Has Google ever banned a site for buying links?

I just keep reply to what's above. This is a forum, not a Q&A site.

Going back to the John Chow example. I'd be interested to see what sort of weight a link on JohnChow.com currently passed with him being penalised. A lot of experienced marketers are still buying his ad spots (obviously more for exposure / direct click throughs than link pop) but they're obviously not worried about any negativity being passed from his penalised site to theirs.

 

If google can detect paid link by program, they will never ask people to report paid links

 

Buying links is a real business and it's evident. People don't hide if they want to buy links...What's more Google reader gives all the information about "link sales" processes...

 

on some interview where google workers answered on questions they stated that buying/selling is not allowed... but how can they know if you are carefull

 

The trick is to build links for the sites you are competing against in this manner. If you do that, they'll be banned and you will rise to the top. It's a black hat method that I know some people have used effectively.

 

Sure they wont...! Otherwise i would go ahead and buy some links for my #1 competitive website and they will get banned... lol

 

I didn't notice.

 

Same here, well it's the only thing i can put it down to was being wiped for "buying" links. The site was every bit as compliant as Google's own Webmaster Guidelines page, it had just 2 Dofollow links on the whole site (required by the script & theme maker) which are present on thousands of other sites who weren't banned so the site itself wasn't the problem.

It went from 13,000 daily uniques to 200 overnight in January and hasn't come back despite a reinclusion request.

The only thing it leaves is a link buying penalty, only problem is 90% of the links were natural due to the nature of the site.

Another case is Matt Innman's Widget Bait Gone Wild where he made widgets that created a link back, and ranked for terms like "Online Dating" in a few months. He was wiped for obtaining links, not purchased but it was still acquiring links so same deal just no money involved. Matt Cutts even commented on the situation.

All i can say is so much for Google's "Do No Evil" when they completely ruin people just for being clever.

 

Yes i have seen evidently one of my client for whom i was doing content writing his site is completely banned in google but he hasnot violated any rules as of i know

 

How do you know, if the site has been banned by Google ? My 2 month old site was on page3 for a very competitive word. And I thot to do some more building - its now at 180+ position .

Around 1200 pages are indexed for my site till date.

 

No,never see any evidence,G do allow some big sites sale links.

 

As far as I know and aware of, only sites that sell links may have risks in their PageRanks and SERPs.

 

The sites which buys too many links have been penalized for it in SERPS and Page Rank (Alivedirectory and Avivadirectory)

 

I must say Buying links WILL get you a PENALTY. I have many experiences. My main website was on a steep climb in SERPs from Feb - Dec 2007. By Nov 2007 i got some good adsense money and i started buying links. On 10th dec 2007 the serps from google just died out. ie. no a single referel from google.

I digged though the forums and find out a few people get hit the same day. After removing all unnecessary and the three paid links i had, i submitted the reinclusion request. In a few days, the serps are back.

The full story here in this Wemasterworld discussion:

http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3524752.htm

 

TO the extent of my knowledge, John got banned because he started a contest where he linked back to all the people who did a review about his site. Not because he sold/bought links - because he exchanged it.

As far as I know, there's no evidence that Google had penalized anyone for buying links. It would be really hard since there's no surefire way to know whether a site had been buying links from others. If Google goes by the "Sponsored Links", then that could be a reason for a site's competitor to deliberately lower the page rank of the site.

To combat this, what Google does now is that it weighs the isolated link blocks with multiple links far lesser than the links within a page, surrounded by content.

Hope that helps.