Penalised for link buying?

[cuzco]

While exploring a site which sells text links, i noticed that the majority of buying sites were on PR0. One or two of the sites had PR2-PR3, the remaining few were very big names with PR7-PR9.

All the sites had backlinks. The sites on PR0 had about 300 backlinks with the majority of those from the link selling site.

The few sites with PR1-PR4 had slightly more backlinks, and though most were from the link selling site there was an increase in links from other places.

The few big name sites had 1000’s of backlinks and looked natural.

The link selling site had good PR and passed this PR throughout the site.

Have looked at this link selling site over the last few updates, and had previously thought it was simply not passing PR. However after the recent update you can now see where else the buyers are getting backlinks from, and those sites seem to be passing on PR no problem (except to sites linked to from the link seller).


Is this a case of google penalising the link buyers but not the link seller?
The penalty doesn’t appear to be a ban, as the sites with more backlinks from elsewhere are showing PR, however they seem to need a lot of other links even to achieve PR3, and even those PR0 sites have some backlinks from elsewhere.

just a small observation, wondering if others are seeing similar sites.

Any thoughts on this? Google backlink update gone nuts? Old stuff, where have you been!?

[Anthony Parsons]

I don't know about that...but interesting proposal. Google would have a hard time proving that a site actually purchased a link to begin with....considering link brokers don't publicize the site directly, though have to enquire to view the URL "generally".

Many say that a link that is out of place could trip a filter, flag, penalty, whatever, but really, who knows what each person likes and wants to link too. Who said that because your site is on photography, that you wouldn't link to the your favourite online golf magazine or some great online shoe shop that you want to share with users?

I think it's a very hard thing to prove and maybe not the cause of the problem...but hey.....who knows, the SE's do some silly things at times that we simply cannot explain. ;)

[seobook]

stories like this are exactly why I have no problem dropping a grand just registering a site with a bunch of directories real quick before even considering any sort of site sponsorships.

[cuzco]

Surprised this topic hasn’t received more attention since this isn’t a one off; did not take long to find other sites in the same situation.

Few extra bits of info,
The one site i noticed belonged to a webmaster that was less than discreet about his link selling, adverting “PR for sale” on several SEO forums. Believe several of the webmasters own sites which were crossed linked also got penalised, the one surviving site that continued to have PR(mentioned in 1st post) is a popular resource. The link buyers were mostly off-topic, pharmacy, dating, casinos, viagra etc

Wasn’t not surprised to see the site get hit, its the nature of the penalty that i suspect is being passed on that i’m not sure about. Link buyers seem to be penalised(but not banned), and appear to need an unusually high number of backlinks from elsewhere to achieve even a low PR.

[seobook]

Few extra bits of info,
The one site i noticed belonged to a webmaster that was less than discreet about his link selling, adverting �PR for sale� on several SEO forums. Believe several of the webmasters own sites which were crossed linked also got penalised, the one surviving site that continued to have PR(mentioned in 1st post) is a popular resource. The link buyers were mostly off-topic, pharmacy, dating, casinos, viagra etc

I think I know exactly who you are talking about and have read some of the complaints myself.