Mate, link buyers won't be penalized. It is link seller who will be penalized. Google must be very stupid if they give penalty to link buyers.
Why do you want to know? In order to avoid Google detecting that you are selling links ? Of course Google will keep their tracking methods confidential...It is like asking Google how it ranks websites....
Are you sure about this? From Google:"Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results." Their Snitch-o-Gram has a place to report both buying and selling so yea I would say they will penalize link buyers as well as link sellers.
From Google's Webmaster Guidelines. I believe Cutts alluded to both buying and selling links in his blog but I can't find it right now. http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66736 The Snitch-O-Gram asks for this:"If you know of a site that buys or sells links, please tell us by filling out the fields below". https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks?hl=en Makes me think they are looking for and will penalize for both.
so if you report a site engaged in selling links, google will just drop the site from the serps without investigating first if the report is real?
Yes, you are correct. I may be wrong but I think any link has the potential to pass PR or manipulate the serps so does this mean G believes all links should be nofollow?
I took it from google's page and therefore they do allow paid links as long as people follow theirs conditions.
My own thoughts have been on this quite a lot lately! 1. From webmasters reporting on G 2. From likes of text link ads being careless 3. From reading these threads 4. More recently I believe they have automated this by exploring the link profile of websites. i.e autoqueery of the metatags to see if sites are linking to relevant sites. Thus if you have webmaster tools linking to a gardening site = disaster Also the links all tend to be in the same part of the linker outer, and ofetn they are linking out to other irrelevant websites. GREED in other words I could speculate to say that is is easier to find the seller first, and then work back to find the buyer, which is unlike most detective novels..
NO. They are just trying to preserve their algorhythm which is inherently flawed, but still the best we have.
My 2 Cents... I personally think this move by G is going to be upsetting many webmasters all over the WWW... Some might become so frustrated to give up on WhiteHat SEO and look for other tools of the trade... This is a crack in the Big G picture that both Yahoo and MSN can take advantage of... Darwins law is Survival of the Fitest! Those webmaster who can figure out a way to work around the obstacle G sends out on all of us (in the coming years) will be the ones who'll be keeping their SERPS on the first page... I wish the best of luck to all those who are avoiding G's Penalties, hopefully everything will work out of the better in 08! (although it's not looking too bright)
For the basics : unnatural links are generally at the footers , and they generally change periodically and a lot of predictions. My Theory is google will begin to shot randomly we'll see a lot of istes going down even innocent and well known sites ( this will be the shock and awe period of the update) , they can even target sites that have no nofollow tag ( I Put some dummy nofollowed links to be on the safer side) The Webmasters will be frigtened and submit to the autority. Of course I will not surrender , google is the enemy.
I wonder if we will be penalised for having our own sites linking to each other? A lot of my links are on my own sites, but could be mistaken for paid I guess?
No one knows about this we'll wait and see but there is no solid way to differenciate the paid and unpaid links. By the way people have a misunderstanding on this point google is not only against paid links but also against unnatural links.
Yes, it is a bit unfair if google punishes unpaid links. Possibly yahoo and MSN might take advantage of this.
Its nothing to worry about, Google have just changed the way SEO works. They don't want you to get natural links, submit to directories etc anymore, they want you to rat on your competitors so they get kicked out and you go up to the top by default. Stop complaining and start reporting all your competitors and watch as Yahoo rises above Google for most popular search engine..