• Matt Cutts, Monday, December 3, 2007 12:30 PM

Imagine that someone close to you is diagnosed with a specific form of cancer, and the doctor recommends "radiosurgery" as one of the treatment options. You decide to do some research on the treatment at home, and do a Google search on "radiosurgery" -- and the top-ranked results that come back feature glowing user testimonials, endorsements and reviews riddled with errors.

If you're unaware of the fact that these writers (some of whom had never even actually had the treatment) had been compensated to craft these reviews, you might take them at face value -- and end up armed with a host of inaccurate information.

Google's Matt Cutts uses the above scenario as the basis for his discussion -- which aims to explain why paid posts and sites that host them should not be able to pass PageRank. He also links to Google's Webmaster FAQ for the search giant's official stance on the issue, and responds to reader feedback in the 200+ comment stream.

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