"The greatest thing we have done is convince people we rule and police the Internet, even the one's who don't earn anything from the Internet." said one of my good friends who is a VP at Google. He is bright.

@Mike SMT - Given your beliefs, can you kindly take yourself off the waiting list in one of the txt link campaigns to give someone else a chance? Thx!

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/.....l-webspam/

My interpretation is that Google has the ability to remove sites from it's index if it feels they are engaging in shady activities.  Though since I don't work for Google I can't say that is fact, just opinion based on what I've read.

But it wasn't my intention to imply that advertising would fall under the umbrella of "shady activity" or that it should be avoided.   Websites big and small accept advertising, and it is a profitable way to monetize your site. 

I do accept advertising on my blog, and I do believe we should have the freedom to do whatever we want on a blog that we own. 

Mike

Personally, I hope you're right and I'm wrong. 

@Mike SMT - Given your beliefs, can you kindly take yourself off the waiting list in one of the txt link campaigns to give someone else a chance? Thx!

in theory, there are certain paid link deals that they would have no way of knowing - but my hunch is that as they find out who is selling text-links by having other webmasters report them and going undercover and asking publishers to sell them a textlink  (both of which, I've heard they do) - they find out some of the common players in the industry and then can make some likely assumptions about which textlinks are legit and which are paid 

KNS Financial said:

They may say that they don't penalize for accepting pay for textlinks, but too many bloggers have had their PR drop significantly while every metric associated with links and traffic were growing. The only change was that they started posting these links.

I always wonder how they can tell the difference between someone posting a list of favorite blogs/websites, helpful resources for their readers, and textlinks.

So, is pagerank they way that they determine your position in search results? Meaning, I write about the biblical perspective on finances (among other things), so does Bob (Christian PF); if we write about the same topic, will he always rank higher because he has a higher PR?

I guess you can tell that I have a lot to learn about this stuff. Thanks to everyone for humoring my questions.

---

Khaleef,
They DO penalize for accepting pay for textlinks. All I am saying is they don't penalize you for accepting advertisements and marking them as a nofollow. There is a difference. They do have algorithms to detect paid links. I have no idea how they see which is paid and which is not, but they have been reasonably good in doing that (in my limited and humble opinion). Here is the answer straight from the horse's mouth - http://www.google.com/support/.....swer=66736

So, is pagerank they way that they determine your position in search
results? Meaning, I write about the biblical perspective on finances
(among other things), so does Bob (Christian PF); if we write about the
same topic, will he always rank higher because he has a higher PR?

It is not just as straight forward as this. Page rank is "one" of the factors, it was the main factor when they started but they have evolved. So if Bob has all the other things right according to them for one post and you have very high quality links from relevant sites saying yours is a great post, you will rank high for that post. They do penalize people selling/buying links, they even have a reporting system as you can see from the link.

Good Discussion guys. I live in SF and am friends with 6 people who work at Google. They work in indexing, adwords, marketing, etc. They ALL told me that webmasters can do whatever they want and that they don't have the ability or authority to punish/police you.

An example used is let's say your good friend starts his website and wants to sell a txt link on your site. You don't accept money, but a beer. Who is Google to say what you can and cannot do for your friend? Nobody. Furthermore, how do they prove anything? Finally, many major corporations has an SEO department. Are they all getting banned? Of course not. USAA, my family's insurance carrier for over 40 years contacted me about advertising, and I was honored to do so. Is a company like USAA, who insures millions of US war veterans and current soldiers going to get banned? Of course not! I personally am not a fan of Adsense ads and am happy to choose what gets displayed and not what someone tells me to do.

If you blog full-time and make a ton from Adsense or marketing, sure why bother. If not, sure why not exercise your liberty.

Cheers

http://blogoscoped.com/archive.....4-n60.html

They may say that they don't penalize for accepting pay for textlinks, but too many bloggers have had their PR drop significantly while every metric associated with links and traffic were growing. The only change was that they started posting these links.

I always wonder how they can tell the difference between someone posting a list of favorite blogs/websites, helpful resources for their readers, and textlinks.

So, is pagerank they way that they determine your position in search results? Meaning, I write about the biblical perspective on finances (among other things), so does Bob (Christian PF); if we write about the same topic, will he always rank higher because he has a higher PR?

I guess you can tell that I have a lot to learn about this stuff. Thanks to everyone for humoring my questions.

They DO penalize for accepting pay for textlinks. All I am saying is they don't penalize you for accepting advertisements and marking them as a nofollow. There is a difference. They do have algorithms to detect paid links. I have no idea how they see which is paid and which is not, but they have been reasonably good in doing that (in my limited and humble opinion). Here is the answer straight from the horse's mouth - http://www.google.com/support/.....swer=66736

So, is pagerank they way that they determine your position in search
results? Meaning, I write about the biblical perspective on finances
(among other things), so does Bob (Christian PF); if we write about the
same topic, will he always rank higher because he has a higher PR?

It is not just as straight forward as this. Page rank is "one" of the factors, it was the main factor when they started but they have evolved. So if Bob has all the other things right according to them for one post and you have very high quality links from relevant sites saying yours is a great post, you will rank high for that post. They do penalize people selling/buying links, they even have a reporting system as you can see from the link.

I always wonder how they can tell the difference between someone posting a list of favorite blogs/websites, helpful resources for their readers, and textlinks.

So, is pagerank they way that they determine your position in search results? Meaning, I write about the biblical perspective on finances (among other things), so does Bob (Christian PF); if we write about the same topic, will he always rank higher because he has a higher PR?

I guess you can tell that I have a lot to learn about this stuff. Thanks to everyone for humoring my questions.

We are talking 2 different things here (1) advertising to get traffic/people (2) testlink ads with keywords for link juice. If I am not mistaken google hates the type 2 and NOT type 1, because type 2 is gaming their system. They want to show good content in the front page as people don't go beyond that. By adding the link with a keyword it is artificially bringing that website to the front page which as a "user" I hate, so I appreciate google for weeding out the results. I see that as a part of their algortihm to stay competitive. It is due to these advertisement type websites I never went to live search, but I see bing is improving. And if you have the type 1 advertising, they do not penalize, which I think is fair. All they ask is to add a nofollow, people who click on the ad and go to the USAA or whatever website don't care if it is nofollow or dofollow, I wasn't even aware such thing existed as a user, until I started a blog. So as a user I don't want to see the artificially "good" results on the front page and now as a blogger, I think that gives me a fair playing ground to compete with those with money to pay for keyword links.

Regarding pagerank, I think this is how it gets used – if you have excellent content (however they rank the content I do not know) you will rank high, but if you have great content and high page rank (plus other authority stuff) you might rank higher than the excellent content with page rank 0. Anyone can choose to ignore pagerank (right now as a PR0 I have chosen to  ) but the text link sellers are going to be interested in page rank, as that is what they want. Whereas the type 1 advertisers are not interested in pagerank, they want your site to be popular to get traffic. They won't care if I lose my page rank. To have a diversified and somewhat stable income, these are the best kind of advertisers to have I suppose.

If you choose to not have adsense and go with advertisers, it is your blog, your decision and inspite of the common misconception that google doesn't like it, google does support your decision. They don't penalize. It is the text links they penalize and as it is gaming the algorithm I see it as a fair point. I might choose to sell textlinks in the future if the money is lucrative, but if they penalize me for that (some sites/links are not penalized), I understand and will have a back up plan. So the money has to be pretty lucrative.

Finally I think it comes down to as Bob said – don't bite the hand that feeds you, if you are getting most of your visitors from google, play by the rules. If you have a loyal following that doesn't care for the ads that you put up on your site, more power to you, use it to its full extend.

An example used is let's say your good friend starts his website and wants to sell a txt link on your site. You don't accept money, but a beer. Who is Google to say what you can and cannot do for your friend? Nobody. Furthermore, how do they prove anything? Finally, many major corporations has an SEO department. Are they all getting banned? Of course not. USAA, my family's insurance carrier for over 40 years contacted me about advertising, and I was honored to do so. Is a company like USAA, who insures millions of US war veterans and current soldiers going to get banned? Of course not! I personally am not a fan of Adsense ads and am happy to choose what gets displayed and not what someone tells me to do.

If you blog full-time and make a ton from Adsense or marketing, sure why bother. If not, sure why not exercise your liberty.

Cheers

Paying someone to skew search results isn't any different than all those
people who pop up first on search results because they paid Google
directly.

Paid search is entirely different.  Those are the few paid results you see at the top in a different colored box as well as what you see on the side.  You do not get paid results in the organic rankings.

I think we tend to forget that this is all their game that we are playing.  When people search for something online the odds are they are looking on google.  Let's face it, many of us are blogging because we think we can make money at it.  The major reason we CAN make any money is Google's existence and their expertise in search.

Remember, Google's main base is providing the best search results for the user.  If sites are gaming the system then they are changing what the best results are so Google does what it can to prevent gaming.  This isn't bullying.  If Google didn't do this it would dramatically change the search results we see when we search.  Believe it or not, when Google penalizes a site for links it helps us all have a fair shot.

I might stop selling text links if I ever have any other income source, but I doubt it.  Paying someone to skew search results isn't any different than all those people who pop up first on search results because they paid Google directly.  Or all of us bloggers that happily link to each other like crazy people to help all of us get bigger. 

I understand they have the right to penalize me when it comes to their rating system or even their search results.  I just rather end up being a PR0 to Google on my own terms than accept their bullying dominance games.  They have the choice to penalize sites or simply ignore the links they don't think hold value.  They choose to penalize.  That seems bullying to me.

Crystal

@ Money Smarts - it's really sad that you were super popular and they dropped you like that because they didn't like the way you made money. 

If I was allowed to have Adsense, then I probably would be more careful. Like you said, everyone has to make that choice, and I would never advise someone to sell text links without telling them what you guys have shared.

I understand they have the right to penalize me when it comes to their rating system or even their search results.  I just rather end up being a PR0 to Google on my own terms than accept their bullying dominance games.  They have the choice to penalize sites or simply ignore the links they don't think hold value.  They choose to penalize.  That seems bullying to me.

Crystal

On Smart On Money I'm not selling text links, and I stopped selling text links a while back on my main site after it  dropped from a PR5 to a PR3.  While the text link income was nice, I was making enough from adsense that I didn't want to chance losing my search users and adsense income to my site because of the text links i've sold. 

While you may not see much of a change in the number of people finding you via search right now, google can change their system at any time and decide that selling text links means you are given a penalty - or you won't show in search results.  I don't want to chance it personally, although I think that's a  choice others will have to make on their own.   I know I accepted text link income for the first year or so of my first site, and it was pretty lucrative.  Only now that I have diversified the income a bit more have i removed them.