Was the web(Google) better off before the 4/4 update and everything that followed? Will they ever be able to achieve their goal of filtering traded and sold links succesfully? How would they tell the difference between advertising and sold links? Does anybody but me think there is absolutely no way to tell the difference between an "acceptable" link and "unacceptable" link, with out a human being arbitraly looking at each one What is this mean, if what they want to do is even somehow accomplished, and if the web dev community accepts to abide by it... -No more networks, can't link to your own sites -No more web advertising, other then AdSense, I have actually heard rumors that your SERPS drop if you change your AdSense to YPN -No more affiliate programs, affiliate links seemed to be frowned upon -No more COOP or anything of the sort, defenitely. -No more directories -No more partner sites (I own a pet store, you sell pet food lets trade links, OHH wait Can't ) I don't know but Google seems to be cutting the hand that feeds it, us, these changes don't seem to be really accomplishable and they are completely screwing everybody with this clearly poor planed effort. Emil
I dint think Google will punish your or such for selling links if it is advertising but when they find out your site will no longer give PR to sites it links to although it will still rank as well as before. Tell me if I am all wrong.
Sites you mention are sending millions on advertising...my guess is adsense will drop revenues exactly as they drop sites... Sites that do not use such tecniques possible do not use adsense.