Google Inc Selling Off High PR Links Time And Again

Saying “Google is buying marketshare for Google Checkout by profiling merchants who use it, and giving them free high PageRank links from Google sites” Aaron Wall has an intriguing post called Google Caught Selling High PageRank Links, Again & Again. The title is self-explanatory.

Apparently, The Google Checkout blog which recently reported about the success of GolfBalls.com on their official blog. This blog not only gives direct links but one of them is a deep link with targeted anchor text.

Aaron Wall says,

“The blog post about GolfBalls.com contains the following passage:

In addition, Google Checkout helps make it even easier for consumers to find us when they search for items like Titleist Pro V1 Golf Balls by displaying the Google Checkout badge next to our search results.

They talk about searching for an item, and instead point that link at a product page on GolfBalls.com. That is like me telling you to search Google for something then dropping an eBay affiliate link in the post. If Google does something like that it is a co-brand cross promotion, and all is well. If I do something like that it is an attempt to manipulate Google and/or a spammy link buy.

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying I would do it differently than Google is doing it. I would just like to remind Google engineers that they would call me as a spammer if I did the same things they do to make their business model work. ”

Seeing it as unfair but not wrong either is NickB who says,

1. "Google is not a public service. They are a private (but publicly held) company.
2. It's their SERPS, their results, their little world.. They can do whatever they want. The company belongs to shareholders now, and that means that profit is #1 and everything else is secondary.
3. You have to play in their world – it's likely pretty useless to complain. But the post is valuable as a reminder that Google can do whatever they feel like doing."

In the corporate world, it seems either noone is wrong or we all are.

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