Google Hit By Page Rank Penalty For Pay Per Post / Buying Links

Before anyone get's the hump, this isn't a personal attack. I've mentioned in the past about why I thought Pay per post and buying links was just plain stupid (ok, if done way too much), and now it's got cast iron, gilt edge proof.

I meant to mention that Google.jp was doing pay per post to promote its site yesterdat (thanks to Shri)allow I did Tweet it as I've been manic with client stuff. I was going to mention its "do as I say not do as I do".

But now its official and Blogstorm has picked this up. The big boys at the Googleplex have penalised (it appears) Google.jp for buying links. Their Page Rank has fallen from 9 to 5.

Even Matt Cutts has said that he expects the penalty to last for a while. At the bottom of the the Blog Storm post it says that he expects Google.jp not to loose much traffic from it. That's because most of the pages indexed are coop, support, reviews or group pages.

So my message to those who are considering buying links is to really think about your objectives and measure the risk.

I've recently been working with a price comparison site and ratcheting down the overt-SEO in favour of a long-term user-focused strategy. There will be a slight dip in traffic (revenues per visitor are actually up 25%, and more than outweighs the reduction in PV's, due to better quality content - all in two weeks), but just as with doing everything else PROPERLY, the long term gains is what you're after. So don't be greedy, don't think short-term, focus on the medium, long-term objectives and don't be swayed by so-called gurus!