Do paid links help?

supersold · #**31 Re: Do paid links help?** 12-19-2007, 11:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NealRM

I don't think that Google penalizes sites that pay for links currently or will they do so in the furture. Everything that Google does has been for items that are directly under the webmasters complete control. If Google started penalizing for items on other sites, that would be too easy to abuse. Example: You want to reduce your competitor's ranking, spend a few $100 on paid links pointing to thier site.

That does not mean that paid links will help a sites PR. It would be very easy for Google to say the paid links do not pass PR value. That would be hard to abuse and would accomplish the same thing.

That is what I meant by being penalized, that they will be discounted to the point of being a complete waste of money. Sounds like a penalty to me.

I know they can't ban you or filter you out of the results just based on links, because as you said, way to easy eliminate competition. They pretty much ban and filter out because of black hat on site tactics or being considered a spam site.