How long does it take for Google to take action on sites that are purchasing paid links? I have reported a site that has had the #1 ranking for a big keyword for several years. I sent over 12 paid links that I could find, and I'm sure if I spend more time, I could send even more.

Has anyone successfully reported a site and seen their ranking fall?

I haven't tried yet. I also got no idea how long they respond to these kind of situations. If they can prove it, I am sure they will take actions on it.

It doesn't work that way! Google would rarely remove (or penalize) a site from their index manually. They will use the information you send them to try to develop automated procedures to detect paid links.

Originally Posted by DoctorWebmaster

It doesn't work that way! Google would rarely remove (or penalize) a site from their index manually. They will use the information you send them to try to develop automated procedures to detect paid links.

uggh, it's quite upsetting to see the top 2 sites (excluding wikipedia) for my search term getting a high ranking because of paid links and possibly other blackhat techniques.

Just try to make better content and get more quality backlinks so you outrank them. Trying to out rank your competitors is much more practical than trying to bring them down.

Yes it is, there is an Seo company in USA, which was indulge in paid linking heavily.


They get their site in top 10 in google through paid linking.

Google got to know this, and banned their site completely infact on typing their site name in google it doesn't come up.

So, my friend, yes you can be successful in doing this, but there is always a risk of being banned by google.

Rest is your choice.

Not tried it. BTW, how do you report them to google?

DW had it right in his first comment, Google does not necessarily remove a site based on your reports.. They use that information to help refine their algorithms..

Let me also add that the site won't be penalized even if they did take action.. The worst that could happen is that they would simply not count those links.. "Over 12 of them" is hardly enough to affect a web site's ranking if they are sitting on top of a competitive market..

This leads to you possibly false assumptions that
1. Those links are "why" they rank
2. Those links are "helping" them rank
3. That they are doing nothing else to rank above you

My guess is that all three of those assumptions are wrong..

Here is my recommendation for anyone starting out in any business, not just SEO..

Look at what your competition is doing.. Chose the things that fit your business model and do them better.. Then forget your competition.. Its really that simple..

You can't control what they do, so don't bother with it.. Do what you do and do it better.. The rest will come to you on it's own.. Worrying about your competition keeps you from working on your own business.. And don't tell me you can do both.. If you have time to do both you aren't working hard enough on your business..

Leave Google to sort out Google and focus on YOU!

How much did you lose so far?

I personally don't see a thing wrong with buying paid links as I have paid lots of money to have my site including in related directories and drive good traffic from them. Why do we think their is anything sinister in buying a link?
Afterall, google has built its pagerank on link so that its spiders can use your linking networks to travel from site to site and update its own indexes.
Lets not forget that alot of these paid directories are also customers of Google by generating income for them by using their adsense and adwords products!

And lets not lag in another site for using paid links because that really unethical.
Let google work out themselves who has been building links at an unnatural rate!

i believe that google may penalize you if you are buying or selling links only for the purpose of manipulating pagerank.
a webmaster/site could well be buying/adding links to increase their traffic or establish a presence on the internet etc etc.
google's rules and regs are rather specific.
perhaps work on the on-page and off-page factors for your own site that might help it out in search engine results....