The paid link debate has a new topic to chew on, namely the official word and demonstrated effect of Google penalizing sites that sell links.

Link Selling Equals Google Juice Squeeze

From Google’s mouth to Danny Sullivan’s ears came the word on selling links. He’s followed the issue, using the Stanford Daily student newspaper website as an example.

Stanford Daily had enjoyed a PageRank of 9, and a $350 per month revenue stream per text link. That PR 9 has dwindled from its position in April, said Danny:

Last week, I noticed the Stanford Daily had dropped from when I wrote the above in April to PR7 today. That’s a huge drop that has no apparent reason to happen. Some others were also reporting PageRank drops. So I pinged Google, and they confirmed that PageRank scores are being lowered for some sites that sell links.

In addition, Google said that some sites that are selling links may indeed end up being dropped from its search engine or have penalties attached, to prevent them from ranking well.

Humorously enough, Danny discovered an instance where Google doesn’t let link selling get in the way of its multi-billion dollar business. On his site, Google advertising for a “PR 6 .Edu Backlink” appeared within a Search Engine Land story.