I would love to say that buying links is not the way to go but apparently it seems like it works VERY well on GG.
So I guess ...go for it.
But beware, one day Google will catch all of these eventually. Buying for rankings should be reserved exclusively to PPC.
But once again, it apparently (very sadly) works, whether incoming links are related or not.

And, third, he's said that those who sell advertising should use "nofollow".

All things considered this is an absurd statement. This is akin to asking all people who walk at night to not wear black hoods or risk being arrested.

The issue of link validation and credit is in Google's hands, not ours - right where it should be.

Buying for rankings should be reserved exclusively to PPC.

And I might ask why does everyone need to follow the preferred model of advertising? Why should advertising be exclusively reserved to PPC?

Why can't and shouldn't a website be a referral and advertising source unto it's own?

[edited by: CainIV at 6:35 am (utc) on Sep. 13, 2006]

A clarification haiku:

Advertising's fine
Buying links for PR: bad
Google senses much ;)

I have bought links for the purpose of PR and it has worked massively in my favor.

I think it all depends on the relative content of the linking site. Just because a site has a high page rank doesn't mean that it is ranked higly for the keywords you desire.

There is a possiblity that authority factor of the linking site has an effect. I did a sitewide link campaign with what some would consider an authoritive site and it paid off. I did very little more in terms of inbound links.

I never buy links for PR I buy them for advertising.

Funny thing about paid links is they always lead you to a page about the same thing as the anchor text, kinda like the advertiser wanted them to be relevant or something ;-)

I buy text links often for advertising. If I can pay $100 for a link and make $200 from the traffic why wouldn't I?

I've always been confused by G asking for advertising links to be "nofollow" because with one mouth G says to ignore the SEs and run your site the way you would if SEs didn't exist. And then with another mouth they tell you how they'd like it done.

Advertising's fine
Buying links for PR: bad
Google senses much ;)

So is this now official that buying links for Public Relations reasons is ok with Google?

cheers
viggen

"Buying links is the one sure way to - eventually - drop your rank to zero and get your domain permanently banned."

Nonsense, even eBay Germany are buying links on high PR pages for one of their subdomains.

re: bought links, I think google is able to look at 'unnatural' link patterns and also do manual blacklisting of sites.
But until they implant googlechips in webmasters brains, they will never be able to determine the reason/motive for a links existence with anything close to 100% accuracy. IMO

Also I wonder if the recent adwords QS increase has induced a recent increase in buying links?

Oh, no, don't buy links! They'll know, they are Gods, don't dissapoint your Gods. What are you crazy to every even think about buying links? They'll ban you. They'll distroy your business. You know, you'll break their super algo & buy a link - and their super-computer will go beep... beep... beep... and then the whole system will crash. Do you really wonna be responsible for crashing google? (Explaination for Du-dda-dah: above comment is sarcastic)

[edited by: tedster at 1:25 am (utc) on Sep. 16, 2006]

When i set up my website, I had zero inbound links. The domain was 2 weeks old when i set up a sitewide "pay for links" campaign with a particular site. I chose this site because i had seen that another site ranked highly for the same desired keyword phrases had obviously done a sitewide link campaign with this site. Within a few months google had given me a page rank of 4 and had registered over 800 backlinks. I was shortly after listed in google #1 for some less competitive keywords and now a year later I have appeared in the top 100 for highly competitive keywords.

My conclusions from this are that sitewide links can be good as long as you pick the right site. Some would consider the site i used an authoritive site or even a boutique search engine. So if you are going to do such a campaign, choose carefully.

Oh and the link campaign cost me quite a bit, almost $1000 a month. Initially i was only able to do this for 1 month and i did it again about 8 months later for a 3 month period, that ended a month ago.

Paid links work. Absolutely. Directories have been in existence longer than Google and still give great ranking benefits.

Reliance solely on paid links for rankings is not wise, but reliance on any one form of marketing usually isn't.

I use them in the first phase of launching a new site. Once you have rankings and traffic you are able to trade links and look to increase traffic by other means.

I worry sometimes that Google will put every paid directory on a list and ignore the OBLs. It would be comparatively easy to do with their resources.

Money talks. If a business has the money to spend on advertising then it must be doing something right, right? They have profits to re-invest or financial backing. These are usually the hallmarks of a serious enterprise. The best directories do what search engines cannot do - a human editor assesses a site and they don't link to crap.

Just because you've paid for the review, doesn't mean the vote isn't valid.

IMO that's why paid directories will ALWAYS be with us and always help to rank.

I believe that my site is one of those sites that had its ability to pass PR stripped by becoming a seller on one of those broker links places, but I could be wrong. I just wanted a different stream of income other than Adsense, because I didn't want to put all my eggs in one basket.

The link brokerage firm pays you by your Alexa ranking not by your PR ranking, so you would think it was safe. Now I can't pass PR to my own sites. The site I sold links on showed up as a backlink for my other sites before I used the link brokerage firm and now it doesn't. I only have two other sites that this site links to. I didn't know what was going on at first.

I didn't no about the nofollow rule, so I suffered as a result.

A clarification haiku:
Advertising's fine
Buying links for PR: bad
Google senses much ;)

A tanka reply:

my understanding
of a japanese haiku
is that it must have
at least one word mentioning
the season in which it's set

(Sorry for being so off-topic)

Here in Mountain View
Seasons aren't discernible
Unlike in Japan