I don't understand how this can work with things like textlinkads who sell paid links for websites. Also, why would they do something like this? If I want to sell ad space on my website, be it in a link or a banner, why would they want to stop me doing this, when you can have a Google Adsense link list with more or less the same thing? I'm real confused here.
maybe google see selling links and banners as a alternative of revenue cotroled by the webmaster to google adsense, so try to limit the competition
I certainly don't see it as my job to go around reporting link sales ... not sure why Google think I should!
You go right ahead and do that. Hopefully by the 200th or so spam you will realize that you needed to be logged in to do it, and they will know exactly who you are. The issue isn't with selling ads, the issue is with people buying links in order to increase their rankings. The problem is that Google cannot read minds, nor dictate how we do business. Matt Cutts made a very deliberate point on this in his blog yesterday, although most people missed it: From: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/avoid-keyword-stuffing/ I discussed something related to this yesterday here, but I'm not sure if anyone understood what I was talking about: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=413545 It has to do with real spam, a non-imaginary threat to Google, and how it relates to sometimes having to buy links just to stay in the index at all. The whole thing is messed up, seriously. -Michael
And how will google know you're doing this? Asking people to report paid links isn't a very bright idea - think of all that spam and malicious usage they'll have to make their way through. Well, that's if they even look at the "reports" sent in. Did you see the post on Matt Cutts' blog when he announced this brand new feature to make the internet a "better place"? Quite a few suck-ups as usual in the comments, pity they couldn't think about it for themselves.
One of the main, if not the main cause of spam on the Web is Google's Adsense program. Look at spam sites and tell me how many of those use Google Adsense? Yet, Google would not screen out which site it lets into its program. A simple thing would be for Google to only choose non-spammy sites for Adsense, but it wouldn't do that. Now, when I do searches, I see a bunch of spam sites and what else? A bunch of Google ads... There is a credibility issue here. Going after paid links is not the solution. People can do link exchanges just for PR with no theme relevance at all. How can Google deal with that? How about 3-way or 4-way link exchanges? Link exchanges are not always/often relevant themselves. I think the solution is to look at authoritative sites, like gov. or edu. sites and for Google to enter into "partnerships" with those sites. E.g. Contact universities and explain to them the situation and ask for an agreed upon policy for adding links that cannot be paid for, etc. I still believe universities, which reach a broad spectrum of competencies, should be part of the solution.
To add to the above, how about contacting Wikipedia and enter into an agreement with them? They should allow links to commercial sites to the extent that those links are relevant and useful. The Wikipedia community would take care of managing the whole thing. This is another example of how to proceed without taking a "denounce other webmasters" approach. This way, Google would play a constructive role, instead of imposing its views.
It will be very strong for webmasters but we know iwebtool also sell textlinks. Google must behave to everybody equally.
I personaly think that action may only be taken on a sites links when or if they are reported and once this happens I would assume that any 'downgrading' of link value would be down after a human has looked at the site. If you look at Yahoo, its very obvious if you read their T&C that the payment is for the revue, any human looking at this site would soon reach this conclusion. I recently looked at a very famous site that deals in link sales, the format of their link partner site details has changed very recently. Now links are advertised with their Alexa rankings & visitor numbers playing a more prominant role in the sale details than the PR, infact PR is not actually mentioned in the links details anymore. They call it page strength or something similar, however, the prices are still aligned to PR but the wording of the sales pitch doesn't show this. The inference is that PR is not talked about in their link sales but it is still the major factor in determining the price of a link at the moment. Using Alexia rankings to determin a price is dangerous, I have a site that is ranked at 180,00'ish in Alexa yet my Google Webmaster tools and my own sites stats show me that this site gets significantly less visitors per day, week, month than another site I own ranked at 800,000+ It's probably just that the site with the better rankings is one that people who have the Alexia toolbar on their browser would visit more frequently. A site that is probably more web savy user orientated.
When google says that you cant buy links it is not that you cant buy directory links because they recommend that it their webmaster help center http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769 The fifth bullet in "When your site is ready" They dont want you to buy links on other blogs like John Chow was doing, http://www.google.com/search?q=john...s=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a he was bragging about it on his site and google removed him manually. Obviously they dont have a way do know if something is a paid link and their algorithm cant pick it up.
If I'm not mistaken that is not a one off fee, its a YEARLY fee to stay in their directory so it is most certainly a paid link. If google don't see that as a paid link just as every other paid link then that is really wrong..
Can someone tell me how a paid link is any better or worse than a link exchange? And what of three way link exchanges?
Paid links competes directly with Google's cash cow: Ad Words Of course they want to minimize this threat but I wouldn't worry about this, I would imagine it would take a lot of complains on 1 url to have Google actually look into it.
They're like pointing a gun at their own feet and shooting at themselves when they do that. Ah well, the big guns always confuse themselves anyway.
Ok well just link to every site you have a paid link on. Problem solved. Its no longer a paid link then, its a link exchange.