That's the article I found on the forum I visit, it's about Google attitude to selling links, hope it''ll be interesting http://searchengineland.com/071007-173841.php

I hope this article is an eye-opener for those who sells links.

As far as I know we should put the no-follow attributes on sponsored links.

http://www.webmaster-talk.com/buy-an...ing-links.html

&

http://www.webmaster-talk.com/the-go...tml#post472035

Read the whole thread as well while you are there

Alas.... I feel it is time to switch to selling contextual links and presells....

I'd rephrase the title of this thread to selling links without adding a nofollow may cause problems for your site in Google.

There are many people including myself who think Google is going overboard in their reaction to paid links. I understand why they're doing what they're doing and I understand their desire to prevent people from manipulating their results, but I think what they're doing won't prevent either. I think in the end it will only hurt the small site who isn't attempting to manipulate anything.

It also comes across as hypocritical since Google is by far the largest link seller on the web.

Originally Posted by vangogh

I think in the end it will only hurt the small site who isn't attempting to manipulate anything.

I'm not sure it will. The small site won't have the same characteristics of the big buck link sellers which I think Google are targeting, and so won't get flagged (in my opinion). And if the small site does get affected adversely by selling links, it's the owner's responsibility to do a bit of research into the free service that brings them traffic. A small amount of research will uncover the fact that paid links without nofollow are bad.

I'm sure that you wouldn't just jump into a new venture without doing some research first. If site owners are relying on what Google gives them they should learn something about how Google works.

See http://www.webmaster-talk.com/the-go...oss-in-pr.html as well.

gringo I think the issue is more that Google doesn't really know how to detect paid links as well as they'd like us to believe. It seems like this week they decided to knock down some very well known bloggers in seo related industries along with some big name publishers.

The PR drop doesn't seem to be affecting their ranking as though it was only a manual edit of the toolbar PR. That strikes me more as Google trying to spread fear in the community.

What I'm concerned with is someone like a client of mine. She has a list of links on a page with a heading of Sponsors. None of the links on the page was exchanged for money. They're just people who have hung her photos in an exhibit. She wants to call them sponsors though. I think in time Google will see those links and since they're not nofollowed (not is there any reason they should be nofollowed) Google could slap her with a penalty.

I'll be the first to admit that my client doesn't have some kind of right to expect Google search results or traffic, but I think Google could go about this in a much better way.