Thread: Sound-off on paid links!

Should search engines penalize publishers for paid links?

Why or why not?

In some ways I think they should because that's basically just trying to buy your way up to the top like you could have a real bad article but as long as you have a lot of paid links then you may end up on the top for no real work at all. But then again there up to the buyer and seller.

They should not, Publishers makes websites, and it takes money investment on domains, hosting, conetent, promotions, design etc, and some serious hard work as well. So publishers should have rigths to monitize their websites the way they want no matter if its paid advertisements or links, after all we publsihers get business for google because we make websites which google and other SE's use to show relevant results.

Idk i dont think they should

Well, in the end the Search Engines don't have any control over what you do. If you want to appear on THEIR website, you will have to comply with THEIR rules.

The problems start when Search Engines start making crazy rules about what webmasters can and can't do, and the webmasters are forced to comply since they rely on that traffic *cough* Google *cough*

IMO they shouldn't penalize websites that bought paid links, because in the end, the fair users who are posting it in public will get penalized and the cheaters who do everything without Google knowing it will become only better and better. They'd better start punishing scammer websites and penalize the bad sites.

Google is something I usually agree with, and I also agree that they should penalize some websites -- but not every single website that wants to perform a little better.

But what can we do against uncle Google?

Yes, sites should be penalized for paid links. That puts the rich sites on the same playing field as the smaller sites.

The internet should be a fair playing field, based on quality. And not on how many links you can buy.

Originally Posted by texashiker

Yes, sites should be penalized for paid links. That puts the rich sites on the same playing field as the smaller sites.

The internet should be a fair playing field, based on quality. And not on how many links you can buy.

And what if Google would penalize your website, because normally it would be a paid link but it isn't? That would suck a lot wouldn't it? For you it would, but for uncle G it's just the way things go.

lol its a pretty tough task for google to know if the link is paid or not.
It wont be fair if the penalize only on balf of assuming if the link is paid or not.

Originally Posted by Oranges

lol its a pretty tough task for google to know if the link is paid or not.
It wont be fair if the penalize only on balf of assuming if the link is paid or not.

That's the problem I think is the biggest problem, I'm sure Google isn't penalizing if they aren't fully sure about the case. But I am very sure that it's possible that the wrong websites got banned too, which is a big problem for that owner.