Buying a favicon spot

[andrej]

I consider buying a favicon spot on an authority website of my niche. Check a screenshot here. I already noticed that the PR of this website dropped from PR7 (or PR6, I'm not sure) to just PR4. I think it's Google's penalty for selling links (the link are do-follow).

I wonder if my site can also be penalized for buying that link? Or will my site get penalized only if I start selling links on it?

[ssandecki]

Good question, I believe in the eyes of Google anything purchased that can alter SERPs or Pagerank is against their TOS, if it will use the rel="nofollow" element in the hyperlink then it's within their TOS.

[mrcrowley]

Originally Posted by andrej

I wonder if my site can also be penalized for buying that link? Or will my site get penalized only if I start selling links on it?

I don't think you can get penalized for it, but instead you will receive no benefit from the link.

[crazyleaf]

Originally Posted by mrcrowley

I don't think you can get penalized for it, but instead you will receive no benefit from the link.

I diagree. You will get benefits from the link.

cssremix.com , because from what I gather from the image that's the website we are talking about has a pretty good traffic stats of about 30k uniques / month. You'll get a lot of visitors from that link. I believe this is the main purpose of advertising, not artificially increasing you PR and SERP.

Edit : Got the stats for cssremix.com from here : http://www.statsaholic.com/cssremix.com

[ssandecki]

Originally Posted by crazyleaf

I diagree. You will get benefits from the link.

cssremix.com , because from what I gather from the image that's the website we are talking about has a pretty good traffic stats of about 30k uniques / month. You'll get a lot of visitors from that link. I believe this is the main purpose of advertising, not artificially increasing you PR and SERP.

Edit : Got the stats for cssremix.com from here : http://www.statsaholic.com/cssremix.com

I still think you need to insert the rel="nofollow" to be on the safe side.

[andrej]

Originally Posted by mrcrowley

I don't think you can get penalized for it, but instead you will receive no benefit from the link.

The main reason why I wanted to purchase a spot is to get a high PR backlink (and even a related one) for my site. And this backlink should hopefully get my site at least a little higher in search engines.

[ssandecki]

Buying Pagerank is a gamble, Google is cracking down on text link sellers, you'll lose your investment once they penalize the site your purchasing the PR from since you'll no longer get pagerank juice from them. Worry about SERPs not pagerank.

[crazyleaf]

Originally Posted by andrej

The main reason why I wanted to purchase a spot is to get a high PR backlink (and even a related one) for my site. And this backlink should hopefully get my site at least a little higher in search engines.

If you are buying for that I think it's safe to buy. The didn't add yet rel="nofollow" and I don't think they are interested in doing that, since their PR dropped and they did no change.

Here's a link to the google policy regarding this : http://www.google.com/support/webmas...n&answer=66736

[andrej]

Originally Posted by ssandecki

Buying Pagerank is a gamble, Google is cracking down on text link sellers, you'll lose your investment once they penalize the site your purchasing the PR from since you'll no longer get pagerank juice from them. Worry about SERPs not pagerank.

Yeah, I'm not looking to increase my PR, but the SERPs. OK, so I will rather not buy it. Thanks for your answers.

[markn26]

on a side note, what's the name of that plugin, and is it Wordpress?

[crazyleaf]

Originally Posted by markn26

on a side note, what's the name of that plugin, and is it Wordpress?

What plugin ?

[markn26]

the thin pixel ad bar seen in the screenshot of the original post - I'm guessing it might be custom programmed.

[jasyn]

i think that is pretty worth it.

[crazyleaf]

Originally Posted by markn26

the thin pixel ad bar seen in the screenshot of the original post - I'm guessing it might be custom programmed.

I got one in my blog without any sort of programming. You don't need a plugin for this.

[AddSense]

Guys, my rivals buy a three PR7 links in a short amount of time and feeling pretty good in the SERP. Two of them i've found in text-link-ads. And you still confident that buying links can lead your sites to penality? I don't think so.

[crazyleaf]

Originally Posted by AddSense

Guys, my rivals buy a three PR7 links in a short amount of time and feeling pretty good in the SERP. Two of them i've found in text-link-ads. And you still confident that buying links can lead your sites to penality? I don't think so.

You got it wrong. Selling links can lead to penalty, but only if someone reports you via Google Webmasters. Buying is ok.

[heebie]

If you don't add rel=nofollow, you could gain loads from googlejuice. You just run the risk of Google manually catching up with you and punishing you. No googlejuice with that rel nofollow, though...

[markn26]

Originally Posted by crazyleaf

I got one in my blog without any sort of programming. You don't need a plugin for this.

They're automated (expire after a certain term, etc)?

[crazyleaf]

Originally Posted by markn26

They're automated (expire after a certain term, etc)?

Nop. I remove them when needed. Not exactly hard work.