How do people feel on here about making a private link purchase on good faith? I have paid for many text links on PR4 - PR6 links, hundreds of dollars. Within a week after Google PR update, sites have dropped to a PR0. Should a webmaster refund the full amount and withdraw the link, refund a portion, due to the drop, or is it totally at the loss of the buyer - who maybe should have done further research into the prospective longevity of the site link? Im curious what the general feeling is on DP here.
It's the loss of the buyer I'm afraid, but that's the point of view from a person who's site is guaranteed to have their site get more visitors over time. I'm not in the least bit concerned about PR because I always have my stats to show for. To be honest, people buying from me are getting a deal because in a year or so, my links will be worth a lot more.
Here is a thought.... What if it was your link that caused it to drop?? Should you then give that webmaster some money?? ha ha I know what you mean though! It's frustrating!!
I also bought many PR5/PR6 links for one of my site, but in this update, it is still PR1.. We can do nothing.. Its google - nobody knows how it behaves.. Better go for monthly subscription or short term links.
Yeah, I also sell, and buy links to be honest...so I am also unsure of what is the ethical/moral stand point. Good point on the short term subscriptions. How do people manage this type of purchase when you are buying and trying to maintain such a high volume of links?
There are plugin-ins and scripts that can take care of it. I personally don't use them because I'm a Perm Girl, but I know people who have in the past.
(this will be moved to another forum) I notice that many of the professional link buyers are buying backlinks for relevancy and not PR.
Google PR is not easy to predict, so you'd better buy links mounthly, and I am sure that it is at the loss of the buyer... No one gives money back due to the drop (to my mind).
Nope.. It's the price of doing business in link buying. Even when you see "pr5" sites, you are looking at OLD PR (a snapshot taken months ago). So it probably was pr0 when you bought. High pr links are not worth the money unless they are natural and in the content (not in a footer/side bar link group). I would buy many pr0 (new blog posts) instead of a few pr5's. Cause you will know that the pr0's have no where to go but up where really the opposite is true on higher pr sites. Although Google loves authority sites and rewared natural links from these, they also love quantities of new sites as this really is what reflects the "vote" of the web.
You raise an interesting point. i'm sure that i were in your position i would be very upset and think of ways of getting my money back. But if you look at it from a neutral point of view, there's nothing you can do. it's not the guy's fault if his PR dropped. Nobody knew when the PR change was going to come (only estimates). If the PR had gone up, would you have paid him more? When i purchase links from pricy sites i usually try and check them first (backlinks, outbound links...) and a quick check to PR prediction isn't that complicated... If you are unhappy with the deals you made, i suggest you contact the owners and depending on the length of your agreement check the possibility of ending it sooner and getting a certain refund. Before you do that, i would suggest you make a quick check to see what's going on with these sites' backlinks, outbound links as well as SERP. If they still get good results in search engines, despite their loss of PR, i don't think you should worry too much. Good luck mate
it's frustrating situation. I feel sorry for you but you can't blame the seller as he is also in the same situation like you. Even he doesn't know why his PR has dropped. He is also in loss after PR drop and he might be cursing the recent links that he sold. Last week I sold few links on my couple of PR2 sites and since y'day they are PR4. What should I do? ask them more money? When the PR goes up, buyers are happy but the seller may be cursing himself for selling more links while it was low PR as he can not sell more links when his site is having higher PR. It's a mixed bag. We have to check the sites before buying or selling links. Today I am selling links on a PR4 health site, people are asking me for "Buy Viagra" kind of links for higher price but I am repeatedly refusing for those kind of links. It's a kind of ethics in business, The seller should also think about the customers that he sold links for some money before selling some wrong links for huge money.
If the PR went up would you have agreed to pay more to the link seller? If you are buying high PR links for PR then you are already treading in dangerous territory. As long as the pages are cached you will get some benifit.
I think this about sums up the situation! I know its a bit of a gamble, and this mixed bag of responses also reflects my personal feelings. Does anybody have any advice on the best method to go about sourcing bundles of 10 or so links at a time, from a reputable source?
Well, first of all my suggestion is don't buy links before PR update (you can guess when Google can do PR update, just check the previous update date then add 3 months atleast). Before buying any links, you have to do some check like back links and make sure that domain is not a dropped domain. In my opinion PR0 new site is better than PR6 dropped domain It's up to buyer, because you are not going to pay extra bucks if a site got an increased PR. For example you bought a PR3 link and then after PR update site got PR5 rank. Would you send link seller some extra for the bonus? You won't. So, you have to bear the current status
I'm sure it hurts the buyer, but the seller cannot be blamed here at the same time. His future page rank is not in his hands. It may be due to the links that he sells. Anyway, sorry for you.
My 2c, don't go after, go after related links, which is much more important then the green bar. The only other things that should be checked are that the site was recently cached in google, and does have some backlinks for itself.
I run through the following steps before I decide whether to purchase links:- 1. Check domain age - the longer, the better and the more authentic the PR that it claims it has 2. Check site history / web cache - was it a dropped domain? 3. Check site contents for relevancy - are the contents relevant to your site? Are they full of outbound links which suggests paid posts to the max? 4. Check content updates - is it updated regularly and with quality contents? 5. Check outbound links - how many outbound links are there on the sidebar, footer, posts? 6. Check outbound links quality - does it link to quality sites or questionable sites? 7. Check for pricing - nothing good comes cheap 8. Check for terms of payment - better to pay periodically than permanent so that you can monitor PR movements It's a lengthy check-list but I ain't gonna spend good money after bad.
Hey, buying based on PR is a gamble. The toolbar PR only changes with the quarterly updates so if you bought links 2 weeks ago from a site that is PR5 and now it is 0 then it was probably already a 0, the toolbar PR just now caught up with the "true" page rank.