if you have a perfect product and no one knows about it then it is tough to sell it. internet is like real world. you must fight to be visible, to sell. I have another question for you: what if the ugly guy with biiiig budget hires a ton of indians and writes 10 times more content than all sites in the niche have? According to your logic, that is bad too as the indians would use info already online.
The internet, of course, is by definition dependent on links. Without links, there would be no "inter" in internet. It seems to me that Google is trying to thwart people that they believe are "gaming" the linking system by buying PR rather than letting the links happen naturally as a result of readers' preferences. I can't fault Google for that, if that is their current strategy. Meanwhile, I'll keep on submitting to free directories and wait to see how the results roll out for the paid directories.
Who said Google's trying to stop paid links? You can still use sell paid links if you add the NOFOLLOW tag, in which case you're selling traffic not PR. That's exactly what Adwords does, it sells traffic
Well yes, that is what people are saying. But they also say that page rank has no real significance anyway, so why do they care if anyone is "gaming" it or not? One way or another someone is bending the truth a little here. On one hand Google says not to worry about page rank, it doesn't mean much - yet on the other hand they're investing shed loads of cash into stopping people manipulate their page rank, which sort of contradicts the first statement.
There are a couple of noteworthy points related to the above. If someone pays me to advertise on my sites and I review their websites and it meet my criteria then why should it not count as a backlink? Also why should I have to go in and make a coding change on my website to help google conduct it's business, they can recommend it but I don't think they should be allowed to force it.
You answered yourself: You said if "it meet my criteria" Same is for google. they are not forcing anyone, but if you do not meet their criteria, your site will only lay on page 950. I really don't see any drama about G trying to get rid of paid links traded only for ranking purpose. with their (crappy IMO) algo they created this mess, about time they try to patch it. I'm really tired to search for something and need to visit at least 4 or 5 sites before a decent one show up. Face it, ranking is doped by link trade.
Two things. First, there's nothing wrong with the paid review if you have a criteria for rejecting reviews. I doubt Google will be able to identify tose as paid links. Second, Google isn't enforing anything. If you want to sell links on your site Google won't stop you; they'll just penalize your site in the SERPs, which is their right as it's their website. If you're not worried about your site's SERPs then there's nothing Google can do if you sell links. Too true
Maybe there would be a case for anti-trust because they could use their virtual monoply on providing search results to force people to use their paid adwords program?
Google is certainly not saying "not to worry about page rank, it doesn't mean much". That's merely what some DP posters say, because they haven't done their homework. Here's what Google is saying: "The heart of our software is PageRank™... PageRank continues to play a central role in many of our web search tools." (http://www.google.com/technology/index.html) ©2007 Google
You're absolutely right. As I said a few posts back, I don't buy or sell text links for SEO purposes, however I do have a few sites that make a nice amount of money from banner advertisers, and I "nofollow" the banner ads but the advertisers don't care, they want people to see the banners and come visit their sites. The whole concept of selling links for pagerank or seo purposes undermines the fundamental principles and ethics of natural search. As somebody who uses Google and other search engines all day long in my work, I'm glad when I search that I'm not taken to an MFA page or a SEDO parked page. Google is not against any webmaster having "advertisments" on their site but they are against selling links for seo purposes. Anybody who can't comprehend that concept is obviously bitter because their little "link selling" businesses are all getting washed up. Personally, I wish Google would finally blank out PR because all those who bought their way to the PR they're currently at are still able to solicit new sales based on the former rank.