I have a question regarding paid links. The majority of our incoming links are obviously "paid for" in Google's eyes. These are highly relevant links that bring us quality traffic, and convert into paying customers quite often.

In my industry, there are a handful of high-traffic information sites that have developed a high level of authority. As a manufacturer and reseller, we find it hard to be in the content business without getting into some serious conflict-of-interest, so we prefer to partner with these sites rather than compete.

We have a great relationship with several of the top content sites and they feel that we are among the most relevant sites to link to. However, they also know the value of their traffic and see these outbound links as the best way to monetize their sites. So we buy our links.

In cases like these, shouldn't we get the pagerank benefit of the incoming links or would Google like to see them discounted simply because of the financial component?

[edited by: martinibuster at 6:26 pm (utc) on Dec. 18, 2006]