No it's not difficult to track. On the other hand, Google has stated more than once that their preferred action is to nullify or discount the PR value of such links. Text Link Ads are also a legitimate advertising option. Google neither wants to nor needs to punish advertising links of any kind; indeed, for them to even attempt to do so would almost certainly result in litigation which Google would lose, and they know that full well. The conclusion is that if you buy links, buy them for potential traffic, not for PR, because there is a reasonable chance the links won't pass PR. And if you want to publish such links, go ahead. That isn't going to result in any penalties for your site/pages. Not really. If you run a health site, and are accredited by HONCode, you are REQUIRED to mark any and all advertisements clearly with the word "Advertisement". I've been doing that for years now. I've never seen any evidence whatsoever of a penalty. Moreover, Google themselves have recommended (in an email to me replying to an inquiry) that all non-AdSense ads be clearly distinguished from AdSense ads in some way to remain within their TOS; I've used phrases such as "Ads by TLA" to indicate that with the approval of Google. And, just in case, I even hotlink that phrase back to the advertiser with my affiliate ID in the link. I admit so far I've never made any money from that practice but what the heck?
This should be tacked in the corner of every whiteboard in every office in the web industry. The goals of the industry should be to provide human beings with the content or products they're looking for and let economic natural selection take care of the rest. Customers hate being gamed even more than the search engines.
I would like to report a paid link scheme. Their page is: http://www.google.com/adwords This scheme seems to have a widget that puts paid links on millions of web sites. They should be removed from the index, along with anyone who displays the widget.
I am not a big fan of this google policy. Pretty soon firm will buy text links for their competition.
If so, they will have wasted their money. All they will have accomplished is to give the competition some free advertising.
Hi Minstrel, But that will also mean that Google will catch them & ban them from the SE, so the objective will be accomplished & your competitor will be banned. So the matter is shelling out some $$$
Google doesn't ban people for buying links. They nullify the links. They may penalize sites who are blatantly selling PageRank.
Most contextual programs require the publisher to declare paid posts. Then again there is always the possibility of someone reporting you.
I ve read an article at seomoz that its not really possible for google to properly differentiate between paid links and normal links ...
Yeah, I've seen several such claims. Google may not be able to identify ALL paid links but they really don't need to. They can catch a lot of them algorithmically with little effort. Many of those they don't catch automatically get reported by competitors, investigated, and nullified. As for the rest, sure, you may get some benefits for a while but don't count on not getting caught or reported eventually. Never underestimate the willingness of competitors (or people who just don't like you for that matter) to rat you out to Google.
I think their algorithm probably is used to display a report which is then looked at and used by a team of humans at Google. Matt Cutt's team specifically. I only know of paid directories being punished, as they are also the biggest money makers for paid links. Would they really go after the little site with a couple questionable links? Probably not. It's tough to tell why links are on a site. There are many gray areas about it. Sites should avoid advertising paid text links and any value to a recipient site toward ranking in the SERPs or PageRank. Only link with sites/pages with related content.
any other thoughts on the matter? So far it seems like half the people think they can see if links are being sold and half of the people think that they can't
No body knows except for Google them self and am sure they will come up with the best way to do that.
I think that Google hate people links being sold on PR, their patented system. I agree with some of the others, I don't see anything wrong in having links as part of traffic generation and I think it forms a good part of advertising - like billboards in real life - you pay for them, people look at them, and perhaps you get business from them. Sites that hunt PR are generally misguided anyway, PR0, PR1, PR8 doesn't mean anything if you've no customers. It's all about targetted traffic and that has the highest value of all.
I cannot express how tiresome it is to see this bullshit trotted out repeatedly every time there's a discussion about PR selling. It's both annoying and downright stupid. This has absolutely nothing to do with AdWords. This is not a crackdown on advertising. This is a reaction by Google to counter attempts to distort and manipulate their search engine rankings. It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone - seriously, what else would you expect Google to do?
I have heard about this so many times and seen so many threads about this point of discussion but the thing is does Google really catch those guys doing against the TOS? I don't think so, I had a friend once that saw 5 years without getting caught by Google for Black Hat tactics on a site of a client. Imagine this, just imagine this instance and maybe this is enough to answer your question...Remember that even reports of abuse does not guarantee results from Google and this goes on for years and who knows? even decades.