Comments on: How Does Google Find Websites That Sell Links?

By: 3d printer

3d printer — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 17:13:24 +0000

I understand that if you put a link on a site that is nofollow will not pass a vote for pagerank but those it still count as a backlink and a improvement in your serp?

By: Rojer Alex

Rojer Alex — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 20:45:28 +0000

There’s no problem in selling / buying links as long as it’s not for manipulating the Google Page Rank algorithm.

That clearly means that you can buy / sell links for traffic and Google’s absolutely ok with this. This was one of the reasons why the nofollow tag was introduced so that people can still buy / sell links without trying to game the PR algorithm.

By: Aahna

Aahna — Thu, 20 May 2010 10:01:05 +0000

hey even i sell links on my site i am getting good money for that, how to stop bcoz in ads i am not getting money but link selling i am getting the money………

By: Velvet Blues

Velvet Blues — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 09:54:20 +0000

@Nihar: Yes, sometimes you will notice this with blogs. They never link directly to webpages. The actual url is a redirect through their own website.

@Kim: Yes, “transparency” is apparently the word of the year. With Google, I agree, they do own too much. And quite often they do things which are not well explained.

Fortunately, they seem to be a very fair company. But I cannot wait until they get some REAL competition to ‘keep them honest’.

By: Kim Woodbridge

Kim Woodbridge — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 23:57:31 +0000

While google is very helpful in many instances I am a little tired of how much control they have. For example, now they own feedburner – I feel like one company has too much control of our blogging activities.

I also lost page rank for no apparent reason in November – I’ve never had paid links. Then it “magically” came back in November. It’s seems almost whimsical without any real explanations provided as to what it going on. I think I would like more transparency.

By: Nihar

Nihar — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 03:47:21 +0000

I always took care about this. But, for me #2. use redirects is new.

Thanks for the info. Good post.

By: Velvet Blues

Velvet Blues — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:55:44 +0000

@Yan: Yes, I don’t like the use of info from the community either. But it might be a source of good leads… And anything that makes the web a fairer place makes me happy. But yes, adding nofollow to all paid links is important. What plugin are you using?

@Ajith: I haven’t really heard of any ‘mistakes’. But I feel that Google is fair. And those sites that were slapped with pagerank penalties have been able to recover when they stopped selling paid links. And yes, Google is in vengeance mode. haha. I will never do anything unethical!

@Kurt: Yes, I am now aware of the linking to Google. It really does help the pagerank of a page.

As for the ‘Inlinks’ plugin, I haven’t heard of it. I’ll do my research to see what it does.

By: Kurt Avish

Kurt Avish — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 09:44:51 +0000

Having said all that, however Google is extremely happy when we link back with dofollow to any google site Its a bit like an unbalance justice from my point of view.

I think the best is to set a limit of reasonable amount of links a website can sell… or for example… not more than 1 dofollow link per post of a blog.

There is a site called Inlinks and I wanted some of you people views about it. It normally gives a plugin to integrate into your site.. But is that not a real easy trap? Google just have to locate this plugin codes and punish the site? Or is it really protected as Inlinks say it?

By: Ajith Edassery | DollarShower

Ajith Edassery | DollarShower — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 09:22:39 +0000

Good post… I am all for Google’s approach. I mean, if it’s granting search visibility for certain good content, it’s our responsibility to make sure that we don’t exploit it by selling PR links. That will sabotage the entire algorithm. Since it’s touching its own search preferences and not our sites, nobody has any right to talk against it.

However, in case Google is making a mistake, I guess they should give the bloggers/site owners another opportunity a few months down the lane. I see this not happening and that’s unethical from Google. And in the case of high profile sites and blogs, Google is in a vengeance mode!

By: Yan@Review

Yan@Review — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 02:20:31 +0000

I’m always against the use of method #1. I figure it’s very much open to abuse by the competitors. How many times I’ve heard of some “authority” sites being stripped of PR due to ‘jealousy’.

The safest bet is to nofollow all the paid links. I’m using a plugin to nofollow all the links for any category of my choice. You don’t want to anger the God of Google, do you?

Yan