The Big Paid Link Debate Roundup

Official: Selling Paid Links Can Hurt Your PageRank or Rankings on Google from Danny on Sunday has driven a lot of discussion around the blogosphere and SEO industry. I have complied a list of some of the sites that have added additional commentary to Danny’s post. I am sure I have missed some; if so, feel free to Sphinn the thread and add a link to your post. Here is the roundup:

• Google PageRank Update & Link Selling, Search Engine Journal
• PageRank Penalties for Selling Text Links, Google Blogoscoped
• Selling Links Can Harm Your Site, Andrew R H Girdwood
• The October 2007 Paid Link Debate, Search Engine Roundtable
• The Paid Links Industry Needs To Go Underground, SearchRank
• Link Sellers Are Punished, Google Confirms, Read/Write Web
• Penalty Confirmed – But I Don’t Sell PageRank, Andy Beard
• 7.5 Rules of Selling Links – How Not to Get Penalized, Marketing Pilgrim
• NoFollow is for Blog Spam…no Paid Text Links, wait…Paid Ads…Aww Heck, Just Stop Linking and Let Calacanis Decide the Rankings – Part One, Search Engine Guide
• Link Selling Equals Google Juice Squeeze, WebProNews
• “If You’re Gonna Dance, You Gotta Pay the Band”, ReveNews
• What is Google doing with PageRank, BlogStorm
• Google Reducing PageRank of Websites That Sell Paid Text Links, Digital Inspiration
• Google Flexes On Page Rank Debate Once Again, Jim Kukral
• How I reversed my Google ranking penalty, David Airey
• Official: Selling Links Can Hurt Your PR or Google Rankings, WebmasterWorld
• PageRank dropped?, Joost de Valk
• 6 links that look like paid ones (but really aren’t), Wiep.net

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on social media at @rustybrick, +BarrySchwartz and Facebook. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio and disclosures, click over here.