Hi All,

I am taking a well earned rest from the world of SEO to write this blog to pose a worrying problem that has arisen out of the Google universe. Matt Cutts, a well known 'mole' working inside the fortified gates of the Google empire, has recently asked web masters to report any site that participates in a 'paid link program' or more specifically web sites that exchange money for a link from a prestigious high page rank site. Google has implied that this is an information gathering process but it smacks of Google penalising sites who supply paid links - where will it stop after that? Web sites who have paid for links getting penalised? I mean Yahoo supplies paid links via its directory - will being added to the directory adversely affect your rankings in Google in the future?

It appears to be a problem worthy of monitoring as it could well cause fairly large ripples throughout the ethical SEO field (and of course the black hat firms but hey - thems the breaks when you bend the rules) The idea that you can buy links from a competitor then 'shop' them to Google the next day is an obvious concern and concern for this move by Google echoes through SEO blogs across the net.

To be slightly facetious - is a PPC advert not a paid link? - Where does this stop? - do Google have the right to penalise any site that does not advertise solely with them?

In addition it seems that its 'ok' to pay for links for traffic but not for Page Rank (PR) - so another further worry about Google maybe changing the way they apply PR and how it is shared between interlinking sites.

I always appreciate when Google fights against spammers and fast buck web sites that don't add value to the internet and its users, really I do, I believe in ethical SEO and the value it adds to web site owners (if properly applied) but it does appear that when Google decides to 'hit back' at the spammers, innocent web sites and companies get stung. The yahoo directory is a legitimate company and business that supplies paid inclusion into its directory for web sites who want increased exposure, even from a non SEO perspective it’s not a bad business decision - but now those sites could be penalised for being involved in a paid linking 'scheme'.

I don't believe that blanket 'fixes' work and I think that Google should invest in more sophisticated solutions to combat spammers rather than changing the way they index and rank web sites in response to spammy techniques and then adopting the 'deal with it' stance!