What is the definition of 'Paid links' for Google ?

[koamit]

Many high authority sites are doing paid text linking and linking sites through 'Sponosred linking' sections, But, Google does not seem to be bothered. Just because they are already ruling the industry. Sponsored links are obviously not natural, they are absolutely paid, still Google is giving them priority that is why only people are paying huge for them.

Please go through the website http://goo.gl/tgfH and see "Sponored link" section

So, What actually Google considers as paid link?

nNolr nNolr

[X-com]

If you pay for a link, it's a payed link. I don't think there is any difference in a sponsored link or just some link in a blogpost on some random website. As you also pointed out, Google doesn't seem to bother much, but if they find out you bought it, you can get a penalty because of it.

But,.. if a sponsored link is a payed link. Would an article submission on some pay-for-your-article-submission-website with any links in that article be also a payed links? And what about signing up for Le Web simply for your link in their directory? I don't know!

[Jinx14678]

Hi,

Yes, In my opinion those would be paid links

Only one is No-Followed (which is also weird, do they actually have a pay structure for paying for a follow link?) Also there is no Javascript redirect, so this looks like a plain HTML link, that is supposed to be a "Sponsored Link" but does not follow the guidelines below, so it most probably in my opinion is a paid link, but since I do not work for Google, I could not (and not sure who could) tell you why this site has not been penalized for selling links. Maybe it is because the sponsored link is in return for content?

Even below cited from Google, as in everything with Google, It is referred to as "Guidelines" not rules... So this means just in the verbiage it is at the discretion of Google on how closely or far away these "guidelines" are followed at, before a penalty is leveraged. Although this does seem to be the EXACT behaviour Google is looking out for at the moment, from a very visible SEO site - Maybe his social reputation and contribution to the SE community gains him the leverage to do this (since he is doing it "tastefully", as it could just be a mistake (LOL)

"Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such as:

• Adding a rel="nofollow" attribute to the <a>tag</a>
  <a>* Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file"</a>

<a>Source</a>

<a></a>http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66736

[koamit]

But the question is why Google is not considering these links as paid links and not taking action against them?

[Jinx14678]

And as noted in my response above, I do not work for Google, So therefore I nor any (IMHO) can answer that question on this board.

The only answer that can be given (once again IMHO) on that specific question would be speculation and conjuncture. (as i clearly already stated my opinion above)

[KeriMorgret]

How do you know Google is not considering these paid links? The site owner does believe Google is considering them paid links and that his traffic is reduced because of it.

Please read his post at http://www.seroundtable.com/sponsored-links-12978.html for background on his view of the links on his site and Google.