On another thread,
The ability to pass pagerank. Can it be lost?, there was a suggestion that selling links is unethical.
In the current climate of Google's war on paid links, I certainly see that selling links is unwise,
but is it unethical?
Merriam Webster
defines ethics as 1:
the discipline dealing with what is good and bad and with moral duty and obligation and 2:
a set of moral principles : a theory or system of moral values.
Google based its search technology on an evaluation of site/page popularity (PageRank or
PR), and then publicized the results through its toolbar. Webmasters capitalized on that information by first trading and then buying & selling links to help affect the
PR of their own sites. Google's response: don't do it. And please help us stop it.
Fine. They have a right to try and stop it, but how does that make buying or selling the commodity they released on the open market, a matter of
ethics?
I'm listening, MJ