I was considering advertising with Text Link Ads. Will Google penalize me for this? Is this considered buying / selling links?
Isn't it obvious that buying / selling links is considered as buying / selling links by Google? Google hate TLA and might penalize your site for using TLA so it's up to you.
Yep, you will get caught, dont buy links from companies or in bulk full stop, its like gambling and the chances of winning are slim, buy links separately or in very small amounts from webmasters that can be trusted
Yeah Google does not like TLA. Their own website is penalized by Google. So you do take some risk by using their services.
By the way if you still want to sell links on your site then try LinkWorth. It's far more better than TLA and less risky because there is no need to place any code on your site (resulting in smaller footprint ).
well they didnt go out of business thats for sure... They have the sites hidden now so i dont see any problems with it laterz malcolm
Basically there's a risk there which you have to decide whether it's worth to take or not. For me, there are better ways to monetize rather than TLA alone.
yes if you get clicks or traffic from TLA, google will consider that you are getting traffic from spam, which is not true.