Remember when Google was involved in that controversy regarding paid links on blog posts about the company’s Chrome browser? As people had caught wind of what was going on, Google implemented a PageRank penalty on Chrome’s landing page, which knocked …

Early this month, Google was caught up in some controversy related to paid linking. It’s funny how the Internet works. That seems like such a long time ago, and so many Google controversies ago. Since then, Google has sparked heated …

The topic of paid links is in the headlines once again, and ironically, Google is the accused. As WebProNews previously reported, Google was recently caught up in a controversy after it violated its own Webmaster Guidelines as part of a marketing campaign for Google Chrome.

Following the previously reported upon controversy surrounding a marketing campaign for Google’s Chrome browser, Google has apparently decided to devalue its Chrome landing page (in terms of PageRank). At least temporarily. Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land acquired a statement …

Google is the subject of some controversy related to sponsored links. They involve posts promoting Google Chrome for small businesses. Are you OK with Google’s Chrome promotion strategy? Let us know in the comments. As you may know, Google has …

Earlier this year, J.C. Penney was caught gaming Google. A New York Times article exposed that the company had been benefiting enormously from excessive paid links, which is obviously against Google’s rules. They had ranked number one or close for …

We knew Twitter lists were going to be big for Twitter. We knew they were going to greatly increase the usefulness of the service, and for many, even the enjoyment. What we didn’t know, however, was that right out of the box, we would see so many different uses for them, providing a window to the potential that they really do hold not only for Twitter itself, but for any business or individual who uses it. Let’s look at a few of those ways that Twitter lists are being used.

You may recall back at SMX Seattle earlier this year, Google’s Matt Cutts talked at length about paid links. He touched upon the topic of Google being able to read javascript after giving out advice for so long to use javascript as a way to keep Google from reading paid links.

Update: Izea has launched thier paid tweeting service (discussed in the original article) on its own site at SponsoredTweets.com.

As you may know, Google’s Matt Cutts frequently answers questions from Google users on the Google Webmaster Central YouTube channel. There are a couple recent ones in which he addresses questions about directories and how they contribute to a site’s rankings.

The first question is:

Will Google consider Yahoo! Directory and BOTW (Best of the Web) as sources of paid links? If no, why is this different from another site that sells links?

There have been a couple of pretty interesting articles written this week that ask a legitimate (if not somewhat sensationalized) question:  Does Google consider SEOs to be criminals?

In a Q&A session at SMX Advanced in Seattle, Google’s Matt Cutts talked at length about paid links. He was asked several questions about this.

Google recently announced it is now reading javascript and acting upon it. In the past, the advice given out has been if you have paid links, you should either nofollow those paid links or use javascript because Google didn’t read it.

Jaws dropped last week upon the news Google penalized its own Japanese site in Google search results after discovering Google Japan participated in a pay-per-post blogging scheme. WebProNews Video caught up with Google’s anti-spam-team captain, Matt Cutts, who offers his apologies.

Go ahead and laugh, because it is funny. Google Japan’s probably too embarrassed to laugh, though, and someone somewhere is likely to resemble the spittle-drenched apologist from the movie Gung Ho.

Google Japan, according to its apology, was apparently unaware of the company’s own terms of service. Paying a Japanese pay-per-post promotion company to pimp its new Hot Keywords blog widget caused the website to be busted down from PR 9 to PR 5.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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