly of mine than I will of Deane’s.
What I do find interesting is the fact that even if bloggers are required to disclose conflicts, it only affects the influence over humans. It does nothing to cancel the influence over the search engines.
Ever seen what a good SEO consultant can do with a link building campaign? Regardless of my personal feelings on the strategy, they’re extremely effective. Paid reviews benefit in the same manner, increasing the number of qualified incoming links from relevant content sources. The impact on search ranking is very significant.
Paid reviews will sway organic search results. Your competitors will benefit by using it just as they may already be benefitting from paid link building campaigns, or paying digg superusers to spike a post, or taking advantage of scores of other tricks to sway traffic.
PayPerPost sucks – I want nothing to do with it. But conflicts in blogging didn’t start with PayPerPost. Conflicts have always existed, and organizations will always be willing to pay to gain attention.
And, where’s the line any way? Editorial integrity aside, what makes these conflicts so different than bringing on a high profile blogger to grow the authority of the corporate blog that regularly pimps its own products? Or advertising on a blog that regularly posts a commercial break / message from the sponsors?
Conflicts of interest aren’t going away any time soon. Not in blogs, or any where else.