Comments on: Poll: Do you report paid links?

By: omar

omar — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 17:47:37 +0000

Its a shame that people use these kind of techniques for better search rankings, but I think google is aware of the fact and these sites are eventually going to get blacklisted by google and other search engines. so we need not to worry

By: Vee

Vee — Wed, 18 May 2011 08:06:55 +0000

Lets face it, all SEO is paid for by the clinet. SEO companies engineer backlinks any which way they see fit to improve ranks, so, effectively those links have been paid for regardless whether the SEO firm have purchased them from a blog, directory or link farm.. it really is a moot point.

Lets be honest here, 99% of links are paid for.

How else are you going to get hundreda of people to link back to a clients website. Not all industries attract links in the same way as a viral video of the president having shoes thrown at him.

Who the hell is going to go on line and feel the urge to link to some random plumbers website without being asked?

The vast majority of links are engineered, and as such they are all paid for, end of story.

By: liaqat

liaqat — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 18:16:23 +0000

i never did!
the main point is, how to find out if its a free or paid link?

By: Jack4

Jack4 — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 03:52:35 +0000

A site should rank naturally not through paid links. Sorry but the argument of pay for a link that someone else is doing as a method of combating paid links is ridiculous. Someone crashed into my car…should I then decide to crash into theirs?

If you’re buying links then you’re effectively bullshitting your users about how good your content is. Bullshitters needs to be put in their place – and I’ll happily report them all.

I don’t even make money off the internet or websites – but I cannot stand using a search engine to be stuck with some crap content that only got ranked because someone could pay for backlinks.

It’s actually pretty pathetic.

By: Mustapha

Mustapha — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 19:05:14 +0000

My competitor is buying links. But I can’t 100% prove it. And even if I could prove it. would Google spend it’s time judging this case? Google has a spam report page, but it is used to create an algorithm, not to directly fight the ‘cheaters’. As a webmaster you don’t have a choice but to concentrate yourself with your own site.

By: Jack

Jack — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 07:50:38 +0000

Nothing to be ashamed of reporting paid links, if you agree with Google’s philosophy. If a crook is never reported, they don’t repent, they just keep stealing.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 23:46:27 +0000

This is a funny debate. I’ll bet most of the people claiming they’d never report paid links probably do, they just want to appear honorable in front of the other SEO’s and avoid revenge.

There is too much money on the table to let any advantage slip. Especially one as easy to execute as reporting obviously paid links to your direct competitors.

By: Bill Hazelton

Bill Hazelton — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 04:38:43 +0000

I’m incredibly torn over this. Checking out backlinks of several competitors of mine who are ranking in top 10 in Google and Yahoo, it’s obvious that a big chunk of their links are paid. Now, they’re slick about it so it would be hard to detect looking at any one single link. But it’s obvious what to me that they’re paid. Some guys just do a better job than others of hiding them.

I will err on the side of karma, but man alive is it tempting to rat these guys out, especially when their kicking my ass so badly.

By: Kay Frenzer

Kay Frenzer — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 17:08:18 +0000

I don’t report paid links, and don’t like the idea of “tattling.” Work harder, do a better job, and let the bad guys hang themselves (they usually do, sooner or later).

By: Vertical Measures

Vertical Measures — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 02:42:40 +0000

Based on what I saw by a show of hands at PubCon, just about everyone is buying links. But when the raised their hands, what kind of link buying did they have in mind?

Are we talking about reporting the people who buy thousands of junk links OR the one’s who rent a few high quality links for both traffic and link juice OR the one’s who spend a few thousand bucks to develop some unrelated link bait to get links to their site? What about the links coming from articles written by a paid writer and provided to some editor to post on their site? Isn’t that a paid link?