Why is Google not punishing paid links as it says it will?

[neilpage123]

I've recently started working with a travel company - and finding the general link building side of the business quite difficult.

I had a call from an SEO firm the other day offering their services, and stating that they had worked with a competitor of ours and delivered some very good results. I checked the competitors rankings, PR, link profile, and indeed, the results were quite impressive.

However, the link profile pointed to one thing, that was incredibly obvious. They had purchased a large amount of sidebar text links from powerful blogs in the travel sector.

Its painfully obvious what has happened, yet they still rank very highly for a lot of key terms.

Why don't Google do something about this? They aren't the only company in this sector doing this, but it just seems pointless for white hats trying to do things properly, then those with the dollar in their pockets just buy success in the SERPS.

Thanks

[Ecreativeworks]

Keep in mind that the goal here is usually not to "punish" the paid link, but instead to ignore it. If Google punished sites for paid links, then that competitor would still buy the links, but would just have them point to your site so you get punished!

Ultimately some links that are instantly obvious to humans as artificial and paid are very hard for computers to algorithmically detect without also throwing out tons of valid links. Over the long haul (years, not months) Google does steadily get better at it.

[PedroM]

Neil,

In my prediction those black hat techiniques will be punished sooner or later by Google in 2012. Just keep your SEO clean and you will the results that you are looking for.

[EGOL]

I had a call from an SEO firm the other day offering their services, and stating that they had worked with a competitor of ours and delivered some very good results. I checked the competitors rankings, PR, link profile, and indeed, the results were quite impressive.

I don't think that I would buy his service because you will be his next demonstration site.  Pretty soon he will have a ton of people participating in this link scheme and the bigger it gets the brighter it will be on the Google radar screen.  I'd stay away from this salesperson and his methods.

[Linwright]

I have to say that I know exactly how you feel. I have a new client in the suplement industry, and while I'm doing everything white hat our competition is doing everything black hat, including buying links....a lot of links. I don't know how they're getting away with it, but they are spending a small fortune getting links within blogs on random, low PR, spammy blogs. It's completely black hat through a company called Sponsored Reviews, and while it sounds respectible it's nto so much. So while I work strictly white hat, seeing small movement, they work strictly black hat and remain on the first page. It can be insanely frustrating for the SEO and the client. But, hang in there, eventually your white hat techniques will pay off.

[Keszi]

One good advice: don't let the frustration make you take decisions

Work hard and you will benefit from it and over rank them.

Good luck!

Istvan

[neilpage123]

Hi Bryan,

Thanks for that. I've just been reading a thread from 2009 on which Rand posted some views on the difference between Paid Links and text Link Ads.

I suppose its hard to distinguish the difference between the two, but its clear in this particular case that the links have been bought, and aren't really for advertising purposes!

Its incredibly frustrating, but I suppose maybe in the long term they'll get punished. Who knows?!

Thanks anyway

[Keszi]

Hi Neil,

Google fights against paid links as much as they can. The thing is that big companies are working hard to "practice what they preach", but it takes a lot of time, energy and "brain power" to deliver that.

Obviously Google team is constantly working on this.

Gr.,

Istvan

[BryanCasson]

Google takes a while to catch these things and believe me, white hat SEO if much harder than black hat so I understand your frustration.

The best thing you can do is locate the site and then submit a paid link report then hope that Google gets around to penalizing them, the competition will soon gain no value from the links and the link-juice may be reversed. The Google part is that a Google Quality Expert will likely follow the trail and treat your competitor according to how much they violated Google's TOS