One popular method of raising rankings is the buying of links from high PageRank sites that often have no relevance to the subject of the buyer’s site. Google discourages this practice, stating, “Many sites that advertise link-sharing programs not only offer little value., but will distribute your email address without your permission.”
Discuss this topic at WebProWorld.
What can Google do to combat link buying? Or are they going to take any action at all?
“Seobook” a SEW forum poster and webmaster of SEOBook.com, offers this suggestion: “the biggest thing they can (do) is plant seeds of doubt to lower demand and raise costs to make ROI less predictable.”
Link buying techniques do have some signatures that search engines can detect. One give away is an increase of non-relevant outbound links that land on pages with high PageRanks. If Google discovers this, they can then penalize the offending party.
Ultimately, it may take Google moving away from PageRank before any real success is awarded. Poster David Wallace suggests that Google, “get rid of the PR indicator and backlinks checker. If someone cannot see their PR and if they cannot check backlinks at Google, how will they sell links based on PR6, PR7, etc., etc.?”
A number of posters at the SEW forum don’t think that Google is going to do anything to combat the practice of link buying. A search of the keywords “PageRank Links” reveals at least two AdWord ads offering to sell links with high PR. This seems to suggest that Google isn’t in a hurry to eliminate this practice.
Besides, quite a few forum members wonder if link buying is something that should be a penalty incurring offense to begin with. Jeff Martin, a moderator at SEW says, “If I have a PR 8 site and I offer ads for run of site and sectional like every other web site on Earth why would Google need to do anything about it? What law’ have I broken? None. To say its wrong would be like (penalizing) SEW because of all of the SEO advertisers Danny has.”
For now, it appears Google will not penalize you for link buying, or perhaps, not even be able to. “Seobook” supports this thought: “Anchor text is extremely powerful and until their algorithm can learn to devalue random unrelated links, link selling will remain a big business.”
If you have any experience with the buying or selling of links for PageRank purposes, or otherwise, please share them with us at WebProWorld.
Thanks to the SEW forums for the information.
Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for Murdok. Visit Murdok for the latest search news.
