Visit this site http://daily.stanford.edu/ at the bottom there is like load of paid links there...wtf I don't know I think link selling is a bit unethical actualy kinda like a blackhat trick...anyways I'm a bit shocked to see standford doing this Thats kinda dirty/spammy having all those links at the bottom there. Doesn't google penalize them yet?
I see no reason for stanford to sell links though. They make probably tons of money from Students paying for education. What reason for paid links?
Google penalized them for it http://searchengineland.com/071007-173841.php They went from a PR 9 to a PR 7. Probably not a good idea long-term to link from that site knowing that Google is aware of their links.
google paid link decide was an stupid idea which google can never get success. i think google will not punish them too.
Standford..schmanford....I've got backlinks on the MIT website...deal with that! (and they were free)
its not stanford, its only a stanford newspaper. School papers usually dont have huge budgets to work with... they sold some links and made some extra cash... nothing I wouldnt do =) edit: and this is where we get into areas where google may be hurting itself. If you're looking for "Stanford News" this is an extremely relevant site. Whether it has text links or not, its probably one of the most relevant sites for those search terms. Is google going to penalize this site, and let a less relevant site get higher rankings? The main reason for google's success in the first place was relevant results. To me, this is what they should strive for regardless of whether it has paid links or not.
I figure the google technicians will work out a algo to discount links it detects that are paid, also human editing too, which Google is already aware of Standford newspaper selling links. They may have already.. It makes more sense then penalizing the site hurting relevant results for it.