Question about something I saw in another thread. (I didn't want to hijack the thread, so I'm starting a new one.) Someone said: "why do you have links up without the "rel=nofollow" attribute? do you realize that google may think that those are paid links?" My question-- Does Google REALLY dislike follow-able links in a site? That seems like such an odd statement. But then it got me to thinking-- what WOULD google consider a paid link? Thanks.
That is an odd statement. Google does not mind you selling links on your site IF you put a rel=nofollow on them.
Buying ans selling links for PR purpose is bad to Google. However you can always put rel="NOFOLLOW" on links to make sure your site does not leak PR.
Okay, I get that if you put nofollow on your links it will be OK for your PR.... BUT on many of my sites, I have a "links" page that I use to post links for exchange. All of the links are out to quality, niche-related sites.... and all of the links have brief annotations. But, of course I haven't put the nofollow tag on these links. And I have various affiliate links scattered around too. So are these hurting my PR or my SERP rankings somehow?
If you don't want Google to detect your paid links, just put them into a JavaScript include file that displays the ads on your page. A large portion of my left navigation bar is filled with paid ads referenced from a JavaScript file that Google can't read (I hope).