Google's Stance On Selling/Buying Text Links...

[bad_bob00]

Hi there,

I was just wondering about Google and their attitude towards sites that buy or sell text links.

Basically I'm wondering, if a site sells a text link to an unrelated website, does the unrelated website get punished, or is is just the site that sold the link that gets penalized?

Also, how does Google know when a site sells a text link? Do they only base it on the category of the site that they are linking to?


Thanks for any help :)

[bad_bob00]

Sorry if this is the kind of question that gets asked a lot (tried searching but not found an answer to my questions).

Would appreciate any help offered

[wokaka]

It's not just unrelated, even if you sell links to related sites, you could get penalized. But only to link sellers. (you can cheat on your competitor if Google also penalize link buyers). However, I think Google algo is still sux in their stance again paid links. I see there are many smart websites who can still get good rank with paid links. (of course not crappy paid links like TLA or blogroll or blog posts)

[superpump]

in my opinion, if you offer relative useful content to your visitors, then you are not doing anything wrong, even if that means offering a link go an acne website from your skin health website...

[bad_bob00]

How does Google know if you are buying/selling links though? I mean, surely if you link to a related website then that is allowed - I thought that was just normal link exchange activity?

How do they tell if someone has paid or sold links?

[maxyRO]

How does Google know if you are buying/selling links though? I mean, surely if you link to a related website then that is allowed - I thought that was just normal link exchange activity?

How do they tell if someone has paid or sold links?

If the link is totally unrelated or stands under Advertisement or something of that kind.

[bad_bob00]

If the link is totally unrelated or stands under Advertisement or something of that kind.

So does Google have automated programs that go round checking for links that are placed under advertisements, etc?

Thanks

[wokaka]

I see that Google is not penalizing sites through manual investigation. I think Google is just penalizing through its algorithm, that's why we can see there are plenty of websites who can sell links without get penalized until now

[tylerdjefferson]

They are normally against link buying and selling. Sites that do that have a chance of getting baned.

[billybw]

Google hasn't said exactly how it detects purchased links or what penalties it imposes on either buyers or sellers. So nobody can give absolutely certain answers to your questions.

A few blatant cases of large scale selling appear to have been identified by personal observation by Google employees, but as far as automatic algorythmic identification of small scale secret link purchases by private arrangement, that wouldn't be possible.

[logikcoder]

Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such as:


Adding a rel="nofollow" attribute to the <a> tag
Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file



http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66736