WebProNews - Paid Links

New Paid Links Service Sparks More Debate

Chris Crum — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 07:33:16 -0500

Quite a storm of debate has erupted over a new service called InLinks - essentially a paid text link service that allegedly makes it hard for Google (and other search engines) to detect them. And mouths of Internet marketers begin to salivate.

Paid Links Go Underground

Jason Lee Miller — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 04:28:27 -0500

For every abolition an underground emerges. Google’s not exactly the law, and bootleggers during Prohibition didn’t exactly offer seminars about avoiding the revenuers. Todd Mailcoat, Rand Fishkin, John Lessnau, with six middle fingers between them, offer no such discretion and invited PubCon attendees under the table in a session titled Linkfluence: How to Buy Links With Maximum Juice and Minimum Risk.

Paid Link Reporting Spurs Furious Debate

WebProNews Staff — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 11:45:38 -0400

Matt Cutts posted a note about Google being in position to handle paid link report submissions from the Internet community; Michael Gray complained about the fairness of the request.

Google Grateful For Your Webspam And Paid Links Reports

Doug Caverly — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 09:37:04 -0400

Give yourselves a hand, folks. In Google's fight against webspam and paid links, you've apparently played an important role, and in the future, the company's hoping you'll participate even more.

Exclusive: Google Leads People To NoFollow Help Center

WebProNews Staff — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 20:47:24 -0400

Matt Cutts told Mike McDonald of WebProNews about something new from Google: the search advertising company opened a little help center on the topic of nofollows and links.

Network Solutions In Another Controversy

Jason Lee Miller — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 16:31:16 -0400

Network Solutions really didn't need any more public relations disasters after the controversy of automatically registering searched-for domains and "protecting" them for a $35 fee. Though this new controversy may not be quite the hyperbole it's made out to be in some places, it does come with some potentially serious issues.

Google Continues Downgrading Paid Link Sites

WebProNews Staff — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 06:09:59 -0500

The pointy boot came down hard on more websites recently as Google knocked PageRank off sites for their paid link activities.

Fighting Google's Paid Link Stance With Robots.txt

WebProNews Staff — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 11:52:36 -0500

Andy Beard has hit upon a compromise between removing text links from his site and being summarily punished by Google for selling them.

A Loophole For Paid Links

Jason Lee Miller — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 15:03:56 -0500

It seems it was only a matter of time before the cleverer element of the SEO world developed a workaround for Google's penalizing of paid links. The workaround involves a pretty creative "dynamic" linking strategy, and it's playing a little bit dirty.

Manipulation and Profit Margins

Aaron Wall — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 17:51:25 -0500

Central hubs on the web fight off manipulation to keep their status and profit margins in tact. A side effect of this war on control over information access is the butchering of the English language.

Digg is Illegal?

Digg's CEO Jay Adelson said:

Google vs. MSN on Paid Links and Cloaking

Mike McDonald — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 14:16:32 -0500

Don't buy paid links! Paid links are bad! Don't cloak either. Search engines don't allow it. You've all heard this before right?

>>> What are your thoughts on paid links? Do you agree with Google's hard line? Comment here...

Google Loose with Editorially Approved Links

Michael Gray — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 09:07:00 -0500

In an earlier post I chastised Google for giving straight links to partners, However now I’ve found a whole bunch more...

Google Not Following its Own Paid Link Rules

Michael Gray — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 19:35:10 -0500

One of the more entertaining aspects of the entire paid links debate is Google is pretty quick to dole out the punishment, even though in many cases they haven’t taken the time to get their own house in order.

Google Squashed Seven SEO Standbys In '07

WebProNews Staff — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 12:04:49 -0500

Search optimization pros bade farewell to paid links and other techniques after Google made certain changes through the past year.

Paid Links and Google Kool Aid

Aaron Stewart — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 13:12:12 -0500

Michael Gray doesn’t know who I am, I don’t expect him to. We sat next to each other one day at lunch during Pubcon, he is a polite, engaging guy, with obviously tons of knowledge in SEO/SEM field.

What Do You Think About Paid Links?

Mike McDonald — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 11:12:17 -0500

Paid links and PR drops were a hot topic at Pubcon Las Vegas last week. We talked to Matt Cutts about it in a video interview, and he explained it quite rationally.

Cutts, Sullivan Weigh In On Paid Links

WebProNews Staff — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 07:10:01 -0500

The wild debate about Google's increasingly hardline stance against paid links looks like Wimbledon, with Matt Cutts taking on Rich Skrenta, while Danny Sullivan volleys against Michael Gray.

PubCon: Treading Lightly On Link Buying

WebProNews Staff — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 06:56:27 -0500

The dominant search engine, Google, doesn't have a problem with nofollowed paid links, but few webmasters want to pay for something that brings minimal value to their sites.

The Paid Link Stages Of Grief

Jason Lee Miller — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 12:44:25 -0500

Let the bargaining begin. It's a natural stage of mourning. As Google shuffles loose the paid links from its algorithms, SEOs are cycling past their initial denial, their outrage, and have begun negotiating. Stay tuned; depression and acceptance are likely to follow.

Paid Links Still Evil To Google

WebProNews Staff — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 06:16:18 -0500

Google continues to beat the drum about passing PageRank through paid links as Matt Cutts weighed in on the topic with another request that webmasters use the 'nofollow' attribute for them.

Official: Google Penalizing Paid Links

Jason Lee Miller — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 12:16:35 -0500

Google has officially said that buying and selling links that pass PageRank is a violation of the company's Webmaster Guidelines, and can result in a drop in search rankings.

Google Busted Laundering Links?

Jason Lee Miller — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 16:21:55 -0500

Because Google has neglected to make certain links from its site nofollow, webmasters are wondering how, exactly, they differ from paid links.

Google (Finally) Responds to Directory Question

Jason Lee Miller — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 12:30:18 -0400

The recent slap a handful of directories experienced was unaccompanied by an explanation from Google, though the general consensus (maybe) was that Google's webspam team was sending a message. Weeks later, WebProNews has wrangled a response from Google's Webmaster Central team – sort of.

Link Selling Equals Google Juice Squeeze

WebProNews Staff — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 05:55:30 -0400

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.

Finking On Paid Linking?

Jason Lee Miller — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 09:58:16 -0400

It's been a couple of weeks since it became apparent that Google was penalizing link directories – at least a few of them – knocking them out of the SERPs even for their own business names. There's still no official word from Google on this, but there is plenty speculation that it wasn't algorithmic.

Google Wants You To Report Paid Links

Mike Sachoff — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 11:06:46 -0400

Google is offering users a way to report paid links in an effort to provide searchers with better results, a move that has generated plenty of discussion.

Google Increases Efforts to Identify Paid Links

Andy Beal — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 08:48:07 -0400

Over at the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog, Vanessa Fox announces a “report paid links” feature, after previously asking us to use the spam report to snitch on those selling paid links.

Google's Paid Link Reporting

Michael Gray — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 10:18:57 -0400

Google added a new section to webmaster central today entitled “report paid links”. How anyone other than me or quite possibly my book keeper know whether a link is paid or not is very questionable, but let’s dig just a little deeper shall we.

You can get the full data on this page but I’ll reprint it here because some of you might be concerned about privacy issues as far as Google is conceded:

Google Cracks Down on Paid Links

David Leonhardt — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 14:36:21 -0400

First, let me preface this post by saying there is nothing wrong with buying paid links, regardless of what Google says or what you think Google says. Paid links are called advertising. “Free” links, which are never actually free, are called public relations. This has been going on since someone in ancient Egypt first wrote a sandwich board reading “The End is near” and someone else asked, “How much to add ‘Reserve your burial plots today!’”

Google Clarifies Paid Link Stance

Jason Lee Miller — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 12:34:12 -0400

Google has updated its Webmaster Guidelines to include definitions of commonly used terms for shady practices and clearer language about the penalties associated with black and gray hat SEO tactics.