Judging from what is happening and from what I'm reading it is fair to say that it will be much more difficult to sell or buy text link advertising involving links of no relevance to the content. However links that do have relevance to the content, albeit in limited quantities may still pass as both "legal" and quite valuable. That said, I do realize that we may need to look for alternative ways to fund our web sites, more traffic/page views oriented and if that doesn't work then selling certain services in relation to (or not, either way) our sites. Suddenly the cost per 10 000 banner views becomes interesting again.
I agree that soon (in the next 6 months to a year) Gooogle will probably target non-relevant links more seriously. But relevant links will never be punished because there is almost no way of proving that a link has been paid for.
Well for the people who are selling links, only business which might go on, is by internal linking. However no body knows is this a fool proof method or just an alternative for sometime.
Buying links for PR was never important to me as I can easily get PR4+ without a dishing single $. (got one site PR4 from PR0 during this update. But I used to buy links for SEO and traffic.
Well maybe gooogle can come up with some code that blocks PR transfer but allows the backlink to count for SEO purposed, I guess that would be a compromise of sorts but the links would still affect the SERP so I don't know if google would ever go for that.
cant you just incorporate sold links into the page to make it look more natural (like it is a regular non-sold link)??
I personally think it is possible but the content of that page has to be content related to the rest of the content of your website. This is not impossible. But there's a problem; that page must have PageRank in order to sell links there. I think it's a little difficult to get high Pagerank for internal pages too. But, who knows, as the MFA (made for adsense) pages are now all over the Internet, possibly the MFPR (made for Pagerank) pages will appear soon
I totally agree with you and believe that it is true. Most of paid links are now have PR0. Many people wasted money because of paid links without getting nothing.
my site cars.blogs.ozfreeonline has a code similar to # 1! But it not paid links! most of the sites have that due to link trade! How can you assure that its a paid links or not!?
gr8 info man, now people will start linking to relevant content only this will improve the quality of the web
Well, i doubt that google used these formulas. And after all who said google is against natural link exchange between sites? "Partner site links" may look, or better say, DO look like sold links according to your scenario! There is a much more sophisticated approach to the matter!! I would say thank god you are not Larry to deal with it in such a (punish all and the guilty ones will surely be punished) way!!!
Links are still (and will continue to be) an important factor in online promotions. As long as PR exists the sites with higher PR are going to be able to charge more for links than those with lower PR's. A rise in the pricing for decent PR links is coming!
These formulas don't belong to me; I decided to write this post after reading some "breaking news" information from a document that I got from a reliable person. Moreover, he pleased me do not disclose any part of the information to anybody but I didn't follow his advice completely because I considered necessary to share with DP members...
Pure BS Google is not going to be fooled by where on the page the links are placed. More misinformation being spread........