HUGE site caught selling text links - Will Google penalize them?

A huge, reputable, and popular site has been found to be selling text links and marking them as "reference links". Will Google penalize them? Who is the site? Find out here.

 

Nah, they will penalize their customers.

 

Heh...google can do shit about paid links...LOL

Down with that guy called matt cutts.

 

There's nothing Google can do about buying links, they will work that out sooner or later.

 

as long as no terms violated, G have no right to do that...

 

Google has a right to do whatever they want with their search engine.

You and I have no rights in Google's search engine.

 

Great point there Will

 

Google is King!!!! Either we agree with them or we are nothing in the SEO world

 

'Thou shalt not sell text links' sayeth Google, true followers of G must follow...

 

It's a little game -- us vs. Google.

They're winning.

 

Rather all websites should have small javascripts and should load 4-5 urls randomly from the link pools (whoever has paid them for links)

 

G can do nothing with those payed links. They can only penalize the seller, but it's hard to prove.

 

http://www.howstuffworks.com/

Page Rank 8

 

Howcome big sites like that can't sell text links?

 

It guess taking action against link selling brings double the benefit for big G... firstly its a small step for them towards more 'natural/organic' SERPs.... plus of course it will no doubt help boost the use of site-specific adwords campaigns

 

If you're a link buyer you should stay away from any site that openly sell text links. There are millions of sites out there not working with brokers flying under the radar.

Lately, if i find a site I want to buy a link from I ask them to change some keywords currently on their site to a link to my site - for a fee of course. How is google going to know a natural-organic link is paid for? The more important question is should they care?

 

I think the BMW thing showed that Google treats established brick and morter businesses differently than smaller, virtual ones. There seems to be two sets of rules.

 

i dont think that they will ban or give punishment to them. they continue to recieve good traffic from google

 

Actually, Google can not tell anyone whether or not they are allowed to sell links, just no one has put it to the test yet. It falls under anti-trust laws.

In Florida, for instance, F.S. §542.18 is worded as such:

Sounds like "restrain of trade" to me, Google telling people how they can and cannot sell links.

What the US Dept. of Justice says about the Sherman Act:

-Michael

 

This thread ended when the above message was posted.

It is absolutely useless to rant about "down with this" "down with google" "oh! lets make our own search engine"

Just accept it and move on,