I have strongly discourage the method of buying text links or paid links since Google's announcement on action against paid links. Since then, many sites experienced a drop in PR and SERPs during the recent PR update. Read about Matt Cutts Confirms Paid Links & Google PageRank Update What is your take on paid links?
yap google is tired of paid links as your site can get penalized through this so better avoid this kind of staff
even google has some limitations on identifying paid links. yes, google has gone much better at cracking down on this but still they can;t catch all of them. site selling links with texts on the site saying "your link here" or "add your link for $10" or something along that line will be identified by google. specialloy if a site links to just about any site and has lots of links that doesn;t match the site content is easy to identify. but a site with no reference to paid option and not even using the word link can be hard for google to identify. specially if a site only links to few related sites is impossible for google to identify. if we are careful where we buy our links from, it can still work out just fine.
I think the last PR update penalized mass link buying and link buying directories. However, i dont see anything wrong with sending out a press release (cost $), this would be a form of paid links.
You can't let Google determine how you do business, but you have to be concious of the fact that Google is (or will be) responsible for sending you most of your business therefore you should adhere to what they have to say. I think any link buying for the sole purpose of ranking in the search engines is probably terms for penalization, but highly relevant link buying with human visibilty as the intent is probably okay as long as you do so in moderation and don't buy too many links at one time. Though, it is probably difficult for Google to determine the intent of the link. If you wish to play it all the way safe, then I would opt for Google Adwords, because buying PPC links (via Adwords) seems to be okay and safe without any penalization.
Nothing is fair in this world. Google provides most of us business opportunity and i guess we should just adhere via their rule to survive in the future.
no it isn't as in adsense the link don't have any seo value, means they are don't pass link juice! but since it is not clearly mentioned in adsense or adwords, so many adwords advertiser pays hundreds and thousands of dollars thinking it will increase their PR, serps and gets cheated by google and lose all money and don't get what they are looking for!
The thing with adwords is the links are fed through javascript so they do not pass any link juice at all. Hell they are not even considered a backlink. This is why they cannot be considered a "paid link" as to what is being talked about here. Yes you are paying for the links to be on google's search engine, but you should not be expecting it to help you in the SERP's by using keywords in your link. With paid links from link brokers, the only real purpose of them is to increase your backlink count, show google your site is listed on many other top rated sites with keywords as the link text. Selling links will continue on, there is no way google can stop them all. Hell you could sell links just by making a post about whatever is related to the customer and put there link in the article as an example.
Google is trying to identify patterns of mass link selling. One such pattern is your average link directory. That's why I wouldn't really advise submitting to them so much.
I have never really liked paid advertising full stop. Someone with a large wallet should get better SERPS/PR simply because it makes their pocket bulge. SOmeone with a great site who can't afford to buy lots of paid links doesn't desserve to be overtaken by a site of low standard because they have paid to get where they are. I suppose that is the way the world works though. All I know is that I keep growing my PR (now at PR: 6) without payed links.