Today I notice on the bottom of the Reuters site there are ads that are served by Marchex. After there ads their a link that says, “Buy a Link Now.” As an SEO this made me cringe a little.
The reason this bothers me is because clearly Google does not want people to sell links. This practice has long fallen under the grey or more so black hat approach to SEO. Coming out and saying “buy a link now” instead of “buy an ad now”, seems to be blatantly saying, “Hey Google look at us, we’re selling links.”
Interestingly enough Matt Cutts posted a video today explaining what happens if they discover you are buying or selling links. Short answer your site will be penalized, but watch the video to see the full answer.
