Has Google ever banned a site for buying links?

According to various reports I've read, Google has banned some sites for SELLING links. But is there any convincing evidence that Google has ever banned a site specifically for BUYING links? Does anyone know?
Thank you

 

Personally, I have not seen any. I know its a big business, so I don't see why Google would have any problems with it.

 

Do you mean link brokers like TLA or just an ordinary sites?
Apparently Google don't like TLA Ordinary sites are being rarely penalized (John Chow?).

 

They normally discount links from the selling site so that the link you are buying just means money down the drain.

 

webhostingbluebook.com & b2evolution.net/web-hosting were banned for buying links from templates.

 

Yep...Matt Cutts said something about this on his blog. One of my sites last year was banned after gaining around 30k backlinks in one month. In fact, it is still penalised to this day. Even after several re-inclusion requests and after removing thousands of backlinks.

 

Yeah, my site has a PR of 0 now because I sell links.

 

I don't think buying links can hurt your site. If that was the case, everyone would just buy links for their competitors.

Selling is where the problem lies.

 

IF (Buy Link = google Ban) Then: Buy Junk Link for Competitors

 

I agree, if Google were to penalise sites for buying links then their competitors would be ordering these huge blog network packages for their clients with a view to getting them penalised.

I think what happens in most cases is that people simply buy too many, or the wrong sort, in such a short space of time. The reason people get banned is not for buying links. It's for the type of links they buy, the total they buy and the frequency they buy them at. Buying links is perfect fine, for the buyer, so long as they buy the correct links at the correct frequency.

I've been buying links for at least 5 years and to this date have never had a site penalised or blacklisted because of this. I think when people get penalised, they look for the easiest / feasible excuse to put it down to. Regardless if they've severely over optimised their site for their keyword recently - they'll still say it's because they've bought links.

 

Yeah, but 30k backlinks in one month...

I don't see any evidence of it unless you really throw yourself into it like Cheap SEO Services...

Which, perhaps, is an advert for using Expensive SEO Services...

 

I've been helping many new clients get removed from their text link selling penalties, it's actually rather simple. So yes, they do penalize sites that "sell text links"

 

Yeah, sites that sell text links often get penalised as far as the PR (figure) goes. When I first tried selling links a couple of years back I would link to anything and got the white bar a couple of times. This was not due to selling links as such, it was due to linking out to the wrong sort of content / sites / neighbourhoods. The links I sell these days are only related to the site in question and as a result, I haven't lost any PR due to being penalised since.

As for getting penalised in the serps i.e. losing positions, this goes hand in hand with the above. If you go and throw a load of off topic links on your website, you're going to get hit. Google doesn't know you've sold them but it does know the link content and the external site itself is wrong for your site.

With that said, losing your PR (figure) for offering paid links does not automatically mean a drop in serp placement. There are several reports of people getting their PR (figure) dampened and still maintaining their position in the serps.

 

I think Google only penalize site that sell links, but when it comes to buying links, then I guess there is no penalty, as if there is any, then people will start to buy links for the competitors.

 

JohnChow.com is one of the biggest example of sites being banned for selling links. And for selling links for PR and not traffic, it is the right thing to do.

 

Do you think he would have still been banned if all the links had been relevant to his content? I've visited his site a couple of times and he's been linking out to some truly awful websites. Completely unrelated to his content.

I think Google have just decided to make an example of JohnChow.com and have dampened his ranking. He's not banned from Google as his site still ranks when you search for his domain name. If he'd been banned / blacklisted, the domain wouldn't show. There are 10's of thousands of sites that are not "banned" for linking, excessively in some cases, to off topic content. If Google are going to go around hand picking sites to penalise, they're going to pick the most prominent ones.

I guess what I'm saying, is if you've got a crap site and sell links, you're safe

 

even the corporate sites trade links for pagerank or atleast it looks that way, for example h o t w i r e.com , there "partner sites links" are so small that pagerank must be the reason they trade links, there not really relavant link trades either unless relevant = big sites

 

Who knows, maybe if the site you link out to is in itself highly weighted enough it slips through. I don't know how Google is ever going to determine what are paid links are what are not. Lots of sites link their partner sites in a completely legitimate fashion, not for PR passing or SERP increase. There are thousands of sites out there that offer links to other sites in their network.

 

For some unknown reason, posters in this thread keep talking about sites that were penalized for selling links. That wasn't my question. What I asked about was whether any sites had been penalized for buying links.

 

I noticed that too and was thinking the same thing. The question is about buying links.

I agree that they shouldn't hurt you because your competitors could just buy them for your site. In fact, no inbound link should ever hurt you because of this reason. And the people at Google aren't stupid, they know this could happen too so I am sure they have taken it into account.

But as was already mentioned, if Google bans the site selling the links then you would just be wasting your money buying from them.