A lot of discussion has come recently about Google’s policy on paid linking (payings someone to add your link to their site, as well as charging money for links) in an effort to improve one’s PageRank.  This seems to have been the cause of a lot of concerns from a number of directories, as well as some larger sites.

I came across a posting at Directory Trials that sheds some light on the topic, specifically referencing the response in the Google Webmaster Help Centre.

The posting states:

Google and most other search engines use links to determine reputation. A site’s ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to it. Link-based analysis is an extremely useful way of measuring a site’s value, and has greatly improved the quality of web search. Both the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of links count towards this rating.

However, some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results.

Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such as:

• Adding a rel=”nofollow” attribute to the <a> tag
• Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file

For this very reason, the Free SEO Friendly Directory has done away with its paid Featured Listing option.  As it was, we never received payment for any Featured Listings.  Instead, it has been an editorial decision when to add a Featured Listing and will continue to be so.