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those who link to sources from which they have received compensation should be labeled in one of the following ways:

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  Use a redirect through URL blocked by robots.txt

  
  


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  Redirect through a URL using a 302

  
  


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  Use Javascript to direct the link

  
  


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  Apply the rel=”nofollow” attribute to the link

He notes the following pitfalls:

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  Links that are bought for a limited time (may not provide long term value)

  
  


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  Links that are "run of site" which Google is very good at finding and eliminating

  
  


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  Links that are purchased from "sloppy sellers" who link to bad sites and bad neighborhoods

  
  


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  Links that are bought from sellers that cloak the links only to you, so Google never sees them

  
  


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  Buying links that can be found and reported by a competitor

At the core of Michael's anti-Google sermon was the following series of arguments:

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  Both commercial and non-commercial queries exist on the web
  
  


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  Commercial websites are NOT generally linked-to naturally
  
  


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  Non-commercial websites are much more likely to entice natural links
  
  


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  By eliminating paid links, Google will fill the top results for commercial queries with primarily non-commercial results
  
  


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  Thus, when a searcher wishes to take a commercial action, the only relevant results will be the paid listings
  
  


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  And, thus, searchers will be more likely to click on AdWords links, which earn Google money

• If link purchases have a positive ROI for a company, they'll continue to make them. If they have a positive ROI, chances are good that they must also be serving the searcher effectively and thus, be good results for the engines.
  
  


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  In a worst-case scenario, you flush your money down the drain - this isn't so bad, as those links can still send traffic, branding and may work at multiple engines (not just Google)

Robert Longfield - 5:16 pm

Q: Further on Geotargetting. I run a multinational site with about 12 different languages being supported. We are implimenting geotrageting so users are directed to the appropriate language page for their country. The concern of some is that Google may penalize me...

John Mueller - 5:35 pm

A: I would recommend not redirecting users based on their location. This can be a bad user experience. It's better to allow a user to choose his version based on his searches.

Rand: Such brazen hypocrisy! Google can geo-target its search results, geo-target its homepage, geotarget many of its other service pages, but heavens forbid anyone else do it. This is ridiculous. Robert - I'd say to simply do a quick check before you redirect your users. If their browser accepts cookies, feel free to drop one, re-direct them to the appropriate page and let your user data, feedback and analytics tell you whether or not it's the best experience or not. If the browser doesn't take cookies, drop them on an international landing page that lets them choose their country/language - this will also work well for search engine bots (which don't accept cookies), and will be able to find all of your country-targeted content.

How Paid Links Work on a Network Level:

For the last 4 years, a number of large, generally well-known link brokers have operated in the gray area of Google's paid links guidelines. Their operations generally follow a similar thread:

1. Contact a number of medium-high PageRank/Trusted websites about monetizing ad blocks with "juice"-passing links. Very often, these sites will simply sell the space without even realizing the potential Google-related implications.


2. Start selling links through relationship marketing - connecting with SEO firms who can re-sell the links, attending conferences for personal connections to potential buyers, and even advertising on the web (Google may have killed ads for "text links," but you can still find a full cadre of advertisers for link brokers, high pagerank links, link buying, etc).


3. Create blocks of text link ads that point to the client pages from the seller, paying the rental price for the link space while earning a bonus on the extra amount earned from the buyers.

Smart link brokers have taken a number of additional steps to help prevent discovery (and devaluation) by Google, including:

• Anonymizing & randomizing the HTML code used to display the ads. One smaller company I've seen will never use the same HTML styles twice to minimize the likelihood of discovery.


• Linking to half clients / half non-clients in the ad blocks, to help dissuade the engines from wholesale punishing the sites in the ads


• Modifying anchor text and link source (linking to multiple pages on a domain, or even domains/URLs that 301-redirect to the client's pages).


• Running only a few ad blocks per site to help lessen the risk of identification through sitewide/multiple links from a domain type detection.