Question on Paid Links?

[craig96]

I know that Google does not approve sites that buy or sell links and your site will get punished if caught doing any but why do directories such as Joeant and Yahoo not get penalized for selling links?

Do directories count as placements rather than links? Surly if webmasters can get penalized they should?

[baldidiot]

Googles view on paid directories:

http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleWe.../4/1Pu1YWcIh04

[best.hands]

For all I know, paid links are okay for as long as the link seller offers it with rel="nofollow" on the renters links placement on his site. I guess Google hates the idea of getting your links on a high quality page that easy, which buying can really achieve, as it can devalue the effort of natural linking, thus appearing manipulative to them.

[Wildnettechnologies]

These are good but not proper information about the topic.

[atari]

Let's be very clear here:

Google is not against paid links, it has nothing to do with money changing hands. What they are against are any links created (bought or sold most commonly) exclusively for the purpose of gaming the Google Algo. So you can buy as many spam links as you want, as long as they're no-followed. If you have an opportunity to buy a link that is not just for SEO (like a legitimate business directory) that's ok.

The only grey area is that Google has 100% final say on what they think is ok or not. And they won't tell you, they'll just hit you with a penalty if you go too far to the dark side.