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The Internet: Can't Beat It With A Stick

The Internet is awesome! Anyone, anywhere, can get online for any reason, whenever they want to and say whatever they want. Never before has there been such a purely democratic means by which human beings communicate with one another.

Unfortunately, the price that everyone has to pay for that democracy is the natural result of the democracy, itself: It is sometimes hard to sift-out credible information from nonsense on the Web; and when it comes to Google's position on buying backlinks, the most rudimentary search will yield diametrically opposed 'opinions' on the matter, and every possible permutation of an 'opinion' inbetween. So, should you buy backlinks...? Is it okay to buy backlinks...?

*Ahem* - Google does not now, never has, and by all appearances never will because it cannot, penalize anyone for buying backlinks; or, paying someone to build one's backlinks for them. Period.

So what's all the fuss about? Google penalizes the buying and selling of PageRank. Google explains what PageRank is:

"PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results. PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. We have always taken a pragmatic approach to help improve search quality and create useful products, and our technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page's importance."

What Google Does Penalize

Google penalizes the buying of links that are purposefully sold to pass the PageRank of the site that has the link on it. There are some 'services' on the Internet where, upon account creation, one can scroll-through an inventory of sites listed by keywords and PageRank. One then selects a direct placement of their URL on the site passing the PageRank, with the anchor text of their choice. The site selling its PageRank is purposefully not adding the "rel=nofollow" attribute to the link that one has purchased for placement onto the site, which passes the PageRank of the linking site on to the other, linked site. This is exactly what Google penalizes, and does so because A.) synthetically passed PR skews search results, and B.) Google owns PageRank.

Google & Backlink Building Services

There is no penalization for hiring backlink building services. Google isn't stupid, and recognizes that it has no legal or capitalistic grounds by which to demand e-commerce not flow as it otherwise would. Conversely, what Google does not want, and what itdoes have a right to involve itself with, is the manipulation of its search engine by way of the synthetic manipulation of the variables it owns that govern how the search engine works. Posting to a high PR, "do-follow" forum (as one example) and getting that posting approved, whether one does it themselves or has someone do it for them, is the natural passing of PageRank from one site to another; an agreement wherein one pays the forum $43.00 per month to have a "do-follow" link on the forum is the synthetic passing of PageRank.

Synthetic passing of PageRank = Penalization

Natural passing of PageRank = successfully passed, and unpenalized passing of PageRank from one site to another

Aside from being none of Google's business, why would Google want to discourage an activity (link building services) that Google, itself, indirectly profits from? The good news is - Google doesn't:

"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." .

Why on Earth would Google penalize someone - and what business would it be of their's - if one hires someone else to build one's links? It would be analogous to a paint manufacturer refusing to sell someone paint because that person hired a painter to paint their house instead of doing it themselves. In fact, the notion that Google would in some way thwart, or is somehow discouraging link building services and those services' customers through penalization is so ridiculous - even to Google - that Google specifically address the matter of one hiring an entity to build one's links...nowhere.

The Young and The Clueless

Strange as it is, one will find no shortage of individuals on the Internet that interpret such silence as suggestive ambiguity rather than what it actually is: Google doesn't directly address the issue, because it is not an issue. Even if Google wanted to forbid the hiring of one group to build the back links of another group or individual (which it does not), Google could not do so as it has no direct, vested, legal, or monetary interest in the creation of the product that would be the result of that private contract: Google does not own the links one purchases; the links one purchases are used as a variable for the product it does own - the Google search engine. Google has no ownership rights to one's back links; no one but Google has ownership rights to PageRank.

OMM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM...

The sale and synthetic passing of PageRank violates Google's owned, patented, and proprietary product rights and directly affects the accuracy of its search engine; they have a vested interest in the sale and passing of synthetic PR, therefore. Indeed, if Google really wanted to get nasty about things, there are definite grounds for Google to pursue legal action against those engaging in the sale of PageRank...

For now, however, it looks like Google will just continue to satiate itself by eating babies...

...Which it does.

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