Quote:
Originally Posted by mjtaylor
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 |
I guess that it's not the product that is to be considered unethical, but the way that it's sold. If you make your client believe that he's going to get super rankings in Google because of the links you´re selling to him, then you´re being unethical.
It's like that song:
"It aint what you do, it's the way that you do it"