jtara - 6:23 pm on Sep 12, 2006 (gmt 0)

Buying links is, (as several have said) buying advertising.

There seems to be some confusion here about the term "buying links". So, first, I think we have to go back to the original poster and ask, "what do you mean by that?"

To me, "buying links" isn't the same as advertising. Some here seem to be equating "buying links" with buying advertising through ad networks, such as Google Adwords, etc.

There are places where you can buy links - not advertisements - that will be put in spammy places. The sites where the links will be placed often exist for no other purpose than to hold links that hopefully will be crawled by search engines.

I still insist that buying those kind of links will ultimately be harmful to your site - if not now, then in the future.