Is this a violation of Google's TOS?

[SIA]

Ok, question to the great minds of WPW.

I have been looking at what constitutes Black Hat SEO for some time now and cam across something I was curious about.

I was at a website that allowed users to purchase back links within their articles. The website is text based and has a ton of information on an incredible amount of information. They allow you to purchase a backlink based on a keyword phrase that you choose. The one that got my attention was about website design and the keyword phrase I would be interested in is in this article. I can purchase the back link rights to that keyword phrase as little or as much as I want on their website. It turns the text from standard text into a relevant anchor tagged back link.

Would this be a violation of the big G's terms of service or did someone find a loophole here?

[shakir]

Selling links is violating, but what u r doing is good way that u r updating utr content alos regarding the sold links. its good and technically no problem on it

[kgun]

Selling links is violating, ...

As far as I know that is misinformation. Can you quote?

[chrisJumbo]

Google's TOS for what? Do they own your website?

Google has said they don't like people buying/selling links to affect page rank. But there is no TOS document that you are agreeing to that says you won't.

Google wants you to put the nofollow on bought/sold links if you do. However, what you do with your site is your business.

Of course, if you go against Google's suggestions they can also choose to penalize your site. Maybe you were using the term TOS in a general sense.

[chowell]

Google says stay away from paid links that help your SEO/PageRank, but virtually everyone is doing it. I can point out lots of big name sites (Fortune 500, etc.) that do both buying and selling, but they're often not affected.

So I guess the bigger question is: Are you going to jump? LOL...

[Terry Van Horne]

Selling links is violating, but what u r doing is good way that u r updating utr content alos regarding the sold links. its good and technically no problem on it

Ummm. it violates the content guidelines but the TOS (Terms of Service) I'm not so sure of. Remember also that selling links is also breaking the content guidelines (this is as good of an example of a paid link as I've seen on here) so not only you but the author has broken the guidelines if the links do not include rel="NoFollow". So I'd say only buy them as advertising I wouldn't buy them for SEO. That said if the author sells you advertising and doesn't use the rel="NoFollow" then they have broken the content guidelines and that could cause you a problem down the road. Exactly the degree to which it may be a problem is not known for sure. At the very least it is added risk and should be treated in that manner.

[Martinscholes]

And the sponsored links on Google search results, are... Gosh! They'd be 'paid for' links!

Yeah. Of course. Google have them rigged as "nofollows". As if!

[Terry Van Horne]

No... NoFollow but they are going through a proxy/redirect which is the same as using nofollow. Besides that SE's don't have to play by the rules, they make the rules and give you an opportunity to get some free advertising. The above argument is a strawman argument that the lame and spammers hide behind to justify unethical and unprofessional conduct. SE's are not public entities! They are private so like you can do what you want on your site, they can do whatever they want because basically you are riding on their dime!

[Big Juice]

Google will someday rel=nofollow itself out of usefulness or the public's favor - or at least we can hope that they do.

[Martinscholes]

No... NoFollow but they are going through a proxy/redirect which is the same as using nofollow. Besides that SE's don't have to play by the rules, they make the rules and give you an opportunity to get some free advertising. The above argument is a strawman argument that the lame and spammers hide behind to justify unethical and unprofessional conduct. SE's are not public entities! They are private so like you can do what you want on your site, they can do whatever they want because basically you are riding on their dime!

Terry, you seem to be arguing that without Search Engines, there would be no Internet. That's not true. There should be a symbiotic relationship. They need websites, websites need them.

And just to make it clear, I am neither lame, nor a spammer. Nor was I attempting to justify unethical behaviour.