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jamesplankton
@ danielsan1701 - A lot of people feel that way about Google's stance toward paid links, but Google always distinguishes between paid links that influence search results and ones that do not. AdSense doesn't influence search results, while that is the exact intention of most paid links.
@ crimsongirl - "When does a seller benefit if the buyer doesn't have any idea of how much the product or service is worth?"
All the time, like when I bought a crappy fiddle in Nepal for US$15 that I later realized I could get for US$2. The seller in that case certainly benefited. Why do people buy billboard advertising if its ROI can't be easily measured?
Also, withholding PR information wouldn't stop link-buying. Link-buyers would just put more emphasis on backlinks, age of domain and on-page factors.
Immoral? Yes.
But are those business partners going to keep paying for links once a site's PageRank is stripped?
I think anything that creates distrust between link-buyers and link-sellers can only be good for Google. The solution is based on the assumption that Google has already started busting down sites that sell links and will do so more aggressively in the future. That "Report Paid Links" form in Google's Webmaster Tools has already seen a lot of use.
Here's a question: If Google sends you, a link-selling webmaster, a notice that it has detected paid links on your site, which will be forgiven if you come clean about them, what would you do?
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Story: How Google Should Defeat Paid Links