Spotting Unnatural Link Patterns

[peter_d]

This article makes a good point about link patterns.

http://searchengineland.com/070827-082717.php

Buying links for the sake of advertising on a demographically relevant target site is smart business, and it is arguably manipulated, but it's not spam and doesn't deserve a penalty

Where I think Google should come out and draw the line is with excessive off-topic linking. Those sites are pretty easy to spot. Stop the source site from passing value to the target.

As the writer says, there's nothing wrong with relevant paid link advertising.

[Bernard]

The definition of "natural" has changed as the internet has grown commercially.

Google's own popularity, combined with their toolbar (PageRank indicator) and AdSense, have changed the fabric of the internet.