Comments on: Does Google penalize paid links?

By: Rodney Smith

Rodney Smith — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 06:22:43 +0000

Azeemi: you’re quite entitled to give Google the finger – just don’t cut off your nose to spite your face! If you’re not bothered about them, you might as well put the paid posts and links back in. The only problem is that the value of links is strongly tied to your PR, so you’ll probably find it hard going.

Have you tried submitting a reinclusion request?

By: azeemi

azeemi — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 11:42:55 +0000

I stopped doing paid posts and even deleted most of them or put nofollow on the links, but I still have a PR 0. Doesn’t bother me though. I think Google is a joke.

By: Mikael

Mikael — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 19:01:33 +0000

I’ve had my site loose PR because I was selling links through TLA’s wordpress plugin. It went well for a couple of months but then suddently it was gone.

I removed the TLA plugin and issued a re-inclusion request and within a week I had my PR back. I’m not sure that’ll be the case for everyone but that’s what happend to my site.

By: Rodney Smith

Rodney Smith — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 16:20:31 +0000

Good point, Mike – thanks.

By: Designer Kids Clothing

Designer Kids Clothing — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 22:03:38 +0000

Buying links can get you penalized as well. I know many sites that have gotten the Google slap for purchasing links to boost themselves in the SERPs. It’s not a good idea to piss off google. They rule the planet.

By: Free Laptops

Free Laptops — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 14:15:45 +0000

I would say it’s simple how google works it out. ie a list of links with the header ’sponsered links’ – and yes I believe google does indeed penalize them.

By: Rodney Smith

Rodney Smith — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 17:59:09 +0000

Martin: nice theory Martin, but I do hope you are wrong or I’ll be in trouble, what with giving away dofollow links to all-comers via the comments you all leave

Seriously though, I think it’s more to do with identifying the link broker sites and figuring it out that way. Then again, I’m also just guessing – I don’t really know.

By: Martin

Martin — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:48:35 +0000

Really I think it’s pretty simple how Google figures it out. People who buy paid links are low PR sites who need help getting traffic. They are also sites that wouldn’t typically get natural links until their PR improved. (a nice catch 22 I know) So if a site with PR3 is pointing to a bunch of PR0/1 sites, it because they probably have paid ads.

If however the ratio is different, and a PR3 site points to PR5+ sites, and a few PR0/1 sites, then no penalty.

Anyways, that’s what I’ve concluded. I’m probably wrong. =)

By: Rodney Smith

Rodney Smith — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 06:53:19 +0000

Atniz: good point. So far I haven’t heard of Google outlawing this practice, which lends weight to the argument that they’re only really interested in cutting out the competition when it comes to paid links (ie to maintain their monopoly!).

So do you delete comments that use keywords in the URL? I know people have different views on this, and haven’t totally made up my mind yet.

By: Atniz

Atniz — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 01:17:18 +0000

I understand the concept of google penalty on paid links. How about dofollow blogs and the comments using anchored keywords? It is purely for SEO purpose and those who are using it might be doing SEO services to the company (which is similar to buying links with page rank) or they personally get the links from commenting. My blog is dofollow and currently I don’t allow anchored keyword name worrying google might penalize my page rank. If we passes keywordluv on dofollow blog, can google still penalty our page rank?