Google and Paid Links

Inbound links are pretty important for websites that hope to rank well in the SERPs (search engine results pages) and links from “authority” websites or so-called high ranking websites give more bang for the buck, so to speak. Taking that into consideration, it’s no wonder that website owners are clamoring about Google’s decision, and subsequent actions, that are clearly making their long-standing policies against paid linking known.

While many internet business owners and webmasters are griping about Google’s stance, I back Google wholeheartedly on this issue. As Matt Cutts stated here on a clip shown on Youtube, “Website owners are free to do what they want with their websites just as Google is free to do what they feel is necessary to return a high-quality index”. This is not verbatim, but it’s the gist of what was stated.

While I can understand why website owners are unhappy about their websites losing Page Rank and such, it’s unfathomable to me why some website owners are upset with Google for enforcing their own rules. It’s Google’s search engine, thus they are free to do what they want in order to return what they feel to be the most relevant results, regardless of whether it inconveniences website owners or even causes website owners to lose their standing with the search engine giant.

In any case, for those who are interested, here are a few blog posts on the topic of buying and selling links:

• Google declares war on paid links
• Matt Cutts clarifies recent PageRank drops and link building
• Pubcon: treading lightly on link building
• Paid links still evil to Google
• A solution for the paid link debate
• Complaining about some Google missteps