As reported by Philipp Lenssen, Barry Schwartz, Tamar Weinberg and Loren Baker, Google has updated their Webmaster Help Center question regarding Paid Links:
Google and most other search engines use links to determine reputation. A site’s ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to it. Link-based analysis is an extremely useful way of measuring a site’s value, and has greatly improved the quality of web search. Both the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of links count towards this rating.
However, some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results.
Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such as:
- Adding a rel=”nofollow” attribute to the “a” tag
- Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file
Google works hard to ensure that it fully discounts links intended to manipulate search engine results, such excessive link exchanges and purchased links that pass PageRank. If you see a site that is buying or selling links that pass PageRank, let us know. We’ll use your information to improve our algorithmic detection of such links.
How do you protect yourself?
If you practice in exchanging, selling or buying links for the purpose of building value Google is looking for others to notify them so they can penalize you. Google offers two ways to protect yourself, but the easiest way is to stop these practices.
Is this right, what are your thoughts?
Is Google trying to enforce a primary component of the Internet for their own purposes?
Should a website be penalized because Google passed value for a link?
Should Google only remove the value it gave for the paid or exchanged link or take back more?
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Hey, lets all go to google’s report page and report google! Since they sell paid links more than anyone. I’ve bought them and can prove it, so have most of you. How dare they sell paid links, what a travesty of justice ( Google’s Justice)
Is anyone sick of big companies, especially search engines telling us all how to design our sites? Who to sell links to, who to link to and so on? By asking webmasters to report others, that is like Nazi Germany – let’s report the Jews, they are evil because we say they are. I think if we all opt out at once the threats will be toothless. What if we all started to use Ask.com? Just a thought? Do you and your readers and everyone else like Andy beard, Maki at Dosh Dosh and the rest will ever care again? Just imagine Lycos today telling us all we have to do this or that – you would laugh – right?
My site is not involved in buying or selling links. Why? I think it might be good for a big site to become even bigger. I don’t think reporting sites with paid links as I don’t have time to report all Adsense sites on the net – this kind of paid advertising is really ubiquitous and eye-catching. No one can dissuade me that Google’s Adsense ads are not paid links. The answer to a question whether Google wants to “enforce a primary component of the Internet for their own purposes” is clear. A Web site should not be penalized for selling links IF the site administrator controls the process and does not let poor quality Web site links appear on his Web site. Only in case the links lead to spam sites Google may take the site out of the search engine index. But we know Big Brother does not listen to us, just mortals…
This is ridiculous. Just as other members have said, Adwords is paid advertising. How is it any different? Google just wants a monopoly of the paid link advertising on the internet.
Not quite the same, the idea that someone purchases a link to exploit Google’s ranking algorithm is what they are trying to combat against.
Paid links should be only valuable as the traffic they provide, not additional value passed because of the link.
What’s the problem with this? If your competition wants you out of the way, it can damage your rankings by obtaining paid links to your site and reporting them to Google.