I've written a blog post about why Google is wrong to push back against link sellers, and I've even given a rationale about why paid links might actually make the index better. In a nutshell: 1) Google wants relevant results 2) Buying a link to increase rank for a keyword that is irrelevant to a site doesn't happen simply because it's a waste of money 3) Small business owners can't compete as it is with the big boys (i.e. large corporations), so if a couple hundred dollars worth of paid links helps them become competitive, that plays right into Google's philosophy of "leveling the playing field". There are obvious exceptions and you could drive a truck through a hole in at least one of my arguments, but the whole issue has bothered me for a long time. Google is a monopoly (at least in my semi-informed opinion) and banning paid links could be seen by some in the Justice Department as Google using that monopolistic condition to hurt the revenue-generation abilities of competitors. It just seems ironic that the largest seller of links in the world has made a rule against buying and selling links. I know that the issue is more complex than that, but if the political climate in the U.S. changes over the next 18 months, Google could be in trouble (as could Microsoft). The full blog post can be read here. It's a long read, but I'd appreciate some feedback, even if you think I'm completely full of crap. (I can take it)
I can agree with that. They shouldn't care so much if links are bought and sold, just concentrate more on if those links are accurate and relevant to the site.
I wouldn't go so far as to say Google has a monopoly on search. I get more traffic from Yahoo than from Google. As I understand it, the rule isn't really against buying and selling links. It's against gaming Google's ranking algorithm. Buying/selling links for exposure = fine, buying/selling links purposely to leverage a site's pagerank and influence Google's rankings = not fine. I agree that links should be judged on relevancy and not the likelihood of them being purchased with pagerank in mind.
Buying\Selling paid links is manipulating the page rank system, plain and simple. You can't sugar coat it and say, well the site was related to mine. Guess what, there is a 99.99% chance if you didn't pay for your link it wouldn't be on their site. You can also increase your page rank this way just to get it high to do the same thing the sites your buying from are doing; which is buy\sell text links to make money, not serve quality content. This is just the honest truth, take it how you want.
100% agree. Google gave the vote of who ranks in the SERPs to successful webmasters by counting there outbound links as votes, and these webmasters should be able to monetise this vote. I believe the solution lies not in delineating a line that says if money changes hands for a link it is bad, but rather define a kind of relevance score, so that a web sites links will cary more "vote" if they link to quality, relevant sites. This way, money can change hands for links, but this sales process will be integrated with a review of the quality and relevance of the site that is being linked to. Google have successfully implemented such a notion with the Quality Score in AdWords. I can not see why a similar solution may not be arived at with linking. The problem we are observing is not that money is changing hands for links. It is simply the lack of review process that can occur when it does. If google targets quality and lack of relavence rather than a link being being paid, I believe that will be more more successfull. After all, when sold links become integrated into content, ther will be no way to detect if a link is paid, but a lack or relavence will be detectable. Completley agree FastWeb
Of course bought links don't increase relevance - it means anyone with money to throw around can manipulate their way up the rankings with anchored links that have little to do with their site, or the quality of their site.
Thing is, the people who built that index seem to disagree... I can't count the number of completely irrelevant links I've seen ... a lot of people just don't care. Look at blog spam; I get people trying to sell drugs and Russian porn on a photography site. $200 will absolutely not let you compete aganist Walmart. And a level playing field would include the guy who doesn't have $200, or the guy who spends the money on content rather than PR. They have no problems with paid links that use nofollow or javascript ... like the way adsense generates theirs. It only seems ironic while you refuse to look at the whole picture. Sorry, this is a terribly inaccurate way to frame things, whether you're a fan of Google or their worst enemy.
If paid links made a big difference the big would only get bigger. For example Yahoo could make $1 billion in link purchases and start ranking for every keyword imaginable.
Sorry, but I can't agree with that, it's the reason why so many MFA sites make the top 10, and they have nothing, no relevance, no real content, just ads.