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Links are what binds the Internet together - they're the web in the World Wide Web - they're what bring us traffic - they're what Google is desperate to control - and they're what can drive some people totally nuts and cause them to do some very silly things.

The fact is that links should be given freely ... and accepted freely too. If I want to link to your site why should you object? By giving you a link without you begging for it am I not saying to people who come to my site that your site is worth visiting too?

Well at least that's what I would have thought and it still puzzles me that you may not want a link from my site. But then you and I might understand who the Web works and Google does too - but perhaps Google doesn't want it to work that way. Google wants the Web to work in a way that suits Google and so it wants to convince people that links are not good (even though it still says they are); instead Google wants to convince people that not all links are good because some links are better than others.

In lots of ways that all reminds me of George Orwell's world on Animal Farm where all the animals were created equal - a concept that allowed the animals to unite and develop their own little world - until it suited the pigs to change that little credo. Then it became a situation where all animals were created equal ... but pigs were created more equal than others. From that point on the pigs ruled the farm and the idea of equality was a thing of the past.

Here in this world we're at the point where the idea of all links are equal is slowly giving away to the pig's version of reality where some links are more equal than others ... all because that's what suits Google. But in making that move to grading links on the curve Google is fostering some crazy actions by some clueless website owners.

Late last month Forbes.com ran Condemned to Google Hell - a story about Google's version of purgatory otherwise known as the Supplemental List. Websites can disappear into that dark hole and remain there forever; some do return but not without a lot of effort. For some that effort is worth it because being in the supplemental list can destroy an e-commerce site's income and if the site makes a lot of money then we're talking big losses.

In particular the Forbes article relates the story of two diamond merchants who each owned an e-commerce site that sells their product. One guy claimed to be making $3 million worth of sales every year from his site ... until it disappeared into the supplemental list. In three months his sales dropped $500,000.

A similar situation happened to the second guy and when they asked Google for some guidance on why their sites were considered to be unworthy of appearing on the main list they were ignored. One of them decided that his problem must have been some duplicate content while the other decided that the problem must have arisen because Google didn't like the inbound links that were coming to his site.

So the link guy started writing to webmasters asking them to remove their links if he thought the links were of low quality. He even went so far as to send out cease-and-desist letters to those who he considered were ignoring his request. Now how crazy is that?

I give you a link because I think your site is great or because it offers my surfers something of value but you threaten to sue me if I don't stop linking to you? And how do you know that the link from my site is considered by Google to be of low quality?

At least on Animal Farm every other animal knew what a pig looked like so it was obvious which animals were more equal but here we're talking about links and only Google knows which ones are crap. But in desperation some people do crazy things and some are prepared to run around cutting themselves off from the web so they can be more attractive to Google.

After that little exercise the diamond merchant found that his site did get back into Google's main listings ... but it took a further six months for that to happen. And when it did happen Google didn't bother to tell him what caused them to change their mind about the value of his site.

For all he knows those links that he cut off may have had nothing to do with it. What if some of those links were actually sending customers to his site that were buying his product?

Perhaps now you can see why there's a level of insanity when it comes to links on today's version of the World Wide Googleweb.