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Sphinn Home » Link Building
Do You Report Paid Links? What Goes Around Comes Around!
Link Building News Source: http://www.searchrank.com
Published: Jan 15, 2008 - 07:24 am
Story Found By: DavidWallace 1488 Days ago
Category: Link Building
Are you a search marketer that reports paid links? Patrick Altoft asked the same question in a post at Blogstorm and admitted that he had reported them in the past, but only when the site buying or selling them was a direct competitor and ranked higher than him. I guess it really depends on how you view paid links. There are those who view them as spam and would not hesitate for a minute to report a competitor. However, if you buy or sell paid links but also report them to Google all in the name of trying to curtail the efforts of a competitor, well then that kind of makes you a hypocrite.
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from patrickaltoft 1488 Days ago #
Votes: 0

The issue is an interesting one and, as I said in my comment here, I’m still undecided whether reporting them is the right thing to do, hence the reason for stirring up the debate.

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from DazzlinDonna 1488 Days ago #
Votes: 2

As i mentioned at Blogstorm, I’m not into Narc Karma.  Google needs to deal with its algo issues by itself. 

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from BrianChappell 1488 Days ago #
Votes: 1

No, I grew up in middle school. I dont taddle tail anymore.

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from MarketingGuy 1488 Days ago #
Votes: 0

I agree with the points in general, particularly David’s comment at the end of the article, "if we would spend more time making our sites the very best they can be, we might not have to worry about what the competition is doing" - never a truer word spoken!But business is business and if you can leverage an advantage against a competitor within the realms of the law and personal / society’s ethics, then why not take it?  Sphinn has a "report as spam" button that people regularly use, yet no one has any issues with that (the people you are reporting are just trying to market their own interests as is a lot of the rest of the community - they just choose to do it in a different way).  Is that different because our profressions aren’t so reliant on Sphinn for success (and we aren’t hit by "Sphinn updates" and "loss of Sphinn traffic" issues)?  No bitterness towards Sphinn like some SEOs have for Google?I’m still in the same camp as David - make good sites and don’t worry so much about the competition.  But if the opportunity arises to take market share from the competiton then I think anyone working in marketing would be doing themselves a disservice not to take it.Scott

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from DarkMatter 1488 Days ago #
Votes: 0

Alls fair in love and marketing!

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from ruchirkc 1488 Days ago #
Votes: 0

I never report any paid links, unless of course he’s my arch enemy lol...

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from iDriveEuro 1488 Days ago #
Votes: 0

I only report paid links as requested by clients. Personally, I believe that it is a good thing for the SEO industry. I would much rather see the SEO arena be controled by SEOs that are able to "beat the system" through different means than buying links. There are much more satisfying, white-hat means of doing well in this industry.

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from debram 1487 Days ago #
Votes: 0

What Donna said.

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from Halfdeck 1487 Days ago #
Votes: -1

If we all started reporting each other’s paid links, we’re only going to make our jobs more difficult in the long run, as more and more link acquisition opportunities vanish from the web.However, I don’t think its an ethical question. Reporting paid links isn’t illegal.

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from crazycat 1481 Days ago #
Votes: 0

Good post. Learned more about paid links today. Thanks!

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