Who's Still Buying Links?

let the others be scared about buying links and us in first pages of SE because we are buying links lol.

 

I agree in theory its possible. But I dont think big G will hand out punishments like this. It would also be punishing other sites who genuinely have linked to that site because they wanted to, not because there was any cash involved. At worst I think links like this will get ignored, not penalised.

 

There's plenty of sites that are buying links that are still ranking well. Most of the penalties appear to have been applied manually.

 

Hey! Guys nice set of informations. great....

 

91 votes so far and it looks like a lot of people are continuing to buy links.

It seems over the last week that link purchases on my sites has sky rocketed - even on some sites which lost a PR level.

 

Not me, google does penalize!

 

Two sites have been penalized, even though they donot sell any links, and one of my directory completely gone to 0 from strong pr4. I have interlinked my own sites, probably some one have reported to google, with an intention to sabotage my business. Google really needs to learn and evolve on its own, without acting on reports sent by competitors.

 

i just buy 3 or 4 links....
and its not working for me...

 

All you fools that sit here and say that it's a conspiracy theory and that Google isn't really penalizing websites, I just laugh at you.

It's happened to me. It's happened to my friends. And it will happen to you.

You sell links without using a rel='nofollow' and you will be penalized. That is a fact.

 

^ Comments like this is what make me laugh...

 

i dont care to be penalized for selling links, if they penalized my 1 site i will create 100 more, i dont care.

 

There is really no conclusive evidence that paid links are penalized.. After all, how on earth does Google know if you paid for a link or not?

 

You want to check other possibilities. I have bolded what I think may also possibly be effecting your penalty.

The other issue is written content. Are you crossing thresholds (keyword stuffing)? Although this may not result in a penalty, they will devalue from my experience. There are many other reason why Google may not like our sites now. To be favored with Google is a major accomplishment. Once you are favered (trusted), then you can work on ranking.


H

 

It looks like they are penalizing the sellers of paid links.

 

Really? I've not seen that to be the case.

 

I agree - if Google went around penalizing sites that "could" be selling links then there wouldn't be much left of the internet to search.

The worst that happens is some links are discounted. So what? The link buyer loses the benefit but they knew the risk - the seller is not effected.

 

It's time to boycott G if they want to tell me what I can and can not do on my own site.


hmmmm......maybe they should come up with a special tag to use in links and when gbot comes accross that tag....gbot deposits $ in my account because I didn't sell that link....I saved it for G....

 

I'm going to look into detail about whether some really obvious paid links are getting discounted - just as a fun test.

keeping a close eye on the Google SERPs, looking at signs from MSN, Yahoo, technorati, sphere and Google index might give a good overview if they work on not - in a controlled test.

 

I can't believe people are still complaining about text links, it is manipulation of the pagerank system any way you look at it. I don't care if the system is "broken", does that mean if a cities police force is weak and broken down you should go commit crimes at will?

Regardless if there is evidence or not about penalizing for selling text links it IS against Google TOS and if your a respectable webmaster you wouldn't want people buying and selling text links, this not only manipulates pagerank but also SERPs.

Shall we make it so the only way you can rank well is PAY for it? If you really buy text links for traffic then using the nofollow tag shouldn't be a problem. Lets be REALISTIC for about ten seconds, 90% of your text links are to boost PR and SERPs.

 

No, they are telling you what you must do to be ranked and index in THEIR search engine with YOUR site. Obey the rules or feel the wrath, its that simple.