europeforvisitors - 6:58 pm on Aug 26, 2007 (gmt 0)

In the offline world, do you try to trick the phone company into putting your business name on the cover of its directory? :-)

Google isn't saying that you can't promote your business. It's just saying that, if you want free traffic from its search engine, you should "avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings." That sounds like a fair exchange to me.