I talked the other day about how tempting it is to sell text links, but I would suggest against it. Well, sadly, I have been proven right.
According to information from Search Engine Journal, Google has confirmed via email that they are in deed penalizing sites for selling text links.
The partial update to visible PageRank that went out a few days ago was primarily regarding PageRank selling and the forward links of sites. So paid links that pass PageRank would affect our opinion of a site.
Going forward, I expect that Google will be looking at additional sites that appear to be buying or selling PageRank.
In short, no matter what you may think of Google, they account for 60 – 90% of search traffic depending on the country you look at. You can’t afford to damage your reputation with them in any way, so make sure you stay abreast of the latest developments, such as this one.
Hey thanks for the update, I was really on the fence about the link issue.