From the running Text Link Ads thread in the SEO Philippines mailing list:
Are paid links ok?
You’ve probably heard of the Jeremy Zawodny paid links debate here, here, here and here.
Matt Cutts has already implied before that sites caught selling links without rel=nofollow might be slapped some sort of penalty. If what Text Link Ads says is true (that their links cannot be signatured), then the effort to “camouflage” the links rests on the site owner. Don’t put the links under a SPONSORED LINKS tag, or in sitewide spots like the sidebar/footer area, etc.
If you have a high traffic site and you know Matt and the rest of the anti-spam team are watching it, then it would be wise to stay clear of selling links.
But Jeremy’s blog is still Google-healthy right?
Let me quote Matt Cutts:
If you want to buy or sell a link purely for visitors or traffic and not for search engines, a simple method exists to do so (the nofollow attribute). Google’s stance on selling links is pretty clear and we’re pretty accurate at spotting them, both algorithmically and manually. Sites that sell links can lose their trust in search engines.
To answer your question, yes Jeremy’s site is still in Google. Site bans are
extreme penalties so no I don’t think Google will go that far because of paid links. But you can probably see the effect the whole paid links issue has had on his blog now: zero paying link customers (last time I checked).
Moral lesson: sell links silently.
The next question (and I think I asked this before already) is this: how can Google algorithmically detect paid links?
March 2nd, 2006 at 11:48 PM
And for those sites whose business model is to provide an information site that sells banners, this means they will have a hard time ranking, simply because they’re selling ads to offset the cost of the site?
I doubt it. The moment that Wikipedia is sold to a for-profit company and starts selling ad space will mean they get dropped from the serps. Nope. Not gonna happen. If it does, any site that has advertising will be hit - which is what - 90% of the sites out there?
March 3rd, 2006 at 12:24 AM
Banners, contextual ads, and most other programs use Javascript and are not relevant links like <a href="" rel="nofollow"> … ones. Cutts is after relevant links.
March 3rd, 2006 at 7:03 AM
I guess they could detect if certain trigger words such as “Sponsors” pr “advertisers” was near the link, but really - if it’s disguised there is no logical way any algorithm could find them.
I’d also point out that 97% of the internet using public wouldn’t know how to put a nofollow on their links.
March 4th, 2006 at 9:48 AM
Well, they can monitor those sites that are known to be buying links. Track those who link to them. But it will be unfair to those who are linking to some sites because they are known to be buying links. It’s possible that they will have great products worth linking to. But then, again, they are Google. They can now afford to bully whoever they want.
April 12th, 2006 at 5:32 PM
Can you recoomend me few places for me to buy paid text links? My web adress is http://www.printcountry.com and my email address is info@gbausa.com