Google Slap on Paid Links

[donna]

Here's an interesting article on the whole Google Slap on paid links issue that has come up recently.

I had actually thought it worked the other way around that the sites buying the links would be penalized. This article also explains why that approach would never work.

What is really a paid link anyway?

[blair435]

Interesting article - thanks for sharing!
I also didn't know that they actually punish the seller sight and not the ones who are actually buying. Would probably be more efficient, no?
Anyway, the article mentiones that Google can't determine what is a paid link, but according to some SEOs it can do that at least a bit, especially if paid links are at the top or bottom of the site and not surrounded by any other text and pointed out to another website I heard that Google is more likely to detect them as paid links.
I found another interesting article on that topic dealing with paid links from the strongest subpages and why people probably shouldn't bother buying links on there.