So what do you people think?
I read some interesting experiences here
"Here's my story. Draw your own conclusions. My site was between PR4 and PR6 for the last few years. All of a sudden, a few months ago, all my pages went to PR0 overnight. This is a site that's been online for about 9 years. This is a site that was ranked #1 for its prime keyword phrase for 3 years and has been top ten for 5 years.
After much research, I've come to the conclusion that my site was penalized for selling links. I had been doing this for a few years and I don't do anything else that contravenes their guidelines, so I'm certain that this is the reason.
As of today, PR is still 0. I've filed a reconsideration request with Google and am waiting to hear back. There is no grey area in Google's guidelines about this. The following was taken directly from Google's webmaster guidelines. It leaves little room for doubt that they are serious:
"However, some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results."
"Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such as:
* Adding a rel="nofollow" attribute to the <a> tag
* Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file"
"Google works hard to ensure that it fully discounts links intended to manipulate search engine results, such excessive link exchanges and purchased links that pass PageRank. If you see a site that is buying or selling links that pass PageRank, let us know.We’ll use your information to improve our algorithmic detection of such links."
"
"Lol, why do people who refuse to live in fear always get called "shortsighted"?
I'm really truly not interested in what "business model" someone else thinks is good for me. Or good for you...
I was just want pure information without all the fear-based myths that propagate SEO boards.
I'm going to give you a very real live example and you can make of it what you want.
Business owner makes $5k a month selling relevant text links on a site (he does his own brokering)
Let says he believed the END OF THE WORLD CROWD when Matt Cutts first said they were cracking down on sites with paid links.
That was a year and and 4 months ago.
Let's do the math.
$5,000 x 16 months = $80,000
of lost revenue if he believed MC and was just "positive Google would start penalizing sites in the near future"
Let's say he listen to MC's last proclamation of impending DOOM and "warning shot across the bow" as many here like to phrase it which happened in September 07.
That was 7 months ago!
$5,000 x 7 months = $35,000
Let me ask you, what could you do with an extra $35,000 or $80,000?
Do you think you could use that money to build another site?
Invest it in your current site?
Pay for your kids college?
Buy some Goog stock?
What i find short-sighted is a complete lack of understanding of how Google works.
I've made these arguments in prior referenced threads, so I won't go in depth.
Reasons why Goog is NOT likely to ban websites that sell links:
- First and most importantly, its a huge legal nightmare (whether they are in wrong or in the right) which is completely avoidable.
- Google has to seriously run test of how the SERPs would look if all paid links were discounted. Many, many niches would be lacking the "top name-brand trusted sites" that surfers are looking for, because 90%+ of those companies links are paid.
- As mentioned before, unless you have a big flashing sign that says "PAID LINKS HERE", explain to me with logic how Goog's bots are able to detect them?!
Here's a hint, saying Goog's $10 hour secret police check every page of every site is NOT an acceptable answer.
- Is Google going to seriously ban their own Strategic business partners who sell links w/o rel="nofollow"?
Think carefully before answering this one.
- Google is a business that is GROWING it's marketshare. Where's the huge complaints from surfers about how sites with paid links are corrupting the results. Wait! Not from other webmasters. The complaints from the SURFERS?! I haven't heard nor seen them.
- As Sudden said, Google got from this exactly what they wanted from it. People selling obvious paid links look like they've been penalized ... which drives away the majority of "light-weight" link buyers who depend on TBPR to gauge value.
The investors and media are convinced that Goog is no longer being "gamed" by bought links (even if they still are).
People come on boards like this and swear that Google is going to ban link-sellers TODAY which further scares away the un-informed or weak of heart from entering the link-buying / selling field.
Everyone's happy.
----------------
Lastly, please reread Miamacs last post.
It's called Split-testing and every business should use it.
FOR EVERYTHING...including your entire sites.
And you don't get more "long-sighted" that that!
"
"I mean not contacting people directly, but through a broker
not bartering but paying hard cash
not a one time fee but at a monthly rate
...and perhaps even stepping out of the themes.
that's about the only thing I've never tested...
Do the veterans use it for things they couldn't do link campaigns for in any *other* way, or for just about anything?
The way you talk about it makes it sound like that there's a deli-chain with delicious, huge albeit pricey tuna-mayo subs ( with the tunas on steroids ) that could fill someone for the rest of the day, and which I've never tried before *hah*
perhaps I could opt out of hunting food for myself and entrust this lengthly process to the link-feed-franchise. And see if it has any long term side-effects on nutrition levels. Or as Crush said, have an experiment running parallel... twin sites. one sister gets homemade. one gets junkfood*.
*: or deli. you dunno until after. nutrition varies
should I? ... There's one site which I can't get past the top 5 for [mycity worldsmostcompetitivekeyword], ( perhaps I could actually WORK on it but that's... uh... you know... boring ) and to be honest, I think almost anything goes in this sector - the world's largest still working link exchange dirs for example.
...
allright, honestly, theories aside.
We all know that there's no technical definition to bought links, as it's about the process of obtaining them. Which process, when done in-house, is safer. So.
all who still buy links from brokers [in any quantity] say aye.
those with domain names in their WW profile should not apply unless it's their competitors' *smirk*
"
"I had almost the same experience as you, on a six year old site, PR6 for three years, down to PR5, then PR4, then last October reduced to PR0 in the Google Toolbar for selling paid links.
I had some private link deals, and some thru linkexperts and linkworth; about 12 links in total, on my two main sites. Like you, I figure this is a serious warning from Google and I'm not willing to risk further repercussions.
I removed all paid text links, and asked for reinclusion, but no response so far.
I lost about $800 per month by removing the text link deals, but I make between five and ten grand per month from AdSense; more than enough to make me pay attention when Google expresses its displeasure in this manner.
However, I have not suffered any negative changes in SERPS; last few days, I've gone up, most noticeably on a one word term with 150 million results; I'm now number eight, up from eleven. On other pages, I've kept my number one spot, and even have two entries now on page one for several competitive pages that I checked.
I thought you might be interested in a similar experience to your own. Also I'd like to know if anyone has asked for reinclusion, been *forgiven* for their transgressions, and had their toolbar rank returned?
Deserving or not, toolbar rank is still regarded in some circles as a measure of success. While that is so, being reduced to PR0 amounts to a penalty in reputation, if nothing else.
"
"
"I had one particular site that had been a PR8 from 2005 until last October, when it suddenly dropped to a PR4. I had been selling ads on that site - some text based, some image based. I wasn't particularly in the business of "selling links", the site was popular and received a lot of traffic, but there were some people who came forward looking to buy a "text ad" that had nothing to do with the site's topic. I knew why they were buying an ad and I sold it to them anyway - my mistake, I know. Then all of a sudden I was getting emails at least every couple of days from people who wanted to buy text ads like this. If their site looked halfway decent and didn't appear to be a scam I would sell them one.
Then October rolled around and suddenly my PR dropped to a four. Naturally all of that extra link business went away with my high PR. The thing is though that some of my older advertisers - ones who were right on-topic with the site's content and actually bought ads for CLICKS not for LINKS said that the link from my site was "hurting them" in the search engines and discontinued their ads. Within a month of the last PR update, my site's revenue had fallen to just under 10% of what it was before I let the link buyers ruin it.
However my traffic from Google never missed a beat. The site is still in the top 3 for all of its search terms, and gets just as much traffic as it always did.
So was I the victim of a manual kick-down for selling links, or was one of those other sites in a "bad neighborhood" and by linking to them it caused me to drop, but it should come back up once Google updates PR and sees that link is no longer there? I've never been one of those guys who plays the search engine game, and I've never designed a site to be overly search-engine friendly ... I just design my crap in a way that seems logical to me and if they're relevant to what people looking for they get traffic. Nor am I in the business of selling PR or any other link-based sales.
But this last update really hurt and it seems to me that Google, who makes nearly 100% of their revenue from ads, wants to use their muscle to dominate all advertising on the Internet. After all, most of my ads were legitimate ADVERTISEMENTS, intended for people to click on them and visit the advertiser's site and buy something, not for search engines to see and pass PageRank. The fact that Google, in one swoop, was able to essentially kill my entire site's revenue is somewhat discomforting.
Even more discomforting is the fact that the only way I've been able to get some of that revenue back was to open up an AdSense account. In short, what they've done is transferred some of my site's revenue to themselves.
So what do you people think lets discuss[/quote]"Here's my experience on a well-established content site online since 2002. It was PR6 for well over two years, then suffered a gradual decline over about 18 months, first down to PR5, then PR4, then in October last year, to PR0.
The first PR reduction was, I think, unrelated to this issue. I'm not so sure about going from PR5 to PR4 - that may have reflected some of the first moves taken by Google in response to paid links. The topic was being discussed here, at least, but had not yet become a political hot potato.
The move from PR4 to PR0 was definitely a penalty incurred because of paid text links on my sites. I had paid links on two sites, a PR4 and PR3, and both went down to toolbar rank of PR0, while two more of my sites, which did not have paid text links, retained their previous rank.
Throughout this entire time, there was no impact for me on search results; in fact, my main site solidified and is riding high for extremely competitive terms. Google traffic has never beens so good and my Adsense income has also increased.
I chose to remove the paid text links, because I make a good living with AdSense and don't want to tick them off. I submitted a reinclusion request before Christmas, explaining there were no more paid text links on my site, and wouldn't be in the future. I got no reply, but have just been returned to a hesitant PR3.
Oddly enough, while my site sat at PR0, I had no offers from the text link brokers that I previously worked with - but the day my site returned to PR3, I had an offer emailed to me. I won't be accepting it.
I have had private requests for banner ads in the last few months, so there's potential there to regain lost text link revenue through banner placements.
I'm just glad to be registering on the Google radar again and hope to regain more PR rank in the months ahead.
