People say google is against buying and selling links. Where is it written? Can somebody point me there? (I look at it as selling and buying ad space, so what's it to google?)
its hard to know what google really want thanks to "we won't tell you" user policies. They do say they donot like commercialization of links, read it somewhere. but whether they actively take action, i don't know. What I do know that my site had 80 backlinks on yahoo, 40 one way and 0 PR
I believe I read somewhere that Google doesn't like links being brought or sold to clearly increase one's pages PR, this means buying/selling of high PR pages to a user for the sole purpose of gaining PR they would rather that links are placed on PR pages for a meaningful purpose, although I can not 100% verify this information, I do believe it myself.
Nobody can say for sure whether google forbids such activity but I guess... when it is carried out with little moderation, to not raise any flag... one should be fine. If you go overboard with buying/selling links, your effort would look spammy... inviting the wrath! Regards, RightMan
Its not written anywhere.. its hard even for google to tell if the links is paid for or not. If you have paid links I would suggest not to panic and keep them for as long as you can - if they are good that is.
It is written somewhere. Google's policy is that paid links are advertising, and should be either nofollowed or redirected - http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66736 They invite people to snitch on instances of links being bought to manipulate PageRank through WebMaster tools http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-to-report-paid-links/
Yes, google tell that they will penalize the website involved in Link trading but the truth is google wouldnt do that without 100% sure that you are in link buying/selling
only you must be careful about , related links dont buy links from different language and different content.
Straight from the horse's mouth that it's ok in some circumstances: Paid links http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66736 "..................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..........."
Yes, Google cannot penalize you for having a bunch of links, that's how the web economy works, that's advertising. However, it might not transfer PR, that might be the penalty (like if it sees a bunch of ads/links together in a group, with no "rel=nofollow" tag.) Quite honestly, tho I don't know how google keeps track of all that.
I don't think Google would take any strong actions if you buy few good backlinks. I guess..only if its written sponsored links or paid links above your website links than it could raise alarm.
Yes, but it's their job to Police their own system. Inviting people to 'report' is just inviting sour competitors to attempt to stitch up their rivals.