can google spot paid links???

[redsy]

The advice is often build links for SEO purposes and i am certainly not going to argue against this point.

However, can google spot paid links - comments please.

[MarkeD]

They look for networks and then rely on webmaster spam reports. Chances are if a site is selling links then most sites connected to that site are selling/buying links too.

[Merras]

Google is really suspicious to not relevant sitewide links. If you have a few sitewide links to other sites, you could be in trouble.

[redsy]

I have no paid links and no sitewide links which are not mine.

I suppose i am asking more about buying links than selling them. What is thoughts towards that aspect as it is very common place at present.

[KingPin]

Buying links is/can be risky but if you know what your doing it's perfectly ok. The fact is that to get good quality and solid back links they need to be paid for in this day and age.

The top link builders in the world pay for links.

KP

[zurk]

I believe google can. I read somewhere before that paid links that are placed beside (or under) the texts/words like "sponsors" or "featured" are considered by the bot as paid links... But not so sure about in-content paid links, mostly they are detected when the outgoing links are unrelated to the content.

Or maybe when some webmaster reports it to google :P

[SkinnerW]

If you are look on the source code and see two exactly identical links - can you say if one of them is paid???

Same with Google - unless you tell them ("sponsored", "featured" etc...) or like stated above it meets some of the common patterns for the paid links - there is no way to recognize link as "Paid"...

[redsy]

Originally Posted by KingPin

Buying links is/can be risky but if you know what your doing it's perfectly ok. The fact is that to get good quality and solid back links they need to be paid for in this day and age.

The top link builders in the world pay for links.

KP

Would you or could you expand on how to do it correctly. I read your blog with interest.

I have used information from your blog to help me get my site where it is. have included thanks to you here.
As you can see this is not in the nature of my blog but felt it was right as i had learnt so much as a newbie from the info you have written and other blogs.

[KingPin]

Hi Redsy,

I honestly couldn't go into detail because I don't know everything about link building. It's not really my thing and I outsource to a professional.

KP
P.S., My blog is currently offline and will be coming back very soon

[Bagi Zoltán]

I think in some cases google can recognise paid link, but not in every case. For instance if somebody is not enough smart and place a direct html link to a payperpost.com or any other related service i guess Google will think that here is something which must be ignored, but must of the bloggers can be negotiated to write review about your site with contextual links and nobody will know about the deal behind the curtain so this kind of links are far not so easy to recognise. Of course these posts must be ordered only for the traffic benefit