I don’t disagree at all – lots of innocent folks get hurt every time Google or other search engines take sweeping approaches to fighting spam. Often they go too far in an effort to clean a bunch of stuff up in a hurry.

Makes you wonder at what point the FTC and FCC will start poking around some of these practices.

Most paid links are purchased for the sole purpose of passing that pages PageRank on and not for advertising.

I don’t know John. I think Google would like you think this, but I’m not entirely sure it’s true.

There’s no doubt my industry is gaming the system by purchasing links for the sake of rankings, but I think this issue is far more complicated than “paid link = bad.”

I’ve spent the last five years teaching small businesses how to market via SEO, much as you’ve done on a much broader scope here. I’m also pretty ingrained in the “mommy blogger” culture.

What we actually have here is a TON of sites and blogs that are monetizing themselves for the first time. You have bloggers of all traffic levels selling ads now. Not just text ads, but actual graphic ads. “Standard” ads that are designed to catch people’s eyes, not to game the search engines.

These ads are being bought and sold on sites run by everyday people. Meaning…they don’t have access to high-end ad serving software. (which utilizes js redirects and are considered “ok” by Google.) They just throw the ad up as a linked image on their site.

Suddenly, due to Google’s new policies, these sites are at risk and so are their advertisers. Not because they’re trying to game the rankings system, but because they’re trying to make a buck. For the first time, Google has implemented a policy that punishes people for NOT doing something (adding nofollow) rather than FOR doing something (cloaking, hidden text.)

Think about it. If you were a small business owner and someone told you “just add a bunch of keywords to your page using invisible text” you *might* think to go to Google’s site to see if that was ok.

But if someone emailed you and said “I’d like to buy an ad on your site. How much for a 125×125?” would your first thought be “I better go see if Google has any rules about the way I sell advertising…”

If Google’s crusade was ONLY against paid text links, I might be able to see their point. (Though I’d still disagree with it.) What you need to understand though is the fact that Google is going after ALL purchased links, including the graphic ads that people rarely associate with search engine optimization.

Not trying to push for anything in particular, just pointing to the gray area.

I just broke on to the first page for one of my search terms “Livonia Symphony Orchestra” and showed up at #5! yeaaaaaaaaaaa!