Google Penalizing Sites for Sponsored Themes?

I own a large Wordpress themes website and have recently been contacted by someone requesting their sponsored theme to be removed because they have been penalized by Google for having a paid link in the footer of the theme.

Can anyone confirm that Google is indeed starting to penalize websites with sponsored links on free Wordpress themes?

Any info on this would be greatly appreciated.

 

Yes, i can confirm this. Google is chasing sponsored themes.

 

Yes this can happen why not to punish everyone . After all it is also link selling and buying .

 

Finally!

I hate to see wordpress themes littered with completely irrelevant linkage in the footer, adding your own credit(s) is fair game, selling WP themes for cash is fair game, but having "Sponsored by xxxx, xxxx & xxxx" just screams "FREE THEME".

 

I think google needs to get a life.

 

Ditto. When is going to end the nonsense? Someday they might be chasing us for selling links in our sites and forums...

 

I don't think that is entirely accurate.

It can be dangerous if someone uses your theme on say a porn blog... So it is possible it can backfire.

But they could not algorithmically penalise all footer links - as this would hurt legitimate web designers.

Sponsoring a theme is not spamming per se and unless they say it is I wouldn't guess you will be sandboxed for it. People get away with buying text links - so they can get away with sponsored links.

Though I agree as above that filling up a theme with sponsoring links is stupid. No one will use the theme - so it is far less effective than just one sponsored link.

 

Thinking too, and wonder what would they come up more.

 

I have heard this from a few sources myself, I will typically make the sponsored themes nofollow to avoid this issue (if the website's TOS says that this is not an acceptable alteration of the footer I will not use that theme).

 

Of course they can:

If Footer = >2 External Links + All Unrelated = Flag

This basically means, more than 2 external unrelated links in the footer gets flagged. Then all they need to do is throw in an array of anchor keywords such as loans, credit, mortgage etc to seal the deal.

Then pass the results through another array of stop words such as design, designer, theme, wordpress and so on to protect the legitimate designers.

Do you really think they are this stupid? Heck a beginner coder could throw this together in an hour that would nail over 90% of paid theme links, never mind some of the smartest algo engineers in the world.

 

ditto, Google says you must be in bed by 6, Google says you can't have cookies between meals, Google says you must learn you 10 times tables...Google says...

 

Haha.. Repped for funnyness.

 

That's what I read as well. It seems that everything with regards to paid links are seriously been looked into. Practically I think it's just unfair because somehow designer should at least get a justified reward for the amount of hours put in to create the theme. But anyway, nothing we can do here to change google's stand

 

The result of spam for many links will be penalized by google. Should be concerntrate to the content in the site. We will get pr more and google will rate you up.

 

Hi sweetfunny i think you are right when we find too many irrelevant links we can judge easily that they are sponsored links . This makes us very angry than we have to search for those themes by names in Google . I have written on post on this i hope you guys will like it , do tell me your points i will add them their Major Google and sponsored paid links Upsetting everybody

 

google likes cracking down on linking, don't they?

though adding a "rel=nofollow" seems to keep them happy in paid link cases. maybe that would work in these "sponsored" wordpress themes?

 

Technically you're not supposed to pay for links

 

What, really? That's weak