Tons of money is being spent to get high PR links and in fast turnaround time. Does this mean money-power counts in virtual world also. Should not the search engines like Google discourage this by banning such sites. Would like to know your sincere comments. And what should SEs do to discourage such malpractices.
they cant ban sites for this for several reasons. amnt of time to go through and do this would probably be unpracticle from a business stand point as well as the culprits being banned would be likes of BMW, yahoo, nytimes, etc. so I dont think they would want to do that either. they have to attack it from this angle. If you sell links then you risk having your ability to pass link pop. taken away. and technically paid link building is not ethical by the definition from Google. (however if you ask me paid link building is ethical if you forget about the search engines for a second) google just talked about this recently if you havnt seen it : googles blog post (googles blog is down for some reason right now)
I think that most websites put funds towards link building, and when your site gets popular selling adverts (links) is how you make money. Nothing wrong with that in my opinion
I'm not really sure what ethics even means to tell you the truth, but I do know this, if there is money to be made by buying links, and the fact that I'm buying them isn't causing innocent people to lose their jobs, limbs, lives, sex drive - I don't care. The fact that they're calling it unethical, I think, is more an admission that they don't know how to stop link buying than anything else. Its like when your older brother would beat you up and you'd try everything you possibly could to get back at him, but every time he would foil your attempt, what would you do? "Mom!" Google is calling for mommy.
Surley you should consider the buying of links as marketing in its purest form. If I buy a link from a high traffic site related to my industry, then I am marketing! Its no different to an adveert on the front of the Daily Times surely!!! Jamie
Whose got to decide the ethics? Google? I have a website, its mine, and I am free to do whatever I want with the links. So the correct question would have been , "Is link buying in tune with Google TOS ?" . One more thing on this ethics topic, Google's business is dependent upon scraping people's website and storing them in their databases. The only difference between them and MFA's are IMHO, they are big, got money, and deliver traffic to you if you are placed high in their SERP's. Am waiting for the flamefest to begin.
Well Isn't Google supporting link buying by their Adwords and Adsense programs. Just think about big G, you are making webmasters pay for links on Google via sponsored links provided by the Adwords What about Adsense, you are getting advertising space on websites by purchasing it (LINKS), offering commision of your revenue that you get from Adwords Thank you case closed ...
Yep. So buying a link is cutting out the middle man. Thats why Google hates it and thats why they will eventually punish it and that why Cutts is against it. Google isn't a very ethical company themselves (caching pages without asking, syndicating news without asking, scanning books with an opt-out option instead of opt-in, stealing images, creating spamsites (blogger) ....)
Who is Cutts and how is link buying related to a middle man? Anyways what is on my site is my business as kamchatka has mentioned. And if I want to have paid advertising option, I can have it and Google or any other SE has nothing to say about it. They can not stop it if they are part of it and they can not do nothing about it because everyone is involved in it ..
I think the practice changes the perception that the net levels the playing field, but until TrustRank plays a heavier role in the SERP algorithms I think we'll continue to see link sales based on PR whereas the real value of links comes in the form of targeted traffic.
I think Google doesn't object to buying links for traffic purposes. Their issue is link popularity. Link buying clouds their "a link is a vote" algorithm.