Can you really get banned from Google search index for selling links (TLA for example) ? I ask this because some people said that you will only be punished by getting a reduced page rank, which has happened to one of my sites... but others have said you may get banned from their index all together What is the real truth behind this?
Yes you can. I have about 10 sites that was banned for 2 years (and then reappear) for selling links. It was different site not TLA.
I have no idea how they could ever get proof that the links on my site have been sold, is it possible they could ban you if it looks like sold text links?
google doesnot like sites selling links, they think it gives a fake pagerank to the sites buying the links.
Look at this site for example: www.xtremetop100.com At the bottom of the lefthand navigation, you will notice a few links that have clearly been sold for SEO/page rank purposes... but because google could never prove they have been sold, they will not get banned right?
Google doesn't have to "prove" a site is selling links. It is entirely their decision and they can use whatever methods they choose to decide to penalize a site, so no webmaster should feel safe because Google can't "prove" that they're selling links. At the moment, they seem to be going after the most obvious link sellers and those that get reported. But its likely they will continue to scan the web for signs of link sellers and expand their program of manual reviews of sites that get flagged as they refine their software.
It happened with me a couple of months ago. The odds are that Google didn't detect you selling/buying links. It is more probable someone reported you, happens all the time... There are a few tools available online, you can do a Google for them (sorry, I am new on here.. can't post Live Links, that's what the rules say)
Yeah. There is a link in google webmaster tools that lets users report about the paid links. Though one can misuse this provision to penalize their competitors, google will check for the violation and if it is satisfied with the complaint, then it proceeds to ban the sites from search, apart from robbing the PR altogether. Still the link sales happen clandestinely
Not only reporting to google will penalise your PR, but also having too many links in the blogroll or useful resources in the side bar is really suspicious to Google.
The bigger threat is dropping PR - pages that are selling links are sometimes getting banned, but much more often their PR drops to 0. Thus links form such sites are loosing their power.
one of my site is also victom of this, it drop my site from main google.com but still giving the results on country google domain e.g google.com.pk i dont know what is it?
What I know is that blogrolls and sidebar links are already screened out by the algorithms. Google easily detects this when it comes across a list of links without plain text in between
You can get banned and completely blacklisted from Google. They don't need a reason, they simply can if they feel you've violated their TOS. Once banned, the likelihood of you convincing them they wrongfully banned you is VERY unlikely. I know of a few sites that have been blacklisted from Google's index for this very reason. If you're going to sell links, make sure you follow the nofollow rule. You should be selling links as advertisement for the buyers, not to improve their SEO and rankings. People buy advertising mainly for the traffic (or at least this is how it should be). I mean if they don't renew the advertising (in this case text links), they lose the link anyway (what good would that really do in the long run for SEO if the link no longer exists). Treat advertising with a tread of caution and follow the rules. When in doubt, don't do something that will get you banned.
Thanks everyone for your replies... I decided I will remove TLA all together This would mean losing $500 per month which is better in the long run as my sites run completely on organic keywords and I would have nothing if Google banned me Cheers!