Does anyone know if Google will soon start seeing the tactic of buying links on a network of high PR sites as a link spam tactic?

One example of this is our very own SEW/clickZ/juniper netowrk link farm.

Look down on the left hand side of this page and notice the "internet.commerce" section. People pay up to $6000 a month to be on this network where no user will ever go to click on this link. This tactic is purely for the search engines.

Another example of this is doing a link:http://www.forrent.com in Google. You will notice all of the sites listed have the same link section at the top of the page. No one will click on these links.

Is Google’s back link portion of the algorithm to important that fixing this might screw everything up?

No offense SEW :)

If the things we are hearing (seeing already?) about new search techologies for analysing block elements comes into play, it's likely links that are seen as 'navigational' will be discounted.

Or possibly counted, negatively...

Nick

This blocking technique is a MSN thing. Is there evidence that google will implement it?

Put it this way, if i were buying a link today, the last place on earth I'd want it would be outside the main body of content....

Nick

You dont have to tell me that. :) I would not buy a link at all. Trade for relevant links on relevant pages with in the content of a page.

Next tactic: Fake pages created for inner content linking on high PR domains

DBernstein, I think you've missed a bit of history here - PRadnetwork, for starters, plus various penalties on link traders - no PR passed, or else the pages with the links on to PR0. Google is very familiar with the problem and is certainly trying to circumvent the impact of such links.

Hello DBernstein, and welcome to SearchEngineWatch Forums!

I think you will find this thread very interesting to the topic you started here: Block Analysis 101 (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?threadid=2119)