Hi Just wondered what people's views are here regarding buying links? Are people still doing it or is there a worry now that there could be potential penalties for people *buying* links as well as selling? If you are no longer buying links then what methods are you using for link building?
Many people still buy links here at DP. However, they buy selectively and stay low profile. For me, i still build links by writing articles, commenting ob relevant blogs and sponsoring website themes.
I guess link buyers became a little more selective. I may buy links, but only from related sites that doesnt sell too many links.
"I hope some Googlers/lurkers will read my post." As much as Matt Cuts or Googlers claim that they can detect each and every links not only a site but also on a page, their main source of identification is "manual". Off-late Google employees have been ultra-active (albeit stealthly) on forums like DP to catch link buyers/sellers. When they detect, they put their "cursor" -at the right place and do the needful. I personally buy/sell links to only within my known client-base. Google will have to sweat very hard to find it. But -- if they do find it, they will surely penalize. Bottomline: All are still involved in buying/selling links. But everything is done underground Something is coming to my head ATM. Many years back, The Netherlands ( or Amsterdom to be more precise)-was also against drugs and prostitution. But being a democratic society as they are, the leaders realized that, legalizing these thousand years old sins of human-kind would benefit people more than fighiting against them. Hence, Drugs/Prostitution has been legalized in The Netherlands and they got more control of these things. Few other countries followed after the positives they got. I am sorry if I offended anybody, but I'll have to draw a parallel between that situation and the current Google's crack down on Paid links/Advertisemnts. When thousands of years could not remove "Prostitution", how can Google imagine to remove the "underground" links market?
First, the penalty is put on the website "selling" the text links, all the penalty may include is a manual drop in Pagerank and removal of ability to pass on Pagerank or SEO weight to outbound links.
Well said ssandecki, as if people were getting penalised for buying links, then a competator could but a link for your website just to get ur site penalised, which would cause chaos ! Woc
HAHAhAH! Just don't share the information with the search engines, they can appear to be natural. If you really need good links just PM me I have sold over 1,000 in orders within the last 12 hours in link sales
Sorry but this is ridiculous. I don't think Google are doing it manually, if yes, there will be many sites already lost their ranks. In fact, I am still seeing websites (which I reported to Google through paid links form) can rank highly even until now. Matt Cutts said that but I don't believe Google already detected many paid links. Why should you believe in Matt Cutts, anyway? He talked many things but SE process is quite slow, always slower than he said. Well, I can give you many examples if you want to, there are too many sites out there who buy links BUT they still get high ranks. Google are just detecting paid links from blogs and TLA-based, nothing more than that. Anyway, link buyers won't get penalized, only link sellers. Google must be stupid if they penalize link buyers. If one day Google penalize link buyers, I would buy links for my competitors so I will stay on top forever...
Regardless this is a "smart" move by Google none the less. Paid text links are a way people can easily manipluate Pagerank and search results if they have the correct monitary backing. In theory, if this went unchecked and approved by Google people with the largests cash flows would only appear in top search results. I applaud Googles crack down on paid text links.
ppl r selling and buying links , and now a days prices r very low for purchasing ad space at good pr site. ppl build links by exchanging links, blogging comments, writing articles.
I am little bit worried about webmasters like you ( saying everything without proper studies). . Please check the December archive of Google Official Blog - and work little bit hard to know what I am saying. Regarding your report of paid-links, there are hundreds of millions of sites. So it needs time to humanly review thousands of reports that sick webmasters ( who can't rank) -- send against their competitors. So please hold patience, and you will see a result-- sooner than later. If you do your reseach properly, you would know that-- most of the posts on popular forums like DP are scrutinized by Googlers. If you don't believe it-- then you are on your own peril.
I wouldn't be worried about buying links, as others have stated here it wouldn't make sense to penalize people who buy them. As for sellers? Well, honestly I don't see whats wrong with selling links...I mean how is it any different from selling ad space? Is the difference that the link might be placed on a page never viewed by the common visitor, therefor its not ad space? Well, no then it would still be ad space, just crappy ad space. I guess what I'm getting at is...why penalize people for buying OR selling links? I see it as just another form of advertising (although I also think PR is over rated).
Yes lots of people are still buying links and will be for a long time. There is still lots of information on the web saying it's a good idea. And if done right, it is! I will still sell links.
This is true, it's just common sense. If your buying text links and those links help boost your rankings and all of sudden those sites your buying from get penalized guess what happens to your site... down the rankings drain.
Yeah but he meant it differently and not through the sites your links are on being devalued. For such things as sponsoring Wordpress themes where the linking site is not effected just yours.
interesting reading and thanks for all the replies. I am stilll unsure about what to think - but if link buying is wrong then I do not know howto continue investing in my work