It’s a bold but predictable move by Google. Paid links manipulates the search engine results way too much, and it seriously clash with Google’s ‘don’t be evil’ mantra.

And, this move alone would seriously affect the million dollars industry of text links network. We are talking about big name like payperpost, sponsoredreview, blogvertiser, textlinkbroker, textlinkads that depend on the myth of “paid links will improve your search engine ranking” to work. If the words ever get out that paid links are gonna get ‘discounted’, the industry would be in jeorpady.

Those big names those have their ‘damage control’ team, have a lot of reputable SEOs (seomoz, stuntdbl, pronetadvertising..etc) as their ambassador. But I think, soon enough, “paper would not cover up the fire”. I’ve written about this too:

http://increseo.com/blog/can-damage-control-save-text-link-networks/

Regarding this latest news, it’s still an open case if Google want to throw out paid links. I dunno how they going to stop it because that means alot of links, too many actually, are paid links. No webmaster wants to see their link is a “paid” link, so…